What Happens When You Start a Blog

Posted on by theageofthediary

I was talking to a friend one time when he mentioned how people were afraid to blog because of the fear of getting bashed. This wasn’t the first time someone told me this, and I would always nod my head in agreement, recognizing the legitimacy of this fear, when I should have said, nah that doesn’t happen.

When I was starting this blog, no one bashed me. No one even left a comment. This makes perfect sense because there are a million things on the internet. No one cared about my blog. So for many months, I was safe to build content in this space, I got a lot of writing practice, and I was able to build a portfolio of works.

When my blog gained traffic because of the popularity of my post To Shift or Not to Shift that’s when I got my first stinging comment. It was a comment from a basher, not a helpful comment that I could learn and grow from. But that was after my post garnered thousands of hits, after it got six likes, after my own friends shared it on Facebook and told me how much they loved it, after 16 people who were mostly strangers left comments on the post telling me the same. So when that one person told me that I sucked at writing, I was like, weh. I had too much experience already with positive responses to my writing that I was strong enough to shrug off the basher.

Waiting until you’re perfect also doesn’t make sense. If I were afraid of bashers, I would have missed out on learning how to build a blog, I would have missed out on getting valuable writing practice, I would have missed out on sharing my thoughts and experiences, and I would have missed out on touching people’s lives.

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All the opinions expressed in this page and in this blog are my own and do not represent the official stances of the companies, institutions, and organizations that I am affiliated with. I am a person. I’m not just a manifestation of corporate interests. I have an identity that is separate from my company because even if human beings are paid for a service by corporations, human beings are not owned by corporations.

2 thoughts on “What Happens When You Start a Blog”

  1. When I started blogging in 2001 or so, it was the perfect way to just rant and rave about whatever I wanted, and pretty much not worry about anyone noticing. It was like tossing a message in a bottle out into the open sea.

    These days the world has gotten much more smaller and exponentially more critical, especially when it comes to FB (which I try to avoid as much as possible). So what you say is more likely to be seen and criticized by those who disagree (as you experienced). But the bottom line is, bloggers are exercising their right to free speech. That’s the beauty and fun of it anyway, in my opinion. Otherwise, if I really had to watch what I was saying, I wouldn’t have started blogging in the first place.

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    1. Totally agree with what you said! I’m glad you were able to just write without thinking about what other people will say. That’s the way to do it! I mean we’ll never learn if we don’t start somewhere.

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