The New Shit: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Blog

As someone who is what I suppose you’d call a ‘professional writer’ (in so much that I’m lucky enough to pay the bills through writing) the whole world of blogging has always enticed me to some extent.  Don’t get me wrong, I still say that there’s nothing better than seeing your name and work printed on actual paper that other people will read, but the whole concept of largely ordinary folk writing for an audience of other largely ordinary folk whom they’ve never met has a strange appeal.  I’ll admit that, at first, I was more or less entirely against blogs, reason being that, as I struggled to establish myself as a writer in the most traditional sense, seeing other people taking what the martyr in me saw as ‘short cut’ by simply rambling on a website  infuriated me to a great degree. 

And though achieving bigger and better things will perhaps always be my reason d’etre, I’ve chilled out a lot since those days of being a struggling, frustrated writer, and having read countless blogs over the last six months or so, it’s got to be said, I want in. 

Yet this isn’t my first blog ever, and I’ve being doing something similar since I was in my teens. Back then, as one century faded to the history books and another began, I don’t recall blogging having such prominence as it does today, but I’d frequently update an online journal on my own personal website, which then contained nothing more than a few pictures and scatterings of poetry, with the journal entries simply blasted onto a HTML page and uploaded.

 I enjoyed it greatly. Even though the idea of taking up writing as a career hadn’t seriously crossed my mind back then, I admit that I loved the fact that my little journal had attracted a small, devoted audience amongst friends and thus my first real taste of writing for an audience, no matter how small, began. A similar thing happened when I was finally dragged, somewhat kicking and screaming into the world of Myspace. Again, I was frequently posting journal entries which were avidly read by a core group of chums and acquaintances. 

 I was still quite miffed at people who could only make a name for themselves through their blog, but as I continued to, hopefully, entertain my small audience, I had to admit that yes, I was indeed blogging too.  Then something happened. 2006 came around and I hardly posted a single blog/online journal entry at all.

  By then I was writing full time for a living, and sometimes the lack of any notable web rambling from me was simply down to the fact that I was too tired to write any more, but mainly it was the arrival of the missus, then the house, and finally the cat that put paid to such things.   Lately, after pouring over numerous, fascinating blogs by folks from all walks of life, the desire to talk shite on the internet and have it read by people has bounced back tenfold, and yes, I could definitely see the advantages that having a fresh output of work linked regularly from one’s website could bring to a writer on the constant search for more work.   And so I went on a mission to become an active and somewhat serious blogger.   At first I tried Livejournal, if for no other reason than it being one of the first things that crops up when you type ‘start a blog’ into Google, but it just didn’t feel right.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing spectacularly bad about Livejournal, at least nothing that I could see, but for the month or two that I posted there, it felt more like I was dossing on someone’s kitchen floor after a seriously heavy night on the lash than snuggling up on the sofa with the girlfriend and a glass of wine. It just didn’t feel comfortable, it didn’t feel like home.  This place however, this place looks like I could happily call it home, and when I first saw the empty template that is to become my new blog, it was like staring at a wonderful, modern four-bedroom detached with a big backgarden in a nice neighbourhood. It looked like how a new home should look, and I can’t wait to move in. Here goes!