I had a similar post in mind after reading Sam’s livejournal blog from 2010. His livejournal attempt was what I considering blogging. It’s a person who is keeping a journal of his life events haphazardly. Ideas are strewn around and almost unreadable without pictures or any thought to organization. Nevertheless, you get a good idea of how an 18 year old is living his life on a day to day basis which is pretty intriguing. The blog itself isn’t an interesting as the actual interpretation of how Sam is surviving. When the information being presented isn’t as interesting as the human being, we hit our basic level of blogging. Someone who is unable to get ideas across intelligently sums up what I consider blogging.
The post I wrote last night was inspired by Sam’s blog. I took a night of my life and documented it with exactly what happened. Now my thought in my mind was that I’m not only going to write about what happened, but I’m going to write about my thought processes behind everything that was happening. I thought it came out very well and hope when compared with the LiveJournal, a 30 year old telling a tale compared to an 18 year old is apparent. My purpose isn’t to put the Sam’s old blog down at all because I’m speaking to a part of his most recent post that I think is on point. You not only grow with the blog, the blog grows with you.
Back on May 2nd, 2009 I moved my blog from blogspot to its own domain name. If you read my old blog, you’ll see something very similar to Sam’s in that all I’m writing about are daily occurrences and random rants. No structure and it’s incredibly boring to anyone who doesn’t know me. Buying your own domain name is the first step to separate yourself from “blogging.” It shows that you are serious about managing a website and that you are willing to spend money to give yourself a more professional look. I installed WordPress and used a few of their template themes and I was off. 13 people visited that very first day. Over 500 will visit today.
As the years passed, a major part of maintaining a website is keeping up with a current look. This requires the purchasing of new themes which will keep you ahead of other cookie cutter templates. With the look in place, and I would think an upgrade every year or two is acceptable, the content becomes what is going to drive people to your site. My greatest successes have been focusing on people who other people care about. Interesting pictures is what tends to do the trick. Either way, the content shifts from whatever you are doing in your life, to whatever you are thinking about in your life. You ask yourself, what can I post about that people will read and say, “I enjoyed reading that.” That’s why I really liked the post last night because I thought I combined both parts of this with what I was doing and the message I was trying to convey about Philly bars and meeting new people. Each entry begins to take longer because you start thinking about what word perfectly describes what I was thinking. Or how a picture can be worth 1,000 words. The pictures I used in that entry were false on all accounts but they were far better than nothing as I put thought behind them even if they weren’t true. These are concepts that Sam and I weren’t using 4 years ago.
Sam grows with me and I refine my skills by what he is implementing. The websites grow together and we grow as people as we blog. He isn’t the same 18 year old boy anymore getting black out drunk on random Wednesdays. He’s a grown ass man who is able to use his website to tell stories and thoughts that he encounters throughout his life. My goal has always been to build a website that is far more than a blog. I want people to read my material because they like my frame of mind and how I publish my thoughts. This isn’t blogging anymore, this is building a site that produces ideas. I still haven’t been able to get the visitor interaction that I would like to see but I think it’s hard for people to want to take the time to comment on posts when it doesn’t fit their agenda. Once that part of this site comes together, you start to form a community and with more people, come more power. That’s what I’m trying to work towards because you can accomplish bigger thoughts with more brains working on them. A blog is for one person. A website is an engaging experience. This site is somewhere in between.
12/27/13 Analytics
I thought you were gonna go more in the “He isn’t the same 18 year old boy anymore getting black out drunk on random Wednesdays. He’s a grown ass man who pissed himself on my couch” direction. Also jc’s ‘stache is epic
That thought actually crossed my mind but I decided not to run with it. Glad it’s now documented.