About the Blog

As I’ve mentioned throughout this site, I’m very passionate about what I do. It is a driving force in my life, and is highly fulfilling. As a result, I tend to talk about it. At length. To everyone I know. I suspect that this blog will be no exception.

Hopefully, my quirky interests and odd sense of humor won’t confuse/infuriate you. If they do, well, I won’t be offended if you decide to read the musings of someone more interesting than little ol’ me.

Blog Feed

2.21.11, 10:36am
Freelancing, Web Design, Web Development,

7.23.10, 03:25pm
Technical Lessons, The Internet, Web Design,

7.7.10, 11:28am
Freelancing, Ikea, Office Issues, West Seattle,

5.27.10, 08:56pm
Freelancing, Web Design,

3.2.10, 10:32am
Comic Nerdiness, Tech, Web Design, Webcomics,

2.2.10, 09:03pm
The Internet, Webcomics,

1.19.10, 03:53pm
Blogging/Writing, Print Design, Tech, Unreasonable Expectations, Web Design,

11.13.09, 04:18pm
Awareness, Environment, Philosophy, The Internet,

11.11.09, 11:54am
Blogging/Writing, Environment, NaBloPoMo, Seattle Weather,

11.8.09, 11:24pm
Blogging/Writing, NaBloPoMo, Philosophy,

My Brief History of Blogging, or why I’m excited about NaBloPoMo

10.13.09, 10:28am | Blogging/Writing, NaBloPoMo,

Like most of my early steps into my current state of complete and utter internet addiction, I started blogging as a result of peer pressure. Well, “peer pressure” isn’t really the right term, more like “peer interest”. I was in college, and many of my friends had created accounts on a website called Livejournal. Several of them had told me what it was all about (“it’s like a public journal! You can talk about anything you want, and post pictures! OoooOOOoooh!”) and had suggested that I join too. I figured, why not? It’s not so different from my doofy high school website, and because I could have “friends” on this site, at least I could have some assurance that someone might actually read it.

So I started blogging on Livejournal. My entries consisted of the usual sort of topics you’d expect a college student to write about: classes, activities with friends, my new boyfriend, why I’d broken up with my boyfriend, blah blah blah. Pretty typical college/teenager stuff. I liked blogging, because it provided a good stress reliever, and it allowed me to keep tabs on what my friends were up to. Plus, the general entertainment value was really high. There was always plenty of personal drama to read up on, and as a bit of a drama-queen myself, I loved hearing about all the juicy personal tidbits that kept my weird drama-self reasonably satiated.

Fast forward six years to last May. I still had a Livejournal account, and would post irregularly, a couple of times a month at most. I still had plenty of things to write about, such as my work on the Real Change website, or how the planning for my wedding was going. Most of it would have been complaining and moaning over how much work I had to do. But the thing about Livejournal is that it’s always felt more like a community than a bunch of stand-alone blogs. While I was bitching and whining about all the “rotten” great things going on in my life, a friend of mine was writing about legitimate problems going on in her life. And the more she wrote about the stress and depression she was dealing with, the more I felt like an asshole. Something seemed wrong about what I was doing, like I was standing next to someone who’s starving and scarfing down two big hamburgers: “oh, man, I’m sooo full! Oh, I wish I didn’t have all of these hamburgers to eat! I’m so stuffed, but they’re my hamburgers so I guess I have to eat them, oh noes!” *gobble gobble* “Woe is me!” *gobble gobble gobble*

I realized that I was tired of writing in such a negative way. I’m not saying there’s not value to blogging about personal hardship, mind you. Sarah May Scott writes an incredible blog called Mayday Productions, where she talks primarily about dealing with life in a wheelchair, after she became paralyzed from a spinal cord injury four years ago. Her writing is incredible, sometimes painful, and always leaves me looking at life a different way.

However, I don’t really have that much hardship to deal with. My life is going pretty dang well at the moment. I’m married to a wonderful man, my business is picking up speed, and aside from the usual everyday worries about money, health, and getting enough sleep, I really don’t have anything to complain about. I was talking with my friend Beth last night about this very issue, and she expressed the same sentiment. She’d grown tired of complaining and being negative on her blog from college. So she started a new blog called Bethanthemum, where she tries to focus on happy, fun things, like crafting projects and trips to local farms. Her blog is one of those great positive rays of light in this great big blog-o-sphere, and I always enjoy the new updates. They just make me happy.

When I launched this website, and this blog, I thought “here’s my chance! Now I can talk about all of the geeky, greeny goodness that I’ve been thinking about for all these months!”. And then, I didn’t update it. For three weeks. Whooops. I suppose I’m out of practice… I haven’t blogged regularly since July, after all, and even then, I was blogging solely about ME, which is surprisingly easy to do.

But! I have a plan. For the rest of this month, I’ll blog at least twice a week. I’ve even started a list of potential blog topics, to help me when I’m feeling stuck. In November, I start NaBloPoMo: National Blog Posting Month. NaBloPoMo started as a goof off of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, in which the challenge is to write 5,000 words a day for the month of November. I have many friends who do NaNoWriMo every year, and it always sounded intriguing and fun. Trouble is, I’m not really that interested in writing a novel. I want to write a blog. NaBloPoMo it is!

The theme I’ve chosen for my November NaBloPoMo is “impact evaluation”. Basically, I’ll evaluate my current environmental impact, and try to drastically improve it over the course of four weeks. I’ll write more about it as we get closer (both for your benefit and to help me prepare), but I have to say I’m really excited about it. This is a project I’ve wanted to do for some time, and now I have the perfect medium to try it out. Huzzah!

Lastly, I need to setup my RSS feed. Like, really. Soon! And in the meantime, I thank you, my readers, for your patience, as I get off my buns and get this thing rollin’. So hang in there, and you shall soon be rewarded with slowly-improving Molly-blogging.

Thanks for writing this! I enjoyed our talk yesterday as well. =)

I love the idea of a monthly challenge/focus for your posts, and I’m looking forward to reading about it.

Name: Beth | Posted: 4:07pm, 10.13.09