This post was written by Linda Jo Martin for the "My Experience" series.
I've been blogging since 2000. I started blogging because I noticed the beginning of the online diary phenomena, and wanted to participate. I love web design, and at that time was experimenting with creating various types of sites. For over a year I didn't use blogging software; instead I updated a HTML page by hand. I didn't know anything about blog platforms but I wanted to record fragments of my family's life on the web. At that point, blogging was all about letting people know just a bit about who I was and what my goals in life were.
I started using Blogger.Com right after the 9/11 disaster in 2001 when I was dealing with all the emotions and trauma of that situation. I loved Blogger – so much that I started several blogs: one for my daily life, one for writing about war and justice, and yet another for writing about a popular radio program I listened to daily.
I started another blog to write about the homeschooling I was doing with my two youngest children. I believe that may have been the first homeschooling blog on the Internet; I don't know of any others that date from before then (late 2001).
Blogging has been part of my life for seven years now. At this point I've abandoned all my earliest blogs though I'm in the process of restoring some archives for SEO value. I've transferred all my current blogs to WordPress because again, I'm looking at SEO value. I like to write posts that do well in the search engines; most of my blog visitors come to me that way.
Though I started blogging as a way to write about my daily life, I no longer do that because I feel I've got more important things to write about. Now I like to keep my life more private and have transformed my blogs into services that will help others achieve their goals.
For example, my goal with my writing blog is to help and inspire other writers. Here's the link: Perspectives on Writing - http://www.lindajomartin.com/
