My First Blog Post!

Well, hello there. Welcome to my first blog post. I can’t believe I put off trying to start a blog for almost eight years simply because I wasn’t very tech-savvy and thought it would be too complicated. Then today I managed to set one up in about ten minutes and customize it in about thirty minutes. I’m kind of kicking myself right now for waiting so long to do this. I mean, I’ve had an outlet for writing since college when I started a weekly humor column in the school paper called "Rita's Ramblings," but I’ve never had one on the internet that I have had complete control over other than notes on Facebook and a couple of posts on MySpace before I quit using MySpace.

Even way back in college I had people telling me I should start a blog, but kept putting it off. Maybe I didn’t like the sound of the word “blog.” It makes me think of a frog sitting on a log in a bog. Am I the only one? It’s just not that appealing.

So I just wrote my little humor column until I got out of college and then took a break from writing. Eventually I came across Associated Content. They paid me $7 for a recycled humor column called “The Pros and Cons of the Decorative Towel Set.” I was hooked. I wrote many articles there and became part of a great community of writers. There were many talented humor writers that I enjoyed following. We read each other’s work and left funny and thoughtful comments. My family and friends read my articles there too.

I rarely published articles for pay, because I wanted to retain control over my content, but I did make about $1.50 for every 1,000 page views. In a few years, I only made about $200, so it wasn’t really about the money. I just loved writing there and enjoyed participating in the community. I saw no reason to start a blog when I already had a publishing platform that worked for me. Things were going swell. I was hitting my stride and even received the honor of being named “Most Intriguing Humor Writer” in 2010 by my peers.

But things weren’t always peachy at that site. Yahoo! bought Associated Content years ago and had slowly been making changes. This created many frustrating glitches that caused many good writers to leave the site. I held on, thinking it would improve. I had more than a hundred followers and all of my content was there. Then one day Yahoo! rolled out a new name, “Yahoo! Voices.” With this name came more rules and regulations. When I tried to publish an article typical of my style of writing, it was rejected. I was told it was “too long for online attention spans.” It was actually shorter than most of my previous articles. I hadn’t even asked for payment for that article and they still rejected it. Others complained in private messages about similar rejections.

I had already been feeling less motivated and didn’t have much time to write anyway. Most of my favorite writers had also left the site or were essentially booted out. The worst part was that we couldn’t really tell our followers why we stopped writing. We were unable to publish an article just to say why we were being rejected. Coincidentally, “Yahoo! Voices” had silenced many voices with its new restrictions. I'm not saying I will never publish there again, but I'm not real excited about it, either.

Months passed without me publishing anything. This was stressful. I had many ideas, but not much time. I also feared putting a lot of work into writing something that would not be accepted. Yahoo! killed my desire to write humor or anything else. So I worked my 40-hour-a-week desk job, drove my two-hour-a-day commute, ate some dinner, watched TV and went to bed. I became increasingly cranky. I think it was because I was missing my creative outlet and my hilarious friends that helped take the edge off of a hard day. I’ve had an eye twitch in my left eye for three months now. I kid you not. My eye has been twitching every day since December. If it is stress-related, then maybe writing again will be the cure.

Meanwhile, friends and family were questioning why I wasn’t writing anymore. I would give them the shortened version of “Yahoo! stinks and I’m too busy,” and they would ask why I didn’t just start a blog. When I finally made up my mind to start one, though, I realized I knew nothing about it. I tried researching which site was best and everyone had something different to say. It was all very overwhelming.

It did seem like most people thought Blogger was one of the easiest to use, though, and since I’m not familiar with HTML coding and other such computer-geek wizardry, I decided to go with the easiest and simplest blog site. So, here I am, starting the blog I should have created years ago. I would have just called it “Rita’s Ramblings” since that was where it all began, but that was already taken, so I called it “Rita’s Rambling Reflections” instead. I don’t know how often I will publish, but I feel energized already, knowing that there is now a way for me to publish my thoughts without anyone to tell me how to do it. I promise future posts will be more entertaining and less negative than this one was, but I felt I had to give a little backstory.

If you have any tips for this blogging newbie, feel free to comment or e-mail me. I would love to hear them. Thanks for reading, friends!