Where Did I Begin?

Here's one for you: what got you started blogging?

For me, it began thusly...

*Ooooh, wavy lines and that. Again.*

I'd certainly heard of blogging - there was a long article about it in New Scientist, describing how it was a liberating experience, and how the Chinese government was suppressing the downtrodden masses even on t'internet by monitoring their every keypress. Grr!

But so what? I'd also read about cold fusion, quantum chromodynamics, string theory and buttered cat antigravity devices. I'd never seriously thought about investigating any of these further...well, maybe that last one.

Time passed.

I thought about an old friend, and wondered what he was up to, if he was still alive. <clickety on the brand new interweb-enabled moby> Oh! That's interesting, he's set up a community radio station and done loads of brill stuff. And here's a mention of him on one of them blog things. Hey, this bloke Peter is quite interesting in his own right. And Peter became my baby blue habit, right from the first time.

Peter had an infestation problem, first with wasps, then with mice. The former was sorted with a visit from pest control, the latter with a rescued cat whom he christened zoe. Zoe even had her own blog for a while. I discovered comments, then figured out how to post one. My first one was really dumb, and no, I can't remember what it said.

And finally I figgered out how to click through - still on the moby - to other commenters' blogs.

O.M.G.

I found Andre, and Anna, and Anxious - no, not because I was going through his links alphabetically, the next one was Zoe (not the cat, the one whose boyfriend is a twat).

This was running up a small fortune in phone bills, and it would, of course, be unthinkable to steal electrons from my employer *cough* so I was delighted when Mrs Farty bought me a pooter as an early birthday prezzie. (I'd had an aging Amiga before that, but it couldn't keep up, poor thing.) I stalked Non-Working Monkey for a while, reading all her posts from day 1. She is a star.

But eventually, I became tired of reading what other people had to say; I wanted to make a statement of my own. And people were getting fed up of me posting stupid comments in their boxes (not that I've ever stopped doing that).

So I did the <clicky> thing and got me a blog. I was going to go for "Better Out Than In", but some cockmonkey had already taken that. And apparently then chose not to use it. Grr! So I came oot in Scotch garb. Learned myself interweb from this really useful site and pimped my blog. And announced my presence to the world via Zoe (still not the cat), on the same day that she had her one millionth visitor.

I've posted things in here that I wouldn't dare tell my nearest and dearest, but mostly it's just random nonsense. I've made lots of imaginary friends - everyone on my blogroll, except Peter, is there because they left a comment somewhere - and I've read some really disturbing stories. It beats the pants off anything I've seen on the telly.

Oh, the old friend? I bumped into him last year. Yep, still alive. His radio station is still broadcasting too, but it's so local that I can't receive it on this side of the city. Sigh.

If you've not dozed off yet, why not write a post about what got you blogging? Leave a comment below and I might even stalk visit you.