[postaday2011] Why did you start?

Most of the postaday prompts have been, in my opinion, pretty much crap.  Not that I expected otherwise, especially since Automattic acquired Plinky and most of them are coming from Plinky (and you might recall me mentioning that I quit Plinky a while ago).  But today’s warranted a response, I think…

What made you decide to start a blog?

I suppose it could be said that I was “blogging” before there really was such a thing.  I had a website and, like many personal websites at the time, I kept a log of the various updates and new stuff I added to the site.  I’m not sure who I was writing to — then again, I’m not entirely sure who I’m writing to now — but it was probably friends who happened to revisit my site.  It was a way to say, this is what I did while you were gone.  Over time I started adding more personal touches, like what I was listening to lately, or what I was selling on eBay.

Later, when I decided to turn my box into a fileserver, I kept a similar log of what I was doing, what software I was using, what improvements I was planning.  This got ever more personal until it became more of what am I doing these days rather than what’s new on the server.  That was nine years ago.

The blog has evolved into something more blog-like over the last nine years.  It’s been occasionally a bitchfest and quasi-journal whose target audience was a couple co-workers and friends, and occasionally had haughty desires to be something that attracted high amounts of traffic.  In the end, this blog is more or less an extension of me, especially now that I have feeds from my Tumblr, Museum Themes, Arcane Palette, and anywhere else I might post content.

But I suppose that doesn’t answer the question.

I guess I started because deep down (or maybe not so deep) I’m an egomaniac who likes to hear my own voice.  Then again, I doubt that is something that would be considered rare among bloggers.  Let’s face it, if we weren’t egomaniacs, why would we have this bizarre notion that anyone out there in teh internets cares what we have to say?  I’ve always been on the extroverted side, and though that’s been tamed quite a bit as I get older, I still have this desire to have my voice heard, to make my mark in one way or another, to leave something behind in the memory of others, to not be forgotten or ignored.  For that matter, that’s probably why I built my first website, and continued building and updating websites to this day.

If anyone is interested in seeing a mirror of the last incarnation of my website before it evolved into what it is now, you can see it here. Be forewarned, it is 7 years old and uses tables and frames.