I realised that my deadline was coming up for publishing a new post on Pineapple Flats. So I went to the WordPress topic of the day for a starting point for me and this was todays topic:
What made you decide to start a blog? If you’ve blogged about this before, go back and read it. Is that still the reason? What’s changed?
For me starting a blog was the natural thing to do, my mind always has several ideas and thought processes on the go so part of it is for therapy, a creative release and the other for advice and entertainment. Hence why I started so many.
It did start out innocently enough with a “news” style blog of what has been going on in our daily lives for those relatives and friends who didn’t have facebook. For a few years I kept it updated however the past year I fell off that as more people joined facebook. In the midst of writing the family blog I was asked to write for another blog “what makes me happy today” which I contributed in a small amount, to date I am not even sure if it is still up and running. I agreed as I appreciated the whole mantra of the blog, promoting happiness in a world filled with bad news.
While I was working on the family blog and contributing blog I decided to go on a another journey with blogging, joined a “twenty something blogging group” & created a secret blog that no longer exists in blogtopia (I discovered bloggers refer to the world of blogging as the “blog-o-sphere” which I didn’t like so I made up “Blogtopia”). I enjoyed this for a while though I was having trouble with the focus of my blog (being everything to do with women and the celebration of women) plus there seemed to be an overwhelming amount of women blogging out there though only seemingly about thier dating lives and men. I found this un-inspiring as “Bridget Jones” has already been done and going off about how much “men suck” wasn’t really my thing because men don’t suck they are just a different gender and are wired differently than women.
While I was playing around writing in this “20 something bloggers” group I discovered WordPress and I loved the way it looked so I decided to create yet ANOTHER blog “Pineapple Flats” just to try it out and see if I liked it. Turned out I loved the whole layout so I set up shop here and made this my creative writing place, my dreamscape and a place to sound off anonymously (aside from my links in FB). I find it great because I have written about my dreams and people were actually reading it, people I didn’t know and they found what I wrote interesting. I loved that people stumbled upon my words and took the time to tell me about what I wrote instead of me posting something to the “20-SB” group. So I stuck with it…. for a while. Then I slowed down and stopped posting all together because…. I actually forgot about it.
I had a year off at home where I actually learned how to cook, I watched television cooking shows, I scoured cook books and called my mom whenever I had a success or failure that we could giggle about. The kids were telling me to open a restaurant and my spouse kept telling me “You know you can relate to more people out there than those people on those shows, you should do something about it write or something. I don’t know.Thus “Burned Cornflakes” was born and has been my little side-project for a while and it makes sense to write about something one loves. For me food, creating it and naturally completely screwing everything up in the process (not to mention my serious lack in kitchen utensils and imporvising). It was something people could relate to whether they be a novice or an expert or someone who just wants to read for entertainment. Everything was bubbling along nice with the “BC” blog but I still wanted something more. I contemplated deleting Pineapple Flats however I just couldn’t do it. So I’ve revived it, hopefully soon pumping some life back into it and into my dreams.
What is keeping me going now is reading more and following Niel Gaiman. The man does nothing but inspire me. I know I have written about him before but the man is ALWAYS writing, whether it be a blog, a novel, a story or a tweet. He’s a rock star of the literary world (in my opinion) and he does what I want to do. Write creative stories that set thier own precident, thier own time and creativity until they take on a life of thier own.
The other thing that is contributing to my blog revival are some friends on facebook, one a “rebel poet” embarking on her own journey with writing, one carving a path in First Nations radio complete with sass, style and flair and with her is her best friend who again is simply fabulous and is getting a name in the fashion industry; another a successful uninhibited artist who inspired me from high school; a published author; several family members in thier own bands creating amazing music, another family member making a big name in the punk industry as a leading interview DJ; of course this list could go on forever as I watch my aquaintances grow up and do amazing things with thier lives.
So here I am again writing with the support of my readers, the encouragement and support of my spouse, my family and friends. Hoping to shape this and the writing on all my computers and devices to grow into something awesome and maybe inspire someone else at the same time.
Thus I bring this to a close, hopefully I didn’t repeat myself too often or bring on any yawns.
On to the next.
Pineapple Flats 