Neva tagged me with this meme several months ago, when I was in the midst of graduation-countdown craziness. I'm finally making good on my promise to answer it.
I started blogging before it was called blogging. In the summer of 1998, halfway through a journalism degree, I went to Florida for an internship at the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. I had taken a few web design classes and built a couple of very basic HTML sites, and I decided to create a travelogue for friends and family. If I remember correctly, that incarnation of my site, hosted on Geocities, was titled "Cowgrrrl's Home, Home on the Web."
That summer, I shared my adventures -- driving from Montana to South Florida, adjusting to previously inconceivable heat and humidity, dealing with vertigo while working on the 19th floor of a glass skyscraper, going to Coconut Grove and Miami Beach and Key West, swimming with dolphins, learning to produce online news and entertainment -- via semi-regular updates of text and photos. I emailed my friends whenever I updated.
I didn't continue the personal updates after I returned home, but in January 2000, I started a site called Big Times, dedicated to "Fat-friendly news, information and resources." I was very involved in the fat-acceptance movement at the time, and it seemed to me there was a need for this kind of site.Big Times' main section was called "All the News that's FAT to Print," which was a link round-up of fat-related news, separated by category. Two other prominent sections were titled "Hot Links" and "Roses and Raspberries." I updated weekly at first, but eventually fell to monthly. The site took too much time to manage, and although I tried to solicit advertising, I was earning nothing for my efforts. After not quite a year, I threw in the towel.
Now, of course, there are dozens of body-acceptance and fat-positive related sites, such as Big Fat Blog. (Meanwhile, my lapsed Big Times domain has become a porn site.) Big Times was simply ahead of its time. There was no blogging software back then to make things easier, and no advertising networks to sign up with.
But by late 2002, I had started up a personal journal again. (See it on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.) I was still using basic HTML and WYSIWYG software ((FrontPage, then Dreamweaver), and manually editing my photos down into thumbnails.
In August 2003, I finally made the leap to this newfangled blogging software I'd been hearing about. Joining the Salon.com community of bloggers, I installed Radio Userland on my iMac and spent the next year in a love-hate relationship with it. In September 2004 I switched to the much-easier Blogger, and began using Flickr to host my photos. The rest is history.
But the question remains: Why do I blog?
It started out as a way to stay connected with family and friends, although to this day, few of my friends IRL read my blog very often. They forget, or they're intimidated by the technology ("Comment? I can't figure that out."), or they just have other priorities.
With Big Times, I'd hoped to provide a service I was passionate about, and maybe even make it pay for itself.
I didn't find any of the things I was looking for, but I did discover other rewards, such as a community of like-minded bloggers that I enjoyed sharing thoughts and experiences with. I found a way of expressing myself that was immediate and gratifying.
I found a way to connect with people on the level of ideas and thoughts and feelings, rather than first impressions and small-talk and all the tiny judgments we make when we are face to face.
I found an outlet for all the creativity and concern and joy and rage that I couldn't find anywhere else to put.
And that -- that is why I blog.
4 Comments:
And I am so, so, SO, glad that you do.
Nancy from http://milife.wordpress.com/
I'm glad you posted....better late than never! Just another peek into the world of Patia!
Hi Patia,
Glad to find your site and glad to read some of your history & why you blog. Now I am truly inspired to get my own blog going!
You may not remember me, but we chatted at the table at Blogher before Elizabeth Edwards' speech.
I'll visit often and let you know when my blog is up.
Cheers,
Barbara
Nancy: Awww, thank you!
Neva: Thanks for indulging me!
Barbara: Yes, I remember! I'm looking forward to reading your blog.
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