When I started to write my first blog, I refreshed the page over and over again.
There wasn’t really anybody seeing my posts except for my family members, but still, I liked having something to call my own on the internet. A place where I couldn’t be limited by anybody else. (Well, that was before I discovered Substack and COPPA were not exactly on my side.)
Back then, even getting 10 views felt massive. Half of them were probably me refreshing the page on another device, two were my father, and one was probably a bot trying to sell crypto.
Why I started.
When I started, I didn’t really have a reason myself to start writing blog posts, but my father said it would be good for me. Since I was already writing some things here and there, he thought it would be good to start a blog. And as soon as I started, I liked it. It could be because I was sharing my writing with others, or because it would get a good amount of views, or maybe it was something else entirely, but I liked it. And after that, I haven’t really gotten myself to stop writing, so here I am.
Back then, I also thought every blog post needed to sound extremely professional. Apparently, 12 year old me believed every sentence needed to sound like it came from an encyclopedia.
What blogging changed for me.
Starting a blog changed the way I think a lot more than I expected it to. Compared to a few years back, when I didn’t have a blog, I started noticing a lot more around me. Whenever we would go somewhere, I would pay more attention, just because afterward I would be able to write a blog post about it. Like, for example, when you go on vacation and you’re sitting in a cab, normally you would just sit there and be on your phone, but instead, I observed the outside world and wrote a blog post about it. Read it here. And when you start blogging, you end up learning many more things as well, storytelling, design, and so much more.
My early posts.
Looking back at some of my older posts, they are pretty funny. A lot of them either looked like they were written in 10 minutes, or like a 12 year old trying really hard to sound like a professional Wikipedia writer. Sometimes I would overexplain, sometimes I would underexplain. I would use long words where I should use short words, and I would use short words where long words would be better.
Some of the posts also had formatting that made absolutely no sense. Random bold text, giant paragraphs, headings everywhere. It looked like I discovered every formatting option at once and decided to use all of them.
At one point, I discovered blockquotes and started using them for absolutely no reason.
“I ate lunch.”
Truly inspirational.
Why I’m still doing it.
Most of my posts don’t go viral. Most of them barely get read at all. But I still keep writing because I enjoy the process itself. I like documenting the things that I’m learning, I like having a place where I can write what I think about, and come back to read it later. That itself might be the best part of blogging, not the amount of views you get, not the likes that you get, but the fact that you created something, and either you or someone else can still see it now, or years later.
And honestly, even if nobody reads a post, it’s still fun looking back at it later and realizing exactly what kind of person you were when you wrote it.
Anyway, that’s it for this post, see you all next time!
