This photo was taken a couple of years ago in a blogging moment outside on the patio in Summer. I was probably multi tasking at the time, thus the excitement. My Toshiba still exists as my second computer. Today I blog usually on my Acer with Windows 7. I do not want Window 8, have enough finger prints on my iPad without having them on my computer as well.
There was a time, many years ago when I remember asking Mr. Swiss what a “blog” is. He, of course, had no idea. I do not even know where I found the expression, probably picked it up on the Bill Gates machine somewhere. So I put it into the Google searching machine (or was it then Alta Vista – remember?) and came up with Blogger. I then went back to my desk at work and forgot the whole blogging problem. I was then blogging away in the world of export, sending goods to far flung places, that I could not even pronounce (remember the day when the town of destination was Dnepropetrovsk).
One day I discovered Blogger as it was then known and realised that blogging was writing compositions, or essays, like you did at school, but choosing your own subjects. I decided to see what would happen if I registered for a blog. Now what shall I blog about, and what shall I call myself. I mean you don’t want every John Doe knowing who you really are in real life. I remember my first blog on Blogger was about my little blind cat (at least he was little then, but that was about eight years ago). No-one made a remark, no-one said Well Done, What a Blog, Fantastic etc. etc. However not being disappointed, and applying my usual life philosophy “You havn’t got anything to lose” I continued blogging about everything I felt like blogging about.
In the meanwhile I found another blogging site called Yahoo 350. I even got people liking me. How they found me I have not got a clue, but I realised there were fellow bloggers in the world. I then discovered some interesting bloggers who wrote some really good stuff. You see, I do not just blog but read blogs written by other bloggers in the blogger communal spirit.
All good things come to an end, and for some unknown reason Yahoo folded. There were many lost bloggers in the computer world, but it seems that most wandered over to a place called Multiply. I decided what they can do, I can too, so I joined in. Now this was the cat’s whiskers for me. They had groups: writing groups, photo groups, poetry groups, many that had existed in Yahoo 350, although I had never discovered them.
I was still a working woman, but found that in between sending machine parts all over the world, I could sort of blog a bit. Facebook was banned and removed from our possibilities at work, but there were many other blogging places which our company had not noticed. I suddenly started to write stories, poems, illustrate my works with my own photos and got to know a lot of people in Multiply that were doing the same. A brotherhood/sisterhood of bloggers was growing for me.
In the meanwhile my interest for computers grew and somewhere along the line I did a web assistant course and exam, discovering that a basic knowledge of html was useful. I learned css, but never really liked it.
OK, I know, I have not yet mentioned WordPress. This I found by chance. I decided that my great literature works should have a back up and started doing copy paste in WordPress, but just the stories and not the daily blogs like “I visited the local market today” or “I am cooking spaghetti for dinner”. No the works of a writing genius that I thought I was, preserving them for when I am gone.
I still had Blogger (with a complete back-up), I was blogging in Multiply with a fiction back-up in WordPress and one fine day I was retired. Instead of fitting the occasional blog in between in stolen moments at work and in the evening, I could become a real full time blogger (after dealing with the cooking, cleaning, washing, gardening and shopping of course).
The next calamity was that Multiply (my favourite blogging place) decided to go into marketing. They moved to Indonesia and closed down last December. Lots of lost blogging souls were looking for a place to blog and we went in different directions. It was then that I really found who was who in the blogging world. I tried them all and left again after a day or two. I just went where my colleagues went, which was mainly Blogger (the service had improved since I started there) and WordPress. It was then that I discovered WordPress loves its bloggers (so they are always telling us – sometimes more and sometimes less according to what the Daily Prompt has to offer). WordPress has now become my main blogging place an no longer just for stories, but all the sordid details, like “today it was snowing” or “I got fined for speeding” and “my blind cat got out, but we found him again at midnight in the neighbour’s garden”.
So why do I blog? Why not, I could do a lot of more stupid things with my time. It keeps me brain active I suppose. I love writing, have fun and have no-one to tell me what I have to do. If I do not like the Daily Prompt, I do not have to do it, although I usually do. And, of course, I have met a lot of fellow bloggers from all over the world, even cats and dogs that blog (yes I know mine do as well now and again when I am not looking).Here is a little addition to this blog. First of all I do not do religion.
Why do I blog – one day I will be just a pile of bones, or perhaps even ashes, perhaps there will be a stone saying “Here lays a great Blogger”, perhaps not, but my blogs will still be hanging around on a blogging site. My other half has no intention of ever doing anything in the blogging world, although he does read my blogs. So perhaps blogging is for me a sort of mark left on the world to say “I was here”.
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