How's that blog going?

I have gotten the above question from some of my friends (who actually know how often I change my interests) about the status of my blog. Well, in case you're wondering, nope, I have not given up on the idea of starting my own not-very-personal blog. I have been spending the past several days doing research on how to start a blog, everything from concept to design. I took most of the advice from my most favorite bloggers: Gala Darling (she started Blogcademy!) and A Beautiful Mess (these two are just simply beyond awesome). It is actually interesting to learn about how to start a blog and all the processes that involved in maintaining one. No wonder why these people have to be full-time! It is tons of work and most of the time, these bloggers do everything by themselves (amazing!)

I am still working on the concept and the name of the blog, which I believe is the most important items that will set me apart from thousands of blogs out there. Yes, it is about catchy-ness and its appeal to the readers, but it also expresses who I am and what my blog will be about. You know, for every projects, the starting point is the hardest. I do have some ideas in mind and have been playing around with them but so far none stood out as that "special one" yet. Choosing a font for my banner, not surprising, takes a whole lot of time since I am very picky about fonts. Nonetheless, I do have a very good idea of what I want to write about and what topics I would be cover. I will proceed to make a list of those things soon

I am usually a very impatient person. When I think of an idea I have to start working on it right away, otherwise I'd just forget about it and move on. However, I really want to take this slow and spend lots of prep time for it. So I'm giving myself a deadline of Sep 1st before I launch my baby. September is the month for fashion after all, it's perfect.

In the mean time, these are the things I sleep on every night and will continue to do so for the next few weeks:

Tips for Bloggers
Blog Love E-Course: her class schedule serves as a check-list for me
Naming Your Blog: Gala did say it is not that important but I feel like it signifies a start so I want a good one regardless
Here's Gala's advice on starting a blog
More realistic view on Professional Blogging: At this stage, I don't think I want anything close to a full time professional blogging career. I just want to push/motivate myself toward learning about the things that I am interested in (Fitness, Fashion and maybe, food). Reading this article confirms my goal, actually.
After answering these questions, and actually write the answers down in my journal, I have a better sense of what I want to accomplish.

Point is, I still have a lot to learn and continue to learn it is.

I'm going to wander on another journey!

After graduating from college, I have had lots of free time on my hands and I've been struggling to fill up those empty time slots to make myself feel busy. There are many things I want to do, and there are many things I am interested in yet my main excuse when I was still in school was "I don't have time for that", "I have to focus on my study", "I have three exams next week", blah blah blah ... You know how that goes. Now I work only 5 hours a day, even studying for GRE, applying for graduate schools and spending 2 hours at the gym every day don't fill up all my free time. So what could be a better time for me to start doing something I've always wanted to do? I want to start blogging more seriously.

I've started my own blog since high school. However, it was more of a online diary type of thing where I write about relationships, trips, special occasions, feelings, etc. Reading blogs is a part of my daily life. I have a list of favorite blogs that I religiously go on every day and religiously swallow every single word and image that they post, hoping that maybe I will learn things from these successful, and amazing human beings. I secretly admire their courage to start something that most people nowadays still don't consider as "real profession". I want to be like them, I think to myself all the time. You know, these people have to start from somewhere and work their way up to where they are now. They don't just wake up and boom, there are 1 million plus subscribers to their blogs. So I decided for myself that I will start from some where too. Fashion is my passion. I've been told that my eyes sparkle when I talk about fashion. With my recent job, I discover that I am super fascinated by fitness and nutrition. I actually find lots of my friends come to me for fashion and fitness advice. I've gotten people interested in things that they never thought they would be interested in before.

This inspires me to start sharing what I am interested in and spread the words about all these amazing things that make me happy. I am not at the level of being able to write my own fashion or fitness advice articles, but I hope that by committing myself to start blogging seriously about these things, I will eventually accumulate enough knowledge and experience of my own to share. Practice, after all, makes perfect.

I'm sure that my writing and English is nowhere close to professional level yet, but I'm sure I can work on it. After all, writing is kind of your personal style too. Each blogger, I realized, have their own "writing" voice that I actually think that is how they talk normally in real life. I want to establish my own voice and my own writing style so that when people read my pieces, they will recognize me.

Cheers to myself for finally getting started on something I've always wanted to do. Let's see where this journey will take me.

[Az]
July 26, 2013