Beginnings Blogfest

Today I’m taking part in L.G. Keltner’s Beginnings Blogfest. Being the nice person she is, she didn’t give us any rules as to which beginning we should write about. So I thought I’d be all lazy and post the first post I ever did on this blog. But that’s easy. And unnecessary. Because if you wanted to read it, you’d have gone to archives and picked the first post. 

Instead, I thought, I’d do something a bit more helpful to new bloggers. On this blog, I’m going to do two posts from my early blogging days. On my other one, I’m giving ten tips I wish I knew as a beginning blogger. 

Okay then… The first post is from 3 August, 2010. It’s the second one I ever wrote. 

On the joys of being a new blogger

So… at the moment I’m still blogging to myself, which kind of feels strange. Almost like a new empty house. Everything I say reverberates in my mind and I wonder how I’m going to get this out there. 

For now though, just building this blog is bringing up complications. For example, do I continue with the use of my dark but beautiful background or do I go lighter. Do I allow advertising to cover my blog? I suppose that I should be worrying about this later, but somehow I just can’t help myself… 

I will get over this overwhelming desire to put too much nonsense on my blog. I promise. This extends to my posts. Therefore… Thus closes this post.

As you can see, I was completely lost in the start. In fact, I’d e-mailed about five blog authors begging for advice. They were wonderful and gracious when they answered. Which is why I fell in love with blogging. But there was a problem…

Nearly a week. and… nothing but soul searching

I’m starting to feel rather down now, but maybe it’s just that I want to sleep.

I’ve been blogging for almost a week now and this is the impact I’ve made: five profile views. Absolutely no followers. 

As much as I enjoy blogging, I never really enjoyed the idea of writing for myself. Not even my book. Since I was really small, everything I wrote was presented to someone to see. My mom (for honest crit) and my gran (full out support) were my favourite recipients. After I got the idea of short stories down, I wrote every assigned task with the idea that someone else is going to read this, namely my teacher.

I would ask, what am I supposed to do? What do you want to see on the blog… but… alas you are not here. So the empty house reverberations continue, leaving me to fight a slight sense of panic. 

What if… the same happens with my book… What if… I write all of it and no one cares. Should I even care at this stage of the game? I think so… everything I write comes straight from my heart. Repeating this process again and again and again without anyone actually seeing this makes me feel… well… terribly lonely. 

When people tell you that you should blog, they never warn you about the beginning days. The writing isn’t hard. The honesty isn’t hard. Sharing experiences isn’t hard. But blogging to yourself is. It sucks. Big time… So much so that I’m wondering why I’m doing this to myself. 

[Huge amount of insightful but currently irrelevant soul searching withdrawn]

I guess that the only thing I can do is to just do my best to get followers for my blog and not get hit so hard by the apparent lack of interest. I’m sure that someone out there cares enough that he or she will stumble across my attempts and join me in the experience. Maybe it’s just coincidence that they haven’t stumbled across me already….

This same blog crossed 100 followers by the end of 2010. I hit 450 by end 2011 and by end 2012, almost 900. There is hope. Don’t give up. 

To all you veteran bloggers out there, what were your first days like?