Blogging: Why I Do What I Do

Hey guys, so a lot of your are probably wondering why I've been posting so much on my blog lately. You see, I started this blog in January, wrote a few posts and then didn't write anything until the middle of March. Why the long delay? I don't really know. I didn't have a lot to write about and maybe my heart wasn't in it. I started to think that my blog wouldn't continue and that I would eventually stop or give up. But then March Madness came and I started to think about what I can write about. Shortly after, we had a historic episode of my favorite show, Survivor and I weighed in on what I thought of the episode and talked about the future of the show. I know a lot of you that read this or at least see my blog on Facebook aren't fans of the show, so I know that if I write about it it won't get a lot of pageviews. That's alright, that's not the only motive of my blog. So you might be wondering, why am I writing so much, what is my blog geared towards, and what can you expect to see from my blog in the future? I'll explain why I do what I do in this blog.

Almost three years ago, I started a blog called The Lost Laundry List: Vita's Take on Sports, which was only about sports. I wrote about four, five or six blogs but then I eventually lost interest and stopped. Which may have been too bad, because one of my blogs on LeBron James was featured in the New York Daily News website. So I basically went three years without blogging. Throughout the time people had asked me why I stopped and I didn't know. People said they thought I should start a new blog or write on the old one. Throughout those three years, I wrote some long Facebook notes that could have been blog posts. In January, the Manti Te'o hoax story broke the news and I was going to post a Facebook status about it. But as I wrote and wrote, I realized that this was way too long for a 2-3 sentence status, so I decided to write a blog. I didn't know if I would ever use it again, but I thought "eh, why not." Within the next couple weeks I had some other thoughts I felt strongly to share, one on what I learned in the past year and the other on the Super Bowl. Then after that I didn't know what to write about and as I said before, I started to lose interest.

After I wrote those two blogs on March Madness and Survivor, I started to regain my interest. I was now at five blogs. Around this time I was listening to Rob Has a Podcast, a reality TV show podcast that is hosted by Survivor Hall of Famer Rob Cesternino. Rob was talking about podcasting and blogging and he talked about how it is difficult to start something like that. He gave two particular tips/nuggets of knowledge. The first was that the magic number for blog posts or podcasts is seven. Once you get past seven posts, you'll most likely continue to keep doing it. In my last blog I never got to seven. I am happy to say that recently I have eclipsed the magic number of seven. The other tip he had was to force yourself to do it when you don't feel like it. There will be days where you don't feel like writing and if you can force yourself to do it, you can become a better writer in the process. Since then I have posted a multitude of blogs.

I have been taking this semester off from school and I have been looking for a job for quite a while. While I will continue to search for one and fill out job applications on a daily basis, I also plan to do more with this blog. I just came home from spring break Saturday night and lately I've been thinking about how much I enjoy writing. I'm a big talker, I talk a lot and love to talk. Journalism is perfect for me because I can air out all my opinions and thoughts here. Entering this year, which was somewhat of a gap year for me, I had no idea what I wanted to major in or do after college. I've always been interested in journalism and ministry, but I didn't know if either were something I wanted to do full-time. I started to realize that this year is all about learning, and trying to figure stuff out to help plan for my future, and striving to get better. So on my way home from Florida the other day I decided I'm going to try to be posting stuff on this blog every day. I'm realizing that this is something I might want to do as a career, and so I thought the best thing for me to do is to keep writing. Write when I don't feel like it, write when I do feel like it. I want to get better at writing and I figure the best way for me to do that is keep practicing. I have a lot to learn. I'm also trying to write things more speedily, so that way I can increase my efficiency and teach myself to work faster. There are going to be blogs I post that won't be my best piece of work. But that's okay because I'm learning and practicing. The more I write on here the more I can learn, both about journalism and what I want to do. I can see if this is something I want to do for the rest of my life and pursue in the future.

One thing I hope to do is to build a bigger following for my blog. I don't know how it will happen, but I would love to see more people reading it and following it and having more "likes" on the Facebook fan page. The more people that read it, the more feedback I can get. That's the reason why I constantly post the link to my blog on Facebook ant Twitter. I want to hear more of what you guys think. I've only had a few comments on this blog or the fan page, and I would love it if I can get more feedback. Thank you to all my friends and family that have been reading or that have liked the fan page. I appreciate all the support.

So what is this blog about? Really it's about anything. I've written about sports, life, myself and what I'm learning, Jesus, Survivor, Good Friday and more. Why do I write about Survivor, if no one cares about it? Quite frankly it's something I like to write about and I like having variety on here. I love the show and it's something that is easy for me to write about. I try to rotate, write about sports, then Survivor, then something else. I have a lot planned for the future. There are some big movies coming out soon that I hope to do reviews for, such as 42 and Iron Man 3. I still hope to write about the importance of the resurrection; a late Easter blog. There's also a lot going on in the sports world with the start of the baseball season and the the NBA and NHL regular seasons coming to a close. I have a lot of stuff I plan to write about and I'm looking forward to it. However, I also listen to requests. If you have any ideas of stuff you want me to write about, let me know. Comment below or write on my Facebook fan page, or tweet at me @vellvita7. As always, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this blog!