Why do I blog? My answer to that question is because I believe I have something to say. And not just any old thing. I’d like to say something with some value behind it and to leave something for potential readers to think about further. So that leaves me with the following question: What do I blog about?

Back in the year 2000, before blogging ever took off, I kept my personal thoughts and writings at Open Diary. As a way of mocking Internet diaries (especially the ones on Open Diary), I had started out keeping a fictional diary for my made-up, semi-superhero character, Pop Tart Kid. After my stint, I lay dormant for a while but still read up on friends’ diaries. In the beginning of 2002, I decided to start another diary and really open myself up to the world (and really to my friends). I kept this one for a while from the latter half of my senior year in high school until close to the end of my first year in college. I decided to switch to Xanga. It had a nicer interface and just a better feel since Open Diary seemed to be hurting from lack of funds (they split off into free and pay versions) and server (bandwidth) issues. I decided to not use LiveJournal since Xanga had a better community vibe to it.

Eventually, I ended up creating my own WordPress blog on a friend’s site. I imported most of my old Xanga entries. Blogging on my own site was fine for a while. Then the interval between posts became longer and longer, and the creative well dried up altogether. Then came this blog shortly after I stopped blogging at my old site. I wanted to start fresh and anew, wipe the slate clean, and create my own personalized look-and-feel to my blog.

And this leads me back to the reason for blogging: I want to say something profound (in some way whether big or small). I wanted to shed the teen angst and grow up. This comes from years of chronicling the trivial events in my life even going all the way back to the 8th grade when I started keeping a notebook of near-daily logs of life. Reading through a lot of my old entries shows how insignificant some things were and how they don’t matter anymore. I was different back then — young and stupid. I want to show maturation in my posts; perhaps this is why I “recycle” my persona in my evolution of blogging.

So then this brings me back to the same question: What do I blog about? I don’t want to blog about the silly, insignificant things that won’t matter later on. My life isn’t currently exciting enough to blog about. I could blog about work though I’ve heard you can get fired for that so I’d rather not do that. And I don’t have much of an audience to cater my blog to. This blog isn’t for them; it’s for me. So now I’m stuck at the intermittent posts and deciding what criteria an event should meet in order for it to be blogged.

I guess I feel the need to future-proof myself and not look like an idiot (to myself). Maybe I should blog the little things in life, things in the moment, and look back on them in the future in a continuous timeline rather than discrete instances. It’s amazing to see how much I’ve changed but have fundamentally remained the same all this time. I probably shouldn’t feel ashamed of myself for what I was because I wouldn’t be who I am now without looking back and reflecting on my evolution.