To Many More Firsts

This isn't exactly my first blog but it is my first 'public' blog.

Like any teenager in the 2000s, I had my own Bebo and Tumblr account in high school. I know those sites feel ancient now but back then, everyone was on them. My friends and I would repost content we found interesting and write posts about our day-to-day lives. It was actually quite cute and we would like each other's posts, commenting on them if we found something funny.

I'm not sure I would consider this a blog but there were definitely blogging elements. You could express your thoughts, curate your page to display your interests and interact with your online community. There was also this cool function where you could choose the music people listened to while they browsed your page.

The next step I took in blogging was in 2017 when I created my very own blog on a popular blogging website. This was the infamous 'secret' blog that was created for my eyes only. The 'secret' blog that became not-so-secret. Even though I didn't have my own domain and had to use the default settings, it felt like my own blog. I was able to express myself freely and process life through my writing.

This blog was a place of refuge for me to process my thoughts and emotions, to let go of the burden of expectation and perfection and to lay it before God. Though there were hardships, I look back on this time in my life and am reminded of its beauty. God refined me in my thoughts, my motivations and my character as I wrote.

So where are we now? Well, that secret blog died a year after its creation. It fulfilled its purpose and God taught me to process my thoughts and emotions within community and through journaling. I didn't feel the need to blog and I was okay with that.

At the beginning of 2021, as I was praying for the year ahead, I felt God's prompting to start up a blog. I started to watch youtube videos on other people who had started blogs, educating myself on the different hosting options and things that worked well for them. I was in the process of working out the logistics when life took an unexpected turn. For most of the year, I wasn't really in the right headspace to be working on a blog and I wrestled with that every once in a while. What if God wanted me to blog about this? Was I being disobedient to His prompting?

Ultimately, I knew that God loved me regardless of what I could do for Him and the decision that I felt the most at peace with was to put the blog aside until I felt better.

By God's grace, I am in a better place now. Everything is truly perfect in God's timing and I believe that now is the right time for this blog to be birthed.

My first 'public' blog and the very first blog post.

Here we go!