Blogging – Posting Challenge, Day 12

(Also be sure to follow along with Tina, Jean, Krista, and Tambo as they say much more sane and less esoteric things than me!)

I can’t recall my first exposure to blogging. It was back when the net was new; back when LiveJournal was just starting out and hadn’t been sold to companies who decided liberally sprinkling the pages with ads was somehow a good idea. I had wanted to keep a diary for a long time, but frankly, I suck at diaries. I’m one of those people that purchases them, keeps a day or two, then relegates them to the back of the bookshelf so I don’t have to feel guilty every time I run across the empty pages. I thought maybe having people looking in on my work would help my determination to keep up with it, so I made my first journal.

Like all journals of young people, there was much emotion and angst, to the point I don’t know how I ever got followers. But I managed with well over 100, which was a pretty respectable following in the early days of the net. It helped my memory, my emotional equilibrium, and my life in general. But at some point I befriended one too many of my flakier followers. I screamed one too many times where a boyfriend or girlfriend could see it. And the drama bomb exploded once too often in my lap.

So I abandoned it.

About the point I felt I could take it back up again, LJ had added advertisements, and it just didn’t feel like the same place anymore. I already paid for my account, I did my part to support LJ for years, and saw no reason why I should be punished when times were lean. Especially when I knew (as everyone there did) that they weren’t exactly hurting for money. I’d be there right now, but what’s the point? I thought I’d give WordPress a try instead.

I’ve since thought of taking it up again, as practice to getting back into daily writing. So far the “daily” part is an uphill battle, but at least the “writing” is happening. I am woefully behind, but I haven’t given up.