For A Refreshing Change Of Pace, I Was Tagged!

My very good blogger friend Uncle Joey (just kidding about the uncle part, although if you should ever need an extra tax deduction, I'm your man) tagged me with an award the other day, and I'm just tickled pink about it. It isn't often that I'm tagged with an award (last tagged about two years ago or so), so I'm really thrilled that someone really really really likes me.

Anywho, he has but two questions that go with the award, so I thought I would take a crack at answering them today.

Question #1 is: Why did I decide to start a blog?

I've covered this so many times from so many different angles over the past 4 years that I often forget what the real reason was as to why I had decide to start a blog.

First and foremost, there was no one main reason as to why I started blogging, but a bunch a little ones. As most of you are aware of, I used to be heavily involved with the chat rooms. Although the time frame that had the heaviest amount of usage was February '07 thru mid '08, I was involved with the chat rooms for a total of about three and a half years, 2007 thru early 2011. I won't bore you with the excruciating details, but if you are interested please check out years 2008 & 2009 of this blog, of what I did there, but I will say that the one of the reasons as to why I started blogging would have to be censorship.

It was established very early on that the company that owned the chat rooms website where I was hanging out was very selectively enforcing their Terms of Service doctrines. Some people got hammered and some people didn't. If you were friends with the moderators, you didn't get hammered. If you weren't, you got hammered. So when my good cyber friend Gumby The Cat suggested that I move my act over to the blog world, I spent about two days thinking about it, then did it. And I haven't looked back.

In blogging, I found a way to creatively pass the time without getting into trouble, to practice my writing without getting mocked and most importantly, to become a writer. And I believe I have succeeded on all three counts: I managed to creatively make the past 4+ years go by with five blogs (one closed) and a combined 1000+ posts; I managed to perpetually practice my writing to the point where I have two short stories published, a self-pubbed chapbook and a commercial debut novel coming out later this year; and I have become a writer.

Question #2 is: What do I find is the hardest aspect of blogging?

That one is a toughie, as there are three aspects that I consider to be the hardest. The first aspect that I would to be the hardest is keeping to a schedule. As most of you have probably figured out over the past four years, I am a bit anal about things. Scratch, I am anal about things. And one of the things that I'm anal about is following through on a project or whim that I've started. Many has been the time that I've been super gung-ho about doing something only to have it fizzle out days/weeks/months later.

When I'd started blogging back in 2008, I was determined to create a schedule for myself and stick to it, come hell or high water. For those of you who have been with me since 2008, what I'm about to say next is redundant, but those of you who have been with me since 2010, this will probably come as a shock to you.

I have not always blogged three to four days a week. I used to have the following kind of publishing schedules:

1} Twice a day, every other day. Did that for about six months.

2} Eventually cut down to once a day, every other day. Did that for about two  years.

3} Eventually cut down to a M-W-F schedule with the occasional Sunday post. Been doing this since 2010.

The second aspect ties into the first, in that I hate to disappoint people. One thing that I vowed to in my blogging was to never disappoint someone. I have spent too many years of my life dealing with disappointment from friends, family and co-workers, so when I decided to blog, I wanted to be the one dependable person that someone could always count on to be there. And I made damn sure that if I wasn't going to publish a post, I would let everyone know why I wasn't going to be here.

And just to show you my durability in sticking to a schedule, from May 24, 2008 to the present, I have missed a grand total of two weeks from blogging. Half of which took place in 2008 when I took a real vacation, and the other half has been spread throughout the remaining years.

Finally, the third aspect of blogging that I find the hardest is something that all of us have suffered through from time to time, and that is, writing fresh material. Somehow, out of the 1000+ posts I have written, only three have been repeated. I say that is a pretty phenomenal success rate of fresh material.

It hasn't been easy for the past four years to come up with fresh material, and while I'm always worried about running out of fresh material and thus ending this blog, I know that so long as I have someone stopping by to read, I will always be inspired to write something new. And if I can't write something new, I'll always have very old e-mails to fall back on until I do get inspired.

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to tag anyone else with this award, but if you feel up to it, by all means, borrow this award and use it to spice up your blog. You'll be glad that you did.