How to Begin Again?

That's a substantial question, isn't it?

Deciding where to commence with the inaugural post on this blog is a bit like navigating a labyrinth of possibilities. For starters, let's delve into a bit of background.

Once upon a time...well, back in October 2007, I initiated my blogging journey here on Blogger. 

Yes, Blogger and initially I blogged about education since I was teaching and on the leading edge of using social media in my classrooms. Then when I left education to regain my health, I started writing about running which worked quite well for me until the pandemic, when the world changed. During that drudge time, I attempted to write about technology and home productivity, a bandwagon that was getting very popular, but that really wasn't the correct re-direction either. 

I even started to get back into writing about my running, but injured my knee in May 2022 and didn't start running again until this summer. The injured runner writing about running, wasn't working for me, so for a year I kind wandered in the blogging wasteland, not really writing about anything, while attempting revive my love of writing for my blog. 

Earlier this year, I made the decision to retire from blogging altogether. The joy of writing for it had morphed into a tiresome chore. I purged most of my content and took a hiatus from blogging for several months.

Guess what? 

I miss writing for a blog.

I've decided it's time to try once more.

Why Blogger?

Over the years, my relationship with the Blogger platform has been a roller coaster of love, hate, and frustration. Google's seeming neglect or at least their minimal interest in updating it often makes me ponder if, like so many other of their niche platforms, they'll eventually phase Blogger out. I believe the words they like to use is deprecating a service.

Yet, there's an inexplicable force that keeps pulling me back to Blogger, even with the Sword of Damocles hanging precariously over our heads.

For the majority of my blogging journey, I found refuge in WordPress. Despite my disdain for their new blog editor, I stuck around. The fear of losing everything if Google decides to retire Blogger has always been a haunting thought whenever I contemplated or attempted a return. It became a stressor I did not want to grapple with.

This time, I simply don't want to deal with Wordpress' pricing structures and their blog editor that doesn't work the way that I do. I want a simple, straight-forward blog host and I'm not concerned about creating a URL beyond what this one is with the haroldsblog2@blogspot.com "non de plume".

What to write about this time?

This time, what do I seek from blogging?

Frankly, that's a question I've been grappling with. Unlike previous attempts, I don't harbor any preconceived notions or expectations about what I want from my blog.

Then again, I've been spending a lot of time having fun writing up a detailed character journal for Lirael Glimmereye about his D&D 5e adventures in a High Fantasy campaign that recently started. Maybe that will become the first area of interest to write about for a while.  

For now, I'm content to just have fun with my blog and am not expecting anything from it. After the initial catching-up of Lirael's journal, I'll probably only publish once or so a week. We meet on Wednesday's and it takes me a few days to wrap my head around what we did and to get the journal entry done.

Nothing serious, it's just a game I play and have fun doing with a few of my friends. D&D and Pathfinder are things that I have done off and on since 1977, so it is a long running interest that despite all the years, I have a lot of fun with. If things work out perhaps, I write a bit more about this interest over the years.

The reality is that 

There's something therapeutic about articulating your thoughts, reflecting on your words, and knowing you're sharing them with the vast expanse of the World Wide Web, even if hardly anyone reads what you write. Publishing my work forces me to pause and consider not only what I'm thinking but how it resonates when I express it.

Well, call me foolish, but here I am on Blogger – once again.