Blog Retrospective

Lazily ‘shared’ from http://www.wittysam.com

I started the outline for this post sat with a pint and a weighty book, in both senses of the word.  As usual I was agonising over the next topic to write about and that led me back to thoughts of the beginnings of my writerly journey.   You remember those days when we all walked fast in black and white, accompanied by piano music and there was no such thing as hashtags or trending.

There are many challengers new bloggers face but the biggest one I think, is perseverance.  It’s easy to decide to blog but then there is the initial struggle to come up with a decent name for the thing before you can even think about writing.  After a while the shiny new blog is up and running, with a first post and your pride fills the room like something metaphorical would.

It feels a bit empty though, this of course is understandable, anybody wanting to be noticed needs to ‘advertise’ and get out there and be social. That in itself is a challenge,  All the blogs out there seem to have loads of likes and comments from people who are friends, and seem close-knit, how do you penetrate that and become part of the group?

Luckily we are a nice bunch though so eventually it all starts to come together, the to and fro of commenting and liking, then most excitingly those slow beginnings towards solid friendships with people you never imagined you’d be chatting to.  But wait, with all that good stuff comes a troubling notion…it turns out I am not as well read as I thought and my writing is below par with the standard in Bloggaria. Having made it this far, the strong again persevere and keep writing.

What becomes clear is that no matter what you do on your blog, it is art and it needs to be honed through experience.  There needs to be a humbleness and willing to learn, to use that to gain confidence and perhaps go off topic and expand your repertoire in new directions, to present your particular view of combined thoughts that are uniquely yours.

This explosion of enthusiastic inspiration colliding with the realisation of so much more to be discovered and chronicled is the catalyst of a growing awareness coupled with friendship base that can grow and be a testament to hard work and a creative mind.

Over the years for me, it has been a heady mix of books shared, people met friendships built and a quest to always the new,  after all that is the thing that keeps life most interesting.  It is perhaps only in the last few months that I feel like a confident writer not just the confident blogger which I started to feel last year, of which I feel there is a difference.  So keep it up people, you are not alone in your struggles or worries but you are part of an awesome group of people and also, I might add the best looking.