Anatomy of a Blog

I'm participating in the Blogging from A-Z Challenge again this year. Today's post is brought to you by the letter A.

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Aside from my personal facebook page and the sign-up list for the A-Z challenge, I don't spend much time promoting or trying to drive traffic to my blog.  In the extremely rare occasion that I utter the words "I write a blog" in real life, I feel like a huge doofus. This is mostly due to the fact that I don't really have a "style" or a specific set of topics that I adhere to when I post.  More than anything, I use this in place of a journal.  The most successful blogs are ones that are geared toward a certain demographic or provide tips, tutorials, recipes, etc.  I do none of that and therefore consider this less of a blog and more of a brain dump. 

When I started blogging, it was back in the livejournal days.  I wanted to share my innermost thoughts with people and as crazy as it sounds, I wanted to do so online b/c I was intrigued by the sort of faceless void that is the world wide webby-majig. Some of my friends followed me and commented regularly, and I even made a new friend out of the deal.  (Hi, Elizabeth!)  Then along came Myspace.  I started using the blog feature there and eventually phased out and deleted my livejournal account.  (Not before printing up all my posts first.  No joke, HUNDREDS of trees probably died to make the paper for that endeavor!)  As time wore on and Myspace started becoming old news, I once again sacrificed a small rainforest to print out those blog posts and then deleted my Myspace page in exchange for Facebook and Blogger.

In a random burst of ambition, I searched for articles about how to write a successful blog.  I found tips on design, fonts, topics, and a slew of other things that seemed like way too much work for me. The most common suggestion among all of the pieces I read was to be pithy and on-topic, always. That was the moment when one thing became glaringly obvious: this will never be a prosperous venture for me.  My followers will never reach the triple digits.  I will never see one of my posts quoted in another person's story or linked in another blog. My words will not reach the masses. But I'm okay with that.  I embrace my excessive wordiness, my lack of perfect grammar, and completely self-centered topics.  I'm also naive enough to not fully realize how elementary my blog may be. (And let me tell you, ignorance is bliss!) I appreciate the people who take time out of their day to read what I have to say, who may relate to all or some of it, and especially those who comment or somehow let me know they're a reader.  I think if this ever became more than a hobby, I wouldn't enjoy it as much.  It would feel like another obligation I have to fulfill to fit a certain role and not be my annoying, quirky, sometimes dark and twisty, strange little self.  

And that's what you have to look forward to if you continue to read each day of this challenge, or any day after that.  #sorrynotsorry