This is one of a series of posts answering some questions about a life of blogging that started (I believe) via Tom Woodward, (maybe via this blogger) but that I first saw via Alan L, Sarah H and Martin W through a renewed push to return back to blogging spaces and away from corporate social media platforms. I am breaking down the series of questions into different blog posts.
Q: Why did you start blogging in the first place?
Way back when, at the end of my first year of teaching (summer 2003), in my Summer Leadership Institute with the Western Massachusetts Writing Project, we piloted what we were told was “blogging” for the National Writing Project. (This was just after presidential Howard Dean used a blog to raise donations). I don’t remember the platform anymore and it is long since gone. Oh wait. Manila. That was it. Anyway, we used it to share stories, professional thinking about teaching, for comments and more. Even though we were in the same location, we immediately could see the potential for feedback and sharing and publishing. I sure did, and I even got NWP folks to give me a Manila blog space for my students.
I tried to use the Manila space for different activities over the next year or two. It never quite caught on. The concept was too new, I think, and the administrative elements of Manila were clunky and sometimes unstable. But then, a few summers later, at a technology retreat for NWP out in Chico, California, called Tech Matters, some new teaching friends I met there encouraged me to start my own blog after showing me their new blogs (this teacher-as-blogger was now starting to be a thing).
But I wondered: What would I say? What did I have to say?
I decided to dip my toes in, and created the Kevin’s Meandering Mind name and concept to keep many doors open to wherever my curiosity took me — teaching, music, writing, poetry, comics, video production, photographs, family. While my posts are indeed all over the conceptual map, I know I found my writing voice in those regular posts (during one stretch of time, I was posting twice a day — which is insane. I apologize to anyone who had me in their RSS reader.) Here is my first post, ever. Notice the technology references, including Writerly before Google snatched it up and made it Google Docs.
Back to the question at hand, as to why I started blogging, I think it was to have a place to write, pure and simple. Or maybe a place to compose is the better way to put it.
(see my post from 2009 about Why I Blog)
Peace (wherever your letters land),
Kevin
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