What do you mean I've had this blog for 15 years

I started this blog in June 2011 because Blogspot was the hip thing to have back then. God even knows the number of blogs this one has outlived due to my love of my own writing voice (callback to what I wrote in the About section of this blog) and stubborn refusal to abandon the social media trends I actually like. I still have a Blogspot/Blogger, but death before getting a tiktok account.

My first ever blog post 

My first ever book review  (was I actually giving books letter grades back then?!)

My first post of flash book reviews written because I didn't want to write a dedicated book review post for each one, a common staple in this blog

Upon rereading my first-ever blog post, it looks like I meant for this blog to be a place to put my writing and other thoughts. I have done a bit of that (you can still find almost everything I wrote here as I haven't really deleted anything), but what I've written the most seems to be book reviews. To me, there is something very comforting about how old-school blogs and the ability to configure their look feel. It reminds me of the good old days of the internet, how it was when we were both growing up together.

People still share their thoughts online, but mostly in short-video format. I think few people really have the attention span and patience to read others' long-form thoughts anymore. We went from blogs (web-logs) to MySpace/Facebook posts to tweets to... We don't really have a new set way of communicating textually, do we? It's just Bluesky/Threads tweets still, maybe memes, and video (tiktoks) dominates all. 

I don't kid myself by thinking I have or have ever really had (or will ever have) an audience; even in the first-ever blog post, I address the "possibly nonexistent reader". The near-anonymity makes me feel comfortable writing and posting whatever stupid thing I feel like. Just a month or two ago, I got over 1200 hits on this blog, possibly due to having posted something on Instagram (I link to this blog in my link.tree, which in turn is linked to on my IG profile); clearly people were nosy enough to click through. The number staggers; that many people are looking at my Instagram and my silly little blog? I've only ever written for myself, although I like to check the stats to see how many hits I've gotten and what posts have been viewed (and cringe if it's my old poetry). Anyway. 

Thanks for coming to my blog's quinceañera I guess 

Lego Librarian

aka me in Lego form:

I don't have a patterned sweater-vest like that though (yet). My mom bought me this off Amazon. I love it and of course changed all my social media profile pics to it.

I do love a good pun

Which is not to say my blog's title is one. I'm just way more tolerant of the puns I make than of the ones made by others. As are we all, I'm sure. The tagline ("Random thoughts from my mental hard drive") comes from a book my grandma gave me some years ago. It was the title of one of the chapters and just perfect, I felt, for what my writing usually is.

I've been wanting to start a Blogger account for a while, but I waited until I was on summer break. I have this compulsion to write things down, and while I do have a Tumblr (I haven't figured out how to link to that yet in my Meta post), I find it's best for pictures and other such snapshots of a person's life instead of long rambling text passages, which is what I often feel like writing. I have many thoughts that weigh heavy on my head. (This is the sort of thing I will sometimes write. Consider yourself warned, possibly nonexistant reader.) Writing is one of the best ways, I find, to explain things to myself and to figure out what I really feel or think about something. Thinking long and hard about something is the best/main way I do so, but what I think so often changes; writing it down in words creates some distance that one can use for better examination or analysis. Writing organizes my miscellaneous, random thoughts.