What It Means To Be A Blogger
During my four months of blogging, I received a few blogger awards, however, I was never tagged before. But now it happened! The beautiful Milly from Sevenseasaway tagged me with a new tag, the Being A Blogger tag. The point of the tag is for bloggers to talk about what blogging means to them and I’m very happy to be participating! Even though I’ve only been a blogger for a few months, I’ve fallen in love with it and can’t imagine stopping it anymore. So let me start the rambling about what being a blogger means to me.
BEING HONEST
First and foremost, being a blogger means being honest. Because that’s the point of blogging, isn’t it? A blog is meant to be a place where people can get honest, first-hand opinions. The reason why people read my blog is because they want to hear my thoughts. So there really is no point in being dishonest. However, I realised that I’m sometimes tempted to lie by omission because that’s what I’d probably do in a real life conversation, but on my blog, I more often opt for telling everything, even the uncomfortable.
REDISCOVERING THE JOY OF WRITING
When I was little, I didn’t want a Gameboy or a new Disney movie to watch. Instead, I’d always wish for a blank writing pad, preferably with horses printed in the margins. I loved writing ever since I was capable of it and I still do today. Now that I read English at Uni, an overwhelming majority of my writing is of academic nature (as you might guess from my style). After two years of writing nothing but flat essays about whether antidisestablishmentarianism is legitimate or about the function of English affixes, I almost forgot how much I love to write. So when I started my blog I was finally able to rediscover the joy of writing. I no longer felt limited within the boundaries of academic writing.
HAVING TO DEAL WITH THE UNKNOWN
When I started out, I had absolutely no clue about blogging whatsoever. Thus, being a blogger has taught me to approach the unknown. That way, I learned a lot of new skills like photo editing or even the basics of HTML and SEO. I’m sure that the positive experiences with dealing with the unknown will make me more confident in many situations.
GETTING CREATIVE
I have to admit I’m not the most creative person. For instance, my skills in designing, decorating and drawing are very limited. And even though I still don’t know how to draw, being a blogger forced me to get creative in my head. Being a blogger means coming up with new ideas, new concepts or even a new layout.
TELLING MY OPINION
This, for me, is one of the most important aspects of blogging. I’m a political person, but at the same time I’m not. What I mean by that is that I’m not the kind of person who wants to be a member of parliament. This doesn’t mean that I’m not interested — on the contrary! I always felt the strong urge to talk politics (and other stuff of course), but it won’t change anything if you discuss with the same group of friends all the time. It certainly won’t change much up here either. However, the blog has more potential.
So I guess that’s what being a blogger means to me. Of course, there’s much more to it, but I don’t want this to be a 4000-word essay. What does being a blogger — if you are one — mean to you?