The other day two separate discussions occurred in different areas of my life that made me long for the glory olden days of the Internet when blogs were just starting to become a thing. Therefore I was really excited when the subject of this month’s ChicagoNow Blogapalooza*was “write about a person, place or thing that you miss.”
* One hour each month when the bloggers of ChicagoNow blog about the same topic sent out at exactly 9:00 p.m. CT by Chicago Tribune Overlords ChicagoNow Community Managers.
Blogs started out as Weblogs or online journals. I was late to blogging because the idea of putting my personal journal online seemed risky. While I had switched from a handwritten journal to a computer file in the 90s, I didn’t see the point of going online. Why would I want to share my intimate thoughts with strangers? I didn’t realize that 1) it was an efficient way to store my story for posterity and 2) the internet is so big that putting your diary online is the equivalent of shouting your personal secrets at a rock concert at Soldier Field: only a few are going to even hear you let along pay attention.
As I was saying blogs started out as ramblings on people’s personal “home pages” until animals like Blogspot, WordPress and Typepad came along. At the same time, people who wrote blogs figured out ways to make money from their blogs by allowing ads and getting a fuckton of pageviews. This was essentially the splitting of the atom as far as the blogosphere was concerned. Gradually the line between blogging and regular media started to blur. What was once a fun way to end your evening suddenly became a second job.
Blogging is a lot of work. Most of us are like SAHP, we don’t earn a salary but the rewards are immeasurable. ChicagoNow is kinda like Hogwarts for Bloggers. ChicagoNow has given us a chance to hone our magic skills and flex our writing muscles while providing positive feedback, best practice advice and lots and lots of support. To that end, you have post, like, share, tweet, rinse and repeat.
Promoting your blog is almost if not more work than writing posts. Technically you don’t have to promote your blog and you certainly control the level of effort you put into it. However, I feel since ChicagoNow gave me a platform from which to post, the least I can do is attempt to bringing pageviews so that the Mothership Tribune Corp doesn’t kick us to the curb. [So please subscribe, share & like the fuck out of my blog! Seriously, I’m asking for a like, not a kidney.]
It’s funny how when no one read my blogs I wrote all the time and wished for an audience. Now that I have one, I sometimes find it hard to find energy to write. I say energy because I have tons of ideas and topics I want to write about but often lack the energy to write a post.
That’s because I have other things that take up my time like my day job, projects around the house, and attempting to get back into marathon running shape. Also, I’ve learned that hammering out 500+ words on a post is one thing, but it helps if there is a good picture to go along with and if I can through in a good SEO headline all the better. Yuck, that is a lot of work and sometimes I’d rather not bother.
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