Hi y’all! My name is Alison, but that’s not really important. If this post is not interesting, you will have forgotten my name and everything else about me before you get to the end. So let’s just cut to the ending, shall we?

I am hoping that by the end of our time together you will have learned something new about blogging.

Because really, is that not why you joined ARWB in the first place? I am not ashamed to say that I joined up to learn from other bloggers, even if it was just by watching all of your blogs to see what new blogging trends you were up to. Also, let’s be honest. I wondered if I would get a few hits from adding my name to the directory, because when I joined ARWB in the summer of 2012, I was all about Self Promotion. 

But I am getting ahead of myself.

I did not start blogging to promote myself. Self Promotion was just a stage.

If you have blogged for any length of time, you can probably mark your blog with stages. I know that everyone’s stages are not the same but I thought it would be fun to tell you the story of my blog in stages and see if you recognize some of the same phases in your own blogging.

I get to hang out here all month so I am going to take my time and have some fun with telling the story of my blog. If I do not manage to teach you anything, at least we will have a laugh or two along the way at my expense. Let me say up front that in taking a mocking tone about my own blogging journey, I do not mean to offend or poke fun at anyone’s blog but my own. I actually think that all the different and crazy things I have tried in blogging have served me in the long run. I have learned by experimenting, so no post has been wasted. Well, maybe just that one about yoga.

Also, let it be known that I do not in any way purpose to set myself up as some sort of expert blogger. As you will see over the next few weeks, my road through the internet has been (and continues to be) very experimental. 

But I believe that starting a personal weblog is an experiment worth doing, so let’s begin at the beginning.

My blog, like many others, began as an online journal in 2007.

I have filled notebooks with my melodramatic musings since I was an angst-filled child of 11, so my friend Jerusalem assured me that I could start a blog.

One winter’s night I stared into the screen at WordPress.com and followed the prompts until it came into existence.

My blog.

I called it Chino House, because Chino is my last name and I was going to record what happened in my house. I am creative like that.

Stage 1: i am too cool for punctuation

Hello stream-of consciousness-nonsense with which I bored my 8 readers.

Hello lack-of-grammar-punctuation-or-editing.

Hello all-text-and-no-photos.

Hello girl-without-a-filter.

Hello ranting-that-would-better-be-kept-to-myself (now deleted).

Let me just say that I loved this stage of blogging. As a stay-at-home-mom, I felt like I had been given a lifeline to the world, and I wrote my little heart out. I exploded with joy when someone commented back, Girl I feel you! or Hang in there! or my very favorite comment, This really touched me!

However, after I had a few more readers, I decided that some ranting should be reserved for drinks with the girls and long weepy emails to my friends. (Hello Sarabeth & Whitney.)

Then I moved to on to Stage 2.

Stage 2: I Have A Cute Toddler

This stage of blogging could also be filed under, I Lost My Mind and Starting Homeschooling or Mommyblogger Wannabe.

During this phase of blogging I tried on all the possible genres of mommybloggers.

I wanted to be funny, but not too crass. Positive, but raw and authentic. I wanted to be a photographer and a maker of graphics. A reviewer of books. Informative and inspiring.

Dear Lord, I am tired just from reading all those descriptions.

It was like the adolescent stage of blogging.

Who am I?

At some point during this phase I decided to post my very first recipe.

Yes! Now I was also a Food Blogger!

Wearing all these hats was a lot of fun, but when my daughter’s birthday or Father’s Day rolled around again and I typed the exact same words as the year before, I started to get bored. I wanted more meaning. I wanted to dig deeper.

So I moved on to being a more serious blogger. And by serious, I mean I took myself too seriously.

Stage 3: Existential Blogging Experiments

NaNoBloMo, Blogging every day for the month of August, or Blogging For Lent.

I sporadically played with schedules. And by sporadically, I mean that I kept a schedule for about two weeks before trying a new one.

A recipe a week?

How about a book review a week?

Oh wait a minute, will that mean I have to read a book every week?

Wordless Wednesday, Fashion Friday, Thoughtless Thursday. (I just made that last one up.)

Link Ups!

Honestly, I re-discovered through blogging how much I really love writing and so I invented all sorts of ways to keep doing it. Often they were utterly meaningless and complete rubbish. But somehow I felt the point was to just keep plugging away.

I would read websites like ProBlogger or CopyBlogger now and then and I realized that there were people out there who were professionally blogging. I figured I had just not yet been discovered. Sooner or later, whoever found The Pioneer Woman would come knocking on my door and give me a prize for making granola and raising children at the same time.

You clever girl, you.

I did not understand that most of the opportunities for professional blogging were actually sought after by bloggers. Sure there are some writers who are discovered through blogging. But they are more often the exception than the rule and even they will tell you that staying in the pro-blog world has involved lots of asks. Or pitches. But I am getting ahead of myself. In Stage 3, I would never have known to use the word pitch. I was still waiting for Oprah to call.

And one day I did receive a call, but you will have to wait until next time for me to tell you who it was.

I know you are riveted.

Tune in next week for Stage 4, in which I become Mesmerized By Free Stuff For Blogging.

PS. I would love for you to share in the comments about your own early stages of blogging! When and why did you start blogging?