Blogging 101: Day one

Like many things in my life, I have started the blogging 101 class late. No particular reason other than procrastination, but this is something I was looking forward to since last month. Alas, I am starting and I intend to stick to it.

Day One: Introduce Yourself to the World

I am a 29 year old who wants to hone his writing skills to become a more effective communicator and to gain new ideas. I also want to release my ideas and stories into the world because my mind sometimes gets bogged down with thoughts of the past and I find it hard to concentrate or move on.

Blogging 101 posed some questions to answer in this first blog post, so I will answer them straightforwardly:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?

I keep a journal but I feel that blogging publicly will help me to get criticism to help me grow as a writer. I am also ready to be more open so what better way to do that than on the internet through blogging? Everybody’s doing it.

• What topics do you think you’ll write about?

There are a few instances of trauma in my life that I want to release to the world as a mediation of sorts. I have been dwelling on a few important times in my life where I felt hopeless but I somehow managed, and I want to explore those experiences to understand how I can use those hard times as motivation for me to more forward in my present. I also want to meet people who may have gone through similar experiences and learn how they coped and moved on.

• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?

Meeting people who’ve been through trials like mine would be great. I want to understand what helped them to move forward and what helps them to deal when the memories of past trauma creeps up and holds your brain captive.

• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

I want to accomplish writing my thoughts clearly as to get my point across but also to make it entertaining. I want to build a readership of at least 10 readers who share their thoughts about my blog, writing style, content, etc. to help me become a more interesting communicator. Finally, I want to learn how to talk about myself in a way that keeps people interested because I am insecure about this. I fear people find me boring, so I tend to overcompensate by focusing too much on another person or talking about nonsense. In a sense, I want to become a better storyteller so I can gain peoples’ interest and keep them interested as we continue to get to know each other.

There you have it. Doing this first blog for the class has made me feel good, so I am looking forward to continuing. Since I have missed 7 days, I will most likely try to catch up by completing multiple assignments in one day.