‘Accidental’ Blog: The Backstory
I didn’t wake up four days ago thinking: gosh, I should start a blog today. Four days ago, I really didn’t know what a blog was. Of course I’d heard the term but somehow thought blogs were written by cooks. I didn’t go searching for one because I hate cooking, and I’d never inadvertently stumbled across a blog in any of my Googling adventures. That’s how I roll--stumbling across this and that, then lurking in the shadows, trolling writers’ groups, searching for clues, stalking those in the know, hoping someone—anyone—will give me some idea what everyone’s talking about.
I wasn’t born knowing what a hashtag is. Or a thumbnail. I knew what a link was but learned how to make one the hard way. NaNoers started asking for the link to my blog. I went to my blog, wrote down the address and then typed the address in a comment beneath the post I’d written. It turned into a link when I hit enter. I was delighted. Likewise, when my very first thumbnail popped up, I felt as if I’d done something quite extraordinary. I thought maybe, just maybe, I’m catching on. Unfortunately, there have been many setbacks since I created that mini-advertisement for prepperdating.com. Just yesterday I was proud as an old peacock after creating my first meme-thing. I could hardly wait to post it! My only concern was that viewers would assume I’d used a prefabricated meme and not gone to the trouble of learning how to make my own. Once it posted, that fear evaporated; the words were upside down.
THE BACKSTORY: I do a lot of posting in my writers’ groups and since my ramblings tend to be humorous, no one takes me seriously. I suspect very few people who have read my blog’s backstory of my believe it. A writer in NaNoWriMoVille was clearly upset with other NaNoers who were writershaming. Never having heard that particular term before, and fearing that I was guilty of said offense, I Googled it. That took me to Tumblr. I just kept clicking on this and agreeing to that and relatively soon discovered I had joined up. A couple more clicks and there I was, at my very own blog. Never even saw that one coming. I end up joining one thing or another every time I go Googling. No one has ever offered me a blog before. I’m waiting for the bill.
Once I had a blog, I needed to decide what to blog about, and figure out who I was blogging to. I’m still working on that. I can’t seem to find any rules for this relatively new art form. How long should my blog be? Can I use profanity (I seem incapable of writing without it, much to my progeny’s dismay)? Can Life Alert sue me for critiquing their insipid commercials? Nevertheless, I’m blogging. And I must be doing something right because I’ve already earned a Tumblr Certificate of Merit for completing five blogs. (They evidently even counted the first one which was a single sentence: “what the fuck do I do now?” My granddaughter made me clean up my language a bit but the meaning’s still there: encoded and encrypted, deep within the five or six word sentence.)
In closing, I want to thank my three followers. Thank you. I now have 7.5 followers; I only count family members as half-a-follower each.
