How I Became a Blogger

Soccer Dad began a thread in which he discusses how he became a blogger. It was interesting to read and so I decided that I might add my own story to this.

I began by participating in chat rooms. It was the early ’90s and I was enthralled with the idea that I could speak with people around the world with such ease and in real time. I remember using AOL. If I am not mistaken I was on a plan in which I received a small number of hours for about $25 a month and then was required to pay overage fees. It was fairly similar to the current cellphone plans.

If I wanted to I could make this a really detailed and longer post but why bore the audience. I graduated from the chat rooms to message boards. There was a period of time that I was exceptionally active on the CNN boards and to a lesser extent on the ABC and New York Times.
I learned a lot about the Net and how people behaved. I posted under my real name because it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. But I soon learned that there were people who would use their keyboards to attack those that disagreed with them with incredible vehemence. The nastiness was such that I was concerned that using my name might bite me in the ass so I stopped.

It has been many years since I was on those boards. I have had some mixed experiences on various boards since then. I stopped hanging around them because the nastiness wore me out. In the interest of full disclosure I participated in some of that. I have a decent command of the language and I found it to be easy to respond and I did.

I am not ashamed nor proud of those moments. I learned from it all.

So here we are at the big reveal,what made Jack decide to start blogging. In truth I don’t remember there being any one thing. I just decided that I wanted a new outlet and thought that blogging might be that.

If you are interested in more you might want to read about why I blog.