2015 End of the Year Anecdote | Why I Became A Blogger
It was a dark and stormy night…
Just kidding! It was actually sometime during November of 2014. I had just begun my medical leave from college and I was bored, tired, sick, and lonesome. I desperately needed a hobby. But what??? I knew I liked reading, but I wanted to share my love and interact with people.
As I scrolled through Tumblr, eyes glazed over from the monotony of my condition, and I thought (to paraphrase the famous Miss Clavel off Madeline), “I need an outlet for my excess energy!” Then it struck me. I was scrolling through Tumblr. A blogging site. Boom! Inspiration struck; I would begin a blog! But what would I write about? Would it be a journal of sorts or something else? Would it be public or private?
So I started thinking about what I liked and would like to share with people and what kind of content I enjoyed and could probably make. I knew I loved reading and I found as I scroll, scroll, scrolled through Tumblr that I really admired the bookish graphic edits people made. “I could do that,” I thought, “…Well…At least, kind of…” I’d never made graphic edits in my life before but I had always been an artist. How hard could it be? So I saved some pictures, downloaded a ton of free photo software, and started fiddling around. I made depictions of characters I’d only seen in my head and scenes from books I’d only ever imagined. And I found as I fiddled around that it was kind of fun. It combined my loves of reading and art and gave me something to do.
So I started a blog and began posting my work. I didn’t do it for popularity, or to get the attention of publishers, I did it for me. I was having fun! Soon my posts began gaining large numbers of likes and reblogs and I watched in awe as my blog, Inspired by Books, slowly gained a following.
But I wanted to branch out even more. I’d recently learned about book bloggers and reviewers and I wanted to try it. After all, literature and literary analysis had been one of my favorite subjects in school. So I made a sister blog to Inspired by Books dedicated solely to my reviews of books and general bookish fun. I called it The Bookkeeper’s Secrets. And I found that I truly enjoyed it too. It gave me a bigger platform to interact with other book lovers like me and with authors, my rockstars! And that’s the best part, I think, interacting with you guys and sharing our passion!
A year later my blogs have slowly grown and I’ve moved The Bookkeeper’s Secrets over here to WordPress. I’m proud of the work I’ve done in the past year, but most of all, I’m happy to have found a hobby that brings me so much joy! Blogging is hard work. Almost like a second job or an extra class. But it’s worth it, in my opinion and I wanted to that you all for making it worth it! Thank you, from the bottom of my heart!
