It’s the first post on the new blog! Writing the first one is daunting – am I supposed to write an introduction or just jump straight into content? A little of both, maybe.
First of all, hello! I’m Jen, I’m 39 years old and live and work in Las Vegas, NV as a front-end web developer. I have an incredible partner of almost 9 years, Zach, two wonderful dogs (Teddy and Ella, both 13 years, Pomeranian mixes), and a house which I adore and am so grateful to have. My hobbies these days mainly revolve around cooking & baking, reading, doing puzzles, and interior decorating. And now, blogging.
I’ve been out of the blogging game for a long time. I first began blogging in the late 90’s, before “blogging” was an official term. I was in middle school and would write out each entry in its own HTML file and FTP it to my website, then manually link to it from the homepage. Eventually I discovered the b2 platform (which eventually became WordPress) and migrated to that.
However, my most fond memories of blogging came during the Vox era, before the Vox.com domain was acquired and repurposed as the online news site it’s known as today. The thing I loved most about Vox was the community – I made SO many friends and I loved the events that the members put together (like Christmas card exchanges!). I met one of my dearest IRL friends on Vox, Lauren. What started as a few comments here and there on each others blog posts eventually turned into emails, which turned into snail mail letters and fun gift exchanges, which then turned into real life trips to visit each other in person once a year, and finally, to me being her maid of honor at her wedding. 🥹 I owe that friendship entirely to blogging and the community that Vox gave us.
I was devasted when Vox closed its doors in 2010, and while I made small attempts to continue blogging afterwards on various different platforms, I eventually lost the desire to do so entirely. It was just as well, as that time period happened to be around the time I had graduated college and moved to Las Vegas to begin my first serious job as web developer, so my main focus at the time was my career, exploring my new city, and developing new friendships.
Then, throughout the 2010’s, social media exploded. Snapchat, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Tiktok, etc became people’s primary way of consuming content. Attention spans became shorter (including mine), RSS and blogs were replaced with images and short-form video, and largely, I think people forgot that blogs existed. For the ones that did exist, they largely became places for social media posts to link back to, filled with top-to-bottom ads and affiliate links. I myself am still frustrated by these blogs when I’m trying to read a recipe on my phone and have to keep closing ads that block the instructions.
The blogs that continue to exist despite social media have morphed into what I consider a full-time job. Gone are the days of writing up a quick post, slapping a few photos in, and then hitting publish. Modern blogging involves making sure you hit a certain word count so that Google is happy, bloating the post with unneeded words and language so that the SEO is performant, spending money on photo presets and design assets so that the site looks like a magazine publication, spending time editing said photos so that everything looks “aesthetic”, creating affiliate links and linking every product under the sun whether you own it or not, and then writing and posting across social platforms so that traffic can be pointed back to the blog. Oh, and don’t forget to make sure you’re doing all this on a consistent schedule, or the search engines will become angry and penalize you! It’s exhausting to think about. Not a lot of people with actual 40-hour workweek jobs (like myself) can actually manage all of the above with regular consistency.
I’ve been wanting to return to blogging for several years now, but modern blogging has discouraged me from it. I recently had a lightbulb moment where I realized that I only need to do all of the above if I’m trying to 1) increase traffic and 2) make money. I can actually omit a lot of the things modern blogging requires if I’m only blogging for fun. Would it be nice to make some money and see some traffic? Yes, of course! But I don’t want to feel overwhelmed before I even begin writing a post.
That said, there are a few things about modern blogging that I like and want to implement. I do love visiting “aesthetic” blogs that have a nice site design and consistent photo editing. I don’t see the harm in adding some affiliate links to products I actually own, restricted to certain areas of the site. Beyond that, though, I don’t want to follow conventional rules.
And now we come to the question of: what content will be found on this site? I think it will evolve with time and as I refamiliarize myself with blogging as a hobby, but for now I want it to be a mixture of personal updates and lifestyle content. As Shea McGee has said, “I love good design and I love good food, and this is where the two come together”. I couldn’t have said it better! I, too, love those things, so I anticipate a lot of content around them. I’d also love for this blog to chronicle my dream of designing and eventually building a custom home somewhere, though that’s still a ways off.
So, for whoever has read this far, welcome! Thank you for visiting, I hope you enjoy your stay here. 😊
[NOTE] I kept the default title that WordPress uses as the first post – Hello, World – as a nod to my career as a web developer. “Hello, World” is the first program many people learn to write when they’re just learning to code. Learn more here!
Leave a Reply