Today my blog turns 6. Well, yesterday because I wrote this on my blog’s anniversary.

This will be the first time I’m acknowledging my anniversary here on the blog. Normally I just Tweet about it, and thank everyone who’s stopped in at various intervals throughout my journey. I’m not really using Twitter for a whole lot anymore though. That seemed reason enough to acknowledge things on site for once.

We’re also into the final days of Blaugust, and the weekly theme is one of reflection. As such, I thought it might be fun to look back, and share some of my journey. To keep things from getting too unwieldy, I’ll try to do this as 6 lessons learned over 6 years. That sounds good, right?

I suppose we can start at the beginning. The very beginning.

It was August 2017, and I was frustrated. I’d been working for 3 years at the same company, and hated it. There’s a version of this post where I spend several paragraphs regaling you with every little detail, but I won’t be getting into it today. Complaining about my old job goes beyond the scope of this post. What you need to know is that I had trouble getting out of bed every morning, and created a blog as a coping mechanism. It gave me a place to channel all of that negative energy into creating something, instead of letting it fester and consume me.

The beginnings were rocky as hell. Creative writing wasn’t something I had a lot of practice with. Heck, I don’t even know that I viewed this as being a creative outlet in the beginning. All that I wrote was reviews for games that I was playing. While writing a review doesn’t preclude a body of text from being a creative work, that certainly wasn’t how I approached writing them. Every review had to be analytical. It had to have evidence to support each of my claims. It had to make a rock solid defense for why I had the opinion I had.

There’s just one massive problem with writing this way: it’s incredibly boring. It was boring to write, and it was boring to read. It’s the written equivalent of a math problem. I think X because of Y. Woohoo. How exhilarating.

Sarcasm aside, my reason for writing reviews in such an uninteresting way wasn’t completely ridiculous. I wanted to convey my thoughts in a way where even someone who disagreed with me could understand where I was coming from. So a format of sorts was born: I’d state where I stood, and work backwards trying to explain how I ended up there. I don’t know how successful I ever was at explaining myself, but I eventually came to retire this format. As I already stated, it wasn’t fun to read, or write like this.

And thus, we arrive at the first of 6 lessons: you’re allowed to just have opinions. Not everything needs some complex explanation. It’s nice when you are able to delve into laborious detail on certain topics, but it isn’t a requirement for sharing your thoughts on a subject. Sometimes it’s equally, or more valuable to convey how an experience made you feel in a way where your audience can empathize with you.

Year one of my writing journey ended with me meeting Tristan. We found each other through Reddit, and he was looking for people to come write for his website: Viewport. This whole thing was pro bono, which I know is a massive red flag for more serious writing gigs. However, Tristan’s site was more like a scrappy blogger collective. The attitude for it was way more relaxed than a paying gig would ever be since no one involved was making any money.

I decided to join up because I wanted to work with an editor to improve my writing abilities. I considered the advise, and experience I got while working with Tristan as payment enough for my time with Viewport. I know that may sound like a crock of shit, but I wrote 1 review a month for them over the course of about a year. There were maybe like a dozen posts in total, which probably isn’t even 2 weeks worth of work for most full time freelancers.

The whole endeavor with Viewport started out really fun, but throughout my second year blogging my excitement for it waned. Tristan, and I had a lot of creative differences. In fact, working with him was starting to feel increasingly like a job. That wasn’t great as my blog was supposed to be where I would run to when I was upset with work. Eventually I snapped, and declared I would be leaving to return to my own corner of the internet.

To this day, I don’t know how Tristan felt about my leaving. I suspect he was probably happy to no longer have me around since we would constantly butt heads. Either way, I learned an important lesson in year 2: write for yourself. Working with Tristan taught me how to develop my writing style better, but it also robbed me of some of the agency in my written work. I’m doing this for fun, not money. It’s important for me to still feel creative fulfillment from this project, and that means I need to write for myself. Not all the time, but certainly most of the time.

I’m looking at the time, and realizing I need to go to bed soon. I’m also noticing I just passed the 900 word mark, and I’ve only made it through the first 2 of 6 years. As fun as it would be to finish writing all 6 years worth of content (it wouldn’t be), I think I’m going to put a pin in this for now. I guess that’ll give some of you something to look forward to? We’re only up to August 2019, so we have the pandemic to cover. There’s definitely some interesting takeaways scattered throughout those years.

Anyway, if you made it this far: thank you. And thank you if you’ve read, or liked, or commented on any of my posts over the years. I genuinely thought no one would ever read anything I wrote when I first started blogging back in 2017. Instead, I’ve had the opportunity to meet, collaborate, or share ideas with so many different people. You’ve all made this journey worth taking.

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