My Evolution as a Blogger

All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.

- Albert Einstein

The other day, someone I work with was doing a search on the internet for the terms technical communication and social networking. As I sat in her office, she said, "Oh, here's something that sounds interesting. It's called A Woman In Technology!" I laughed and said, "That's my blog!"

I started this blog in September of this year, and I am very willing to admit that I had not really blogged before. Actually, I had created a blog for a class I took on Corporate Communication, but I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to be doing with it so my posts were kind of random and short.

This time, however, I've really started to enjoy blogging. In fact, I even got my husband to start a blog about his restoration of arcade-style video games - he calls it My Garage Arcade. But back to me and my evolution as a blogger.

As you can see in this illustration, my initial blog was pretty traditional and my tone tended to be more formal (limited use of contractions and so on). I was kind of torn about the width of the blog, however, because my posts were a little long and I (personally) hate having to scroll a lot. I therefore next tried a blog format with a wider post area.

I liked this template because it had the wider posting area. I also like the fact that the titles on the right side of the blog have bars that give that area a nice definition. I played around with the colors because I didn't like the background pure white as it looked too stark, so I went with a grey. I liked the fact that, with this format, more of my posting was visible on the screen at any given time, so my readers wouldn't have to scroll as much.

What I didn't like about the previous format was that my posting titles were really boring - they weren't eye catching at all. So I decided to try something different. I stayed with a template that had the wider posting area, but I found one that really highlighted my post titles - I felt that really made them stand out and gave them a nice delineation. The purple was just something I played around with because I wanted to try some fun colors to liven the blog up a bit.

Then I saw one of my classmates' blogs using a different template that I really liked. Although it has the narrower posting area, I really like the way the dark background made the text stand out. In fact, I like this template so much that, when my husband created his blog, I told him to use this template, although he's using the original colors while I played around with the colors for my blog. At this point, I also started to feel more comfortable with using a more relaxed, conversational tone.

Still, I didn't like the fact that the narrow posting area made my posts look so very long, so I went back to a template with a wider posting area. I tried to stay away from the stark white background by using grey again, but it just looked dull. I used it for a while, as you can see, but since then I've modified my blog to look the way it does now.

I'm still evolving as a blogger - I envision more changes to come - but this post shows you where I started and where I ended up three months later. Not bad for a first-time blogger, huh?