First Impressions

So, here I am, after a couple of days blogging, and I have to say -- this stuff is pretty fun. I love to write and it's nice to deviate from the strict formats of academic papers and hard news writing. As much FUN as this has been, I have learned to have a newfound respect for those bloggers who maintain "exceptional" blogs on a daily basis (although I'm not sure that I'm ready to call them journalists, quite yet).

Finding newsworthy, relevant stories to write about and analyze (in a manner that hasn't already been done and re-done about a thousand times) is no small task. And after a day of writing, classes and work, it can be hard to motivate yourself to do even MORE work. I can only imagine that it's even tougher when you know that you have hundreds -- possibly even thousands -- of people waiting on your post. That's a lot of pressure (as far as I know, only some friends and family are waiting on my blog -- not too much pressure there).

Which brings me to my next issue: how the hell do people get their blogs so widely recognized? I used Facebook, the telephone and word of mouth to spread word about my new blog, but that still only reaches people that I KNOW. I would like to know how other blogs are nationally, or internationally, recognized. I suppose they've just been at this longer than...4 days.

But, back to the fun part. I really like messing around with the posts, adding pictures, making words links and adding polls and such to my page. I do wish that I understood this site better so that I could make my page more "customized," but I guess that all just comes with experience/fiddling around.

I really hope that I can keep myself motivated to continue posting (although I doubt it will be on a daily basis), because there's a strange sense of satisfaction in posting something that you've written on the Internet. Even if it is only read by a few people.

Bye for now.

-Brian