a new start

 

I started blogging in 2008. It wasn’t much of a big venture, even though it became more so the older I got.
I started blogging because my closest friend had a blog (I know, not the greatest cause) and I thought it looked fun.  Her blog eventually died away; she found new hobbies and interests…and I continued peddling out penny posts here and there about practically everything under the sun.

My early blog was a place to babble, and oh, did I babble.  But slowly, that began to change. I realized the potential of my platform, and then…the Golden Years began.

I got into book reviewing…I’m not really sure how.  It just…happened. Then, before I even knew what I was doing, Scholastic was sending me books each month to read and review.  Then so was Candlewick Press, Thomas Nelson, Waterbrook-Multnomah…I had a definite thing going on.

It was a thing I could have kept up…but I was 16, and I turned 18 all too quickly.  Suddenly, that little blog I had stuck with since before I was 12 was no longer a priority.
I let things fall to the wayside, I stopped my commitment to book reviewing…and I got a job that demanded every second of my time (I didn’t know how to prioritize time yet).
It wasn’t just blogging that got abandoned.
Reading, photography, writing, handcrafts, all things I had enjoyed, things I had been truly thriving in…got pushed aside for the rat race pursuit.
I’m not proud of that, but neither am I ashamed.

For here I sit as a 22-year-old adult, working for a newspaper that I still don’t know know how I managed to convince them to hire me. I am a 22-year-old adult who has had her rough, dry patch already (or…perhaps I should say I’ve had my first rough, dry patch. I’m sure there will be many, many, many more to come). I realize that a life focused on the pursuit of financial and workplace achievement is a life doomed to a constant wasteland of enjoyment.  That patch of misaligned focus made me understand where I was going wrong and forced me to readjust the map by which I travel.

So I am returning to the sphere of blogging.  Not in the old blog, though.  It served it’s purpose well. I will always adore the website that started everything.  But I needed something more than just a blog.  I needed a platform for my writing and for my photography and for years, I’ve wanted to switch to WordPress anyway.

So here I am, newly born into Wild Strawberries, ready to face this new venture, kinda excited, kinda anxious that I will fail.

But all the same, here I am…and it’s impossible to fail in a venture if, after each mishap, you stand back up, dust off those bruised knees and keep going at it.

 

So here I stand, prepared to go at it once more.