What’s the one thing in life you wish you would have started earlier?
This….this writing, this blogging thing I occasionally do. Now to be fair blogging didn’t exist all my life. I did some research and discovered that a college student started blogging in 1994, and the term weblog was coined in 1997 which was then shortened to blog in April of 1999. This very website, WordPress, was launched in 2003.
I didn’t start this blog until 2017 which I’m sure meant that I had missed the heyday of blogging. In fact I’m sure by the time I started blogging it was probably considered an ancient form of communication much like drawings on cave walls. If so it is certainly not the first time I wildly mistimed a trend. Today people make videos posting their entire life on Tiktok, Instagram and Facebook. People who I’ve told that I write a blog look at me quizzically as if asking… “is that still a thing, how quaint, ok boomer you go ahead and keep blogging.”
Even my wife, who by the way never reads my blog, will occasionally ask if anybody reads this. I reply that I have a few loyal readers and anyhow it’s not really for a mass audience but it’s more for me to write and express.
I always enjoyed writing, perhaps it started in school where I much preferred to write than to stand in front of a class and deliver some type of speech. Every time I was required to do any form of public speaking it was a terrifying experience involving heavy sweating, butterflies, tightening of the throat and a general feeling of I wish there was anywhere else I could be. But writing, ah that was different. I could write and most importantly edit and rewrite sometimes to my detriment, until I was satisfied with the outcome.
I just wished I had done some more writing in my younger days. Sure I wrote in high school but I never wrote for the school paper or yearbook, and in college I did a lot of writing but that’s different from creative writing, although I did take a creative writing class in college and enjoyed the process of being given a topic and then writing about it. I remember the teacher remarking to me that it seemed easy to me this writing thing. She was a grad assistant so perhaps I didn’t take her seriously or perhaps I saw no future in writing, it was the 80’s and everyone was in business school.
I often wonder if I should have pursed writing as a career as a reporter but I generally think I ended up right where I should be and anyhow the demise of newspapers and magazines has certainly ended or upended a lot of careers of journalist.
I’m grateful for this platform that allows me to blog anytime about anything, and I’m even more grateful for the few people that encouraged me when I first started and actually read my blog after all these years.
I may always be years behind the latest trend but I certainly have found something I enjoy. Still sometimes I think maybe I should start a Podcast….the world could certainly use another one of those…amiright?
Peace and love,
John
