I thought I would write a post explaining why I got started with blogging. Maybe you don't even care but I'll share it anyway.
It all started shortly after I was married. We lived in a two bedroom apartment in a town that was new and unfamiliar to me. I had a seasonal job at a pharmaceutical company and only worked about five months in the year. We were married in May and I didn't return to work until July. While my husband was working his day job I was home alone. The apartment was small and didn't take very long to clean. In that time of being laid off a friend introduced me to the world of blogging. She along with her other friends blogged on Xanga. Xanga seemed to be pretty popular back then. I had always loved writing and decided to give it a try. Just for fun. I didn't expect much and after I signed up I had considered shutting my page down. Back then Xanga was a very simple site to create and use. They also had a community which made it easy to see what others were blogging. With every post I wrote there would be several comments from other users on there. I didn't know these people. They were from other parts of the country. At first it scared me to know strangers were reading my personal thoughts but that's the price you pay when you put your information on the world wide web. I knew to be cautious because you just don't know who is reading.
I found so many people who had similar interests and it was fun. I enjoyed it. It helped pass the time while I was alone. Eventually Xanga added a lot of privacy features so being able to read other pages weren't always accessible unless they had it open to the public or if they added you as a friend. I joined groups on Xanga which allowed others to add me. Once I became a mother I used Xanga as a way to document every experience of my pregnancy and raising the children. I met other moms just like me who were experiencing the same things. It was so great to have a place I could use to share my stories or to vent any frustrations I had and to get advice from others ... and to be able to read what others were writing. These people became my friends, even though we had never met face to face. I became comfortable. Hey, maybe too comfortable. I have plenty of real life friends who I see face to face but my blogging friends are just as great.
In the recent months Xanga decided to make drastic changes. It is now called Xanga 2.0 and is set up like Wordpress. So many became mad at these changes, mainly because Xanga was threatening to charge it's users. I may like blogging but I'm not going to pay to blog. So far I haven't been charged and I can get on there and write freely. However, all the bloggers that I had been "friends" with are now gone. Everyone gave up. Also, I hate the changes. It's horrible. Luckily Xanga allowed it's users to archive all the posts we created so I have that on my desktop. I have too many memories I am not willing to get rid of. When I go back and read my old posts it's amazing to see just how much I've forgotten. I'm so glad I took the time to write so many of my experiences down.
I signed up here over a year ago, before I knew Xanga would make said changes. I also created an account on Wordpress. Neither has impressed me as much as the old Xanga did but I'm getting the hang of it.
Like I said, blogging has been a way for me to jot down experiences I've been facing in life. It's a great thing to have something like this to look back on. As a stay-at-home mom it also works as a great outlet. It seems blogging has lost it's flare with a lot of people but I plan on sticking with it for as long as I can. It's fun! Even when I'm busy I try to find a few minutes of each day to dedicate to blogging (reading others or typing on my own).
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