Livejournal did such a great job of destroying itself. The communities, the friends-pages, the privacy, the customisation! So much that has been lost and not recovered in its entirety by any other platform. Facebook and Twitter, battered by algorithms. Tumblr and Instagram, not really the right platform for words. And all of them so full of ads and noise that any wordier content gets lost. Blogging sites (like this) give a platform but without communities it feels harder to actually have a community, and part of me wonders how long it’ll be before this too feels like warbling into a void.
Still, here we are! I’m tired of missing people’s life updates due to fickle codes dictating what content I get to see. I’m tired of forgetting my own events and thoughts, since twitter’s fast pace makes it difficult for me to go back and reread my own tweets from previous weeks, months, years. And now that I have a tiny human to take care of, my ability to be omnipresent in the twitterverse and keep up with the latest happenings is limited. I need something a little slower-paced, something that I can approach in my own time, when I have time. And so, it is time to see if I can relearn the forgotten* art of blogging.
If anyone out there is inclined to comment, let me ask you (feel free to respond to as many or as few as you like):
- How do you decide what topic to blog about?
- If your blog has A Theme, how did you arrive at that subject?
- What motivates you to put pen to paper (fingers to keys)?
- What determines which blogs you regularly read/actively subscribe to?
*huge respect to all you pro bloggers out there
DoubleDelight : a blog, for now 
How do you decide what topic to blog about?
– Events in my life. My blog is more of a public journal, really.
If your blog has A Theme, how did you arrive at that subject?
– I don’t have a theme, I just go with the flow.
What motivates you to put pen to paper (fingers to keys)?
– I find that if I’m a good mental space, I blog regularly. The months I don’t blog, I’m probably going through some not-so-easy times.
What determines which blogs you regularly read/actively subscribe to?
– I like personal blogs with relatable personal stories.
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You’ve described the sort of blog I like reading, too! I’m glad, since having to have a certain topic or theme to stick to feels like a lot of pressure 😅
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It definitely feels like shouting into the void at times, but writing is something I’ve always loved. I set myself a goal of hitting 200,000 words by the end of the year which has helped keep me going.
I started my blog so I could share what I was doing with friends and family back home, because it was hard to fit everything into a phone call once a week.
I usually post the kind of stuff I’d like to read, so I guess I’ve ended up following similar blogs to mine.
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200,000 words in a year is an awesome goal! I might try to do something like that next year. Has it been a challenge, or do you think you’re going to do it easily?
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I’ve included the last couple of years in the total because I had about 129,000 before 2020 and I wanted to make it manageable 🙂 I haven’t caught up to last year’s 92,000 yet but I think it’s going to be fine.
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I blogged about Bailey our delinquent Labrador and our problems training him for a while. It was humorous and had a small following, but then he started to behave more or less properly, so there was nothing funny to write about.
I also had a go at putting my poetry and stories on a blog, but that was whistling in a coal mine so I switched to the infant Ello. I gathered plenty of replies and readers, but hit two problems.
The first was technical. If you put your writing out on the internet, you can’t submit to lots of magazines or websites. That wasn’t too much of a problem to start with, but as my work got better I began to want a different audience. I racked up 250,000 views, which was great because it gave me some confidence in my work.
The second problem was that Ello changed. The platform became increasingly focused on visual arts, and regular poets began to leave.
What made me leave was the proliferation of porn spam from people who signed up, posted one porn link and followed everyone.
I complained to Ello, but nothing changed, so I decided to leave. I’d had a handful of poems published by poetry websites, but was sorry to see the changes to the platform.
As for a blog of my own, I’m not good at keeping regular posting up to date, and who’d want to read the ramblings of a daft old man.
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You make a good point about blogging pre-publication and then running into difficulties when the time comes to publish. One of my other friends had a similar issue – they had written fanfiction and, while it was excellent fiction with beautiful imagery, it was not something that they wanted associated with their name once they started looking into being published, so they locked/deleted everything.
I guess porn bots are the one constant of the internet! They really get everywhere.
As for “the ramblings of a daft old man” – honestly, I would really like that. Phil had a LiveJournal! He and I were LJ friends and he’d comment on my entries as well as posting his own updates every now and then. I’ve even been known to revisit his posts occasionally in more recent years. There is some merit in documenting your thoughts – even if it may not be interesting to you, it is probably interesting to someone else!
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Perhaps I should start a blog called Daft Old Man.
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You should call it what you like! I will read it regardless. ❤️
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Hello hello!
Started at update 2 and then tottered over here. ^^
I realized all my old info/login details aren’t completely up to date but will do my best to make sure everything is in order soon so I don’t confuse people. o.O;
Your questions:
How do you decide what topic to blog about?
If it’s personal stuff, then I don’t even remember how I used to do it — it’s been that long. If it’s informational-based then it’s easy. I look at seasonal events, look into stuff I have questions about myself, and then go from there.
If your blog has A Theme, how did you arrive at that subject?
Oh no. I don’t think it has one yet. But it will most likely be Japan-related, since this is where I am and I’ve spent the last decade.
What motivates you to put pen to paper (fingers to keys)?
Intense, tight deadlines. (You never said it had to be a *healthy* motivator.) But in all seriousness, questions. Questions I have or others have. Writing tends to bring out answers, eventually.
What determines which blogs you regularly read/actively subscribe to?
Again, I’ve been out of the game for so long I don’t even know. *But* I can recommend West Dates East https://www.westdateseast.com/ I’ve been following and reading her blog for…10 years?? ish? Everything about her writing is amazing — the tone, the topics, the punchlines.
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Ooh, hello! I like the idea of having informational stuff with some personal things too, but I lack the confidence to be authoritative enough on anything – I deeply respect those who are!
Your comment about tight deadlines made me laugh – that’s pretty much how I completed my entire BA, so I feel you! 😂
Thank you for the recommendation too – I’ll check her blog out 👍🏼
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☆How do you decide what topic to blog about?
Since the blog I’m using for this – and tbh the only blog I’m using right now – has a theme to it, I try and talk about an aspect that relates to it or at least a group or individual related to it. Sometimes I go off on slight tangents but it all ties back to the main ‘theme’ so uh let’s go to the next question!
☆If your blog has A Theme, how did you arrive at that subject?
Throughout the years I’ve hopped from fandom to fandom, sometimes never really leaving one behind because I just went to roll in another for a while to come back to where I originally came from lol In this case, though it was something new. And something that was (and in my opinion still is) not as well known nor popular in the non-Japanese speaking fandom/world. So I decided to put it out there, although to be completely honest, it started out as a way to organize things for myself and then I just figured it couldn’t hurt to share it with the rest of the interwebs.
As for arriving at the theme itself, it’s a bit of a longer story that I will probably address on the blog itself in the not so distant future so stay tuned if you’d like 🙂
☆What motivates you to put pen to paper (fingers to keys)?
What motivates me can vary: friends, my boys, my state of mind. More of than not it might be something I just need to get out of my system – both in a positive or negative sense.
☆What determines which blogs you regularly read/actively subscribe to?
To be honest, I have not subscribed to any as of yet. I’ll read friends’ blogs to try and keep up with what is going on in their lives?
*ILU Pippachu! ❤️*
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