New kid on the blog woes

Once you earn the term 'blogger', it's like your online status is somewhat elevated and you join some sort of exclusive group on the World Wide Web. I am still waddling in the invisible divide that separates bloggers from frequent consumers of social media –Facebook massive (pardon me for the shady reference :) and the elitist Twiterratti.

Everyday since I decided to wow the world with my writing abilities (or lack of) on a web log or blog if you like, I wake up everyday thinking about this blog. I worry that I am not as interesting, engaging, compelling or thought provoking as the next blog. I wonder how Kenyan girl next door is doing and if she had similar issues?..ah but I digress...I worry about my consistency. I worry that I may have overhyped my blogging capability (or lack of).

I think of ways I could make my life more interesting just so I can write about it. I think of jumping off a bridge and surviving just so I can blog about it from my hospital bed. Ok, not really. I'm kidding. I have never been suicidal. Even for a blog. But nonetheless, I think of what seems to be my mundane existence and I feel the need for few lifestyle changes, again, just for the sake of blogging. That's how seriously I take my responsibility as a blogger. I have seriously considered bird watching, driving (I kind of suck at this so I could definitely have things to blog about if I drove…in town), stamp collecting (do people still do this?) and...uh…well, nothing else.

It seems that I am not about to walk with my nose in the air anytime soon as a result of the snooty nature that I intend to acquire once I find real things to blog about. Anyhow, I have bigger things to worry about than being snooty at the moment.

Soon to do list:

1. Minimize blogging about blogging.

2. Find other things to blog about and consider use of visual aids in the blog.

3. Convince people that I can be more interesting than this if they gave me more time. A little money would also go a long way.

The creation of future blogger extraordinaire

The day, time and date were marked as earlier stated. October 5^th, 2010, sometime between 12.00 and 12.30 a.m. That was the historical moment that I had created.

After typing up my first blog post, I came up with a name after several failed attempts, read 'name not available.' Here were my first two options;

1. reDflections- played around with the name reflections and my name, rather nickname, Ed. Turns out someone else had thought about it before I did.
2. Kenyanne- came from trying to feminize the word Kenyan to refer to a Kenyan female, hence Kenyanne. Again, I wasn't the only one with this bright idea.

Don't you just hate it when you find out that someone came up with an idea like yours way before you did? Especially after taking a while to come up with the idea and considering your idea cool. I came up with 'unsaidbutwritten' on a whim and I'm surprised that no one had thought of it before. Seriously, it does not sound that original to me. It will do for now. I might have to take a 'how cool is my blog name?' poll soon. If the results are negative, please bear with the name change.

Next, came the 'choose a template' template option. Sometimes, I don't like it when people give me options. I take ages to make a decision and even when I do, I keep thinking I should have gone with that other one or that other-other one. I think I may be pathologically indecisive if there's anything like that.

I chose the 'watermark' template by Josh Peterson, who seemed to have come up with a good number of the templates. I wonder if that's what he does for a living. Maybe he….it will be good for us if I state at this point of our blogger-bloggee relationship that I digress a lot. 

That was all in regards to creation of this blog. So far I've blogged about blogging. I'm still unsure about what I'll blog about. Is it selfish to blog about myself? I mean my thoughts? Isn't that the essence of blogging? I'm not sure. There are endless possibilities. I could blog about blogging, staplers, the human condition, printing paper…ok now I'm just mentioning stuff that's around me. I think I'll just blog about what's unsaid but is written as my title suggests. The endless possibilities should fit somewhere in these parameters.

Blog entry one: A moment in history

This is my first blog post ever. I am a newbie in the blogging world. Well, I read and have read other people's blog posts before and have wanted to start one of my own for ages but somehow I have never gotten around to doing it. I have blamed it on several reasons:

1. I don't know what to blog about. We have heard time and time again that there is nothing new on this earth and honestly I'm not sure I have anything new to offer you dear reader (who at this point is probably a friend I forced to check my blog out).
2. I need better and constant Internet access.
3. Who will read my blog? I, like all humans and also according to Abraham Maslow, need to know that I am needed. OK, that's not really what I mean. Let me put this way. I need to be relevant, I need people to identify with what I blog about, and I need people to find me interesting. I wonder if this is too much to ask.
4. I am inconsistent. I never follow stuff up. I need reminders, accountability partners, and maybe even a life coach (I'm not sure what exactly these people do but I think they can help me to remember stuff I need to and do it) to poke me into doing things that I'm supposed to do.
5. I have constant Writer's Block. Jack London, an American short story writer once said that "You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." I say use a knife, a hand grenade, nuclear weapons, and other more violent means. But then, if inspiration was a person or thing, wouldn't you end up destroying him, her or it? Maybe Jack London hadn't thought this whole 'club approach' through. Anyway, I digress, the point was that I have many, many blank moments in my life, both physically (I'm not sure this is the right word to use here) when I lack or run out of things to say to people and in situations where I'm required to speak; and writtingly (forgive my use of little known words drawn from the Edopedia :) when I'm required to write and I have nothing to write about or lack words to appropriately express what I'd like to write about.

I guess I have just had a 'Eureka moment' and decided that excuses and reasons not to do something you want to do will always be there but that I shouldn't let this hinder me from doing what I want. All of a sudden, the reasons I had for not starting a blog kind of fizzled away. Well, most of them anyway.

I'm still not sure what this blog will be about but I'll keep writing what comes to mind that I'd like to share. Also, after doing a little research while looking for a name, I have realized that I cannot use the name 'Kenyan girl next door' which would have been perfect. So perfect. Turns out there's another Kenyan girl next door. I hope I find a cool name. I'm still not over the 'Kenyan girl next door' issue.

I now have constant (not really better) Internet access from xxx (I do not offer free advertising).

I will make some of my friends read this blog and link it to my Twitter and Facebook accounts to tell more people about it. I should be content to have even five constant readers. I think this should take care of issue number three.

I will note down everything that comes to mind that I'd like to blog about, so I don't forget when it comes to doing the actual writing and also to help generate more self content (because that's what most of this will be) which should mostly help with the Writer's Block.

 I don't know how often I should be blogging. Weekly? I guess. I will make goals, get an accountability buddy or a life coach or both to help me with inconsistency.

That's about it for my first blog post. I'm thinking maybe I should mark today's date for when I'm blogger extraordinaire.