1: When did you start your blog?
According to my archive page, I started blogging on March 22nd, 2003. Aflux was not my first site and I transferred all of my posts from my first personal domain here. I used other platforms before that but I’m going to go with that as my official start date.
2: Have you had anyone online presence before? Another blog, YouTube etc?
I started blogging two years before YouTube was even a thing that existed. I used sites like geocities and stuff but as soon as buying personal domains caught on I jumped on that bandwagon and never looked back.
3: Why did you start your blog?
Originally I started because I wanted a way to document my life. I was just getting over my divorce being finalized, starting a brand new relationship, was a single mom. I had a lot going on and I saw blogging as a way for a really niche community of girls I loved to connect and support each other. This was LONG before blogging was a source of income or as wildly popular as it is today. It really was just a small group of people because you had to actually know what you were doing and code your own sites.
4: When did you become serious about blogging?
I’m not sure I’ve ever really taken it “seriously”. I think that when people start to do that is when their writing starts to suffer.
5: What was your first post?
This is my first official real post: http://www.aflux.net/introduction/
6: What has been your biggest challenge about blogging?
Probably staying motivated to get it done. At some point I started writing more for the audience than for myself and, like I stated above, my writing started to suffer.
7: Where do you see your blog in one year?
Hopefully just like it is now only more active!
8: What is the most rewarding thing to you about blogging?
Finding and keeping in touch with some extraordinarily awesome girls. Also, being able to look back 10 years and see where I was and what was going on in my life.
9: What is the most discouraging thing that happens to you?
I haven’t really had much. Some hate mail here and there. Some mean comments. I really don’t let that stuff get to me though. I can’t make everybody happy all the time and sometimes they’ve even caused me to take a better look at the person I am verse the person that I want to be.
10: What is your lasting motivation?
I don’t really have one as you can tell by my once a month posting! I’m really trying to change that though!
Found at the website of one of those extraordinarily awesome girls I mentioned: Dez @ She’s Slothy
I agree that once it seems people take blogging ‘seriously’ as in a form of how they can get the most benefits and income from it, their writing begins to suffer. You start to see more and more filler entries and less them. It makes me sad. That’s not to say that I haven’t tried it myself, but I quickly figured out that it wasn’t for me.
I also like the ability to look back and see how you’ve changed. I’ve reread some of my own old entries, including written journals I kept as a teen and the change is amazing.