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Friday, April 3, 2020

C is for Communication (#AtoZChallenge)

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The team decided our theme for this month's posts here would be a take "2020 visions of blogging." This set of weekday posts focuses on:

Memories from Blogging in the Past


I started blogging in 2007. I had just gotten a scholarship to study abroad in the USA for a year, and one of the first things my student adviser told me was "Start a blog. It's going to be a lot easier to keep people updated than sending out dozens of emails."
And that is how my blog started. For Communication, for Connection. At first, it was daily news for friends and family about my study abroad adventures. Later it morphed into reports from storytelling festivals and conferences. Then, in 2012, I joined the A to Z Challenge for the first time, and started sharing storytelling and folklore content regularly.
Through Comments, I was starting to make new friends, and meet new Colleagues. I became part of a Community.
Today, thirteen years later, my blog is a Combination of professional Content and reports from my travels and performances. I have grown as an artist and as a person. It is strange and nostalgic to look back at the very first posts, and remember when and how it all began.

How has your life changed since you started blogging? Did it change thanks to your blogging? What does it feel like to look back on the early days?

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Thursday, April 2, 2020

Blogging Beginnings ( #AtoZChallenge )


  My A to Z overview starts out with some of my past memories from blogging and my journey from that first post until now...

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Blogging Beginnings






         Way back in September of 2009 I was at a sort of crossroads of life.  My job of 18 years had ended earlier that year and having difficulty finding another job I was pondering my next step.  It was at that time that I started running across ads about starting a blog to make lots of money.  Rather than send in the $99 to take the advertised blogging course, I instead researched the topic on my own which led me to Blogger.  Starting a blog was easy though it took some time to learn the ropes.  In fact I'm still learning.

          Having been interested in writing since I was a kid, blogging seemed like the ideal creative outlet for me.  And I started out with a lot of enthusiasm for my new found outlet of blogging.  Initially I spent the better part of every day researching and writing my blog posts, exploring other blogs, and trying to come up with ideas of how to promote my blog to gain readers.    Early on I discovered that to attract readers I needed to visit other blogs and leave comments.

           The principle of reciprocal commenting and establishing blogging communities was the spark that inspired the first Blogging from A to Z Challenge in April of 2010.  This event caught on in a bigger way than I had expected and in that first year an amazing community of bloggers was built around the A to Z Challenge.

              Over the succeeding years we've seen bloggers come and go.  A handful of dedicated bloggers have participated in the Challenge since the beginning while many more have followed along to support the efforts of the A to Z bloggers.  That support fuels those of us who take on this yearly Challenge--just the encouragement we bloggers hope for.  That is the purpose of the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge:  To expand interest in our blogs and to become better bloggers while connecting to others who have a similar goal.

             Some of my enthusiasm for blogging has waned since the earlier days of my adopted "career" and I don't put the same efforts into the endeavor as I once did, but I don't see myself stopping blogging.  For now I'm coasting in a sense, but I still see an explosion of functionality waiting for my blog.

           How about you?   How does your blogging experience compare?    Do you think you've found the real potential in your blog?    What lies ahead for you in regard to blogging?


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Wednesday, April 1, 2020

#AtoZchallenge 2020 Anamnesis


Welcome to the eleventh year of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge! The team decided our theme for this month's posts here would be a take "2020 visions of blogging." Our first weekday posts focus on:
Memories from Blogging in the Past

Which brings us to the post title I used today:



Anamnesis
  • the recollection or remembrance of the past; reminiscence
  • the remembering of things from a supposed previous existence
  • the ability to recall past events; recollection
  • used as a narrative technique in fiction and poetry as well as in memoirs and autobiographies
  • recollection, remembrance, reminiscence

This topic is special to me because I started my blog specifically so I could take part in the A to Z Challenge. I've since moved my blog, but Twitter never forgets! My first year, 2012, I did a month of posts about myself, and a month of posts about characters from my Fractions of Existence book. (The posts were mostly about the side characters.) Yes, I had the crazy idea to do two themes, to double post all month. The result? A lower comment count on both sets plus twice the work for me.

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But my own posts weren't what kept me coming back for more. It was the community I found and the friends I made. I'd love to know how many of you have a comment from me on your April 2012 posts! It's great to remember why we started blogging and to see how far we've come. I hope you'll leave a comment over the next few days with your own memories of the blogging past.


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