Hey guys! It’s been over a year since I last wrote on my blog. I think, unfortunately, my old blog posts on this site got lost due to my inactivity (but you can still see parts of it on the Way Back Machine 😭). But I think this is a better way for my blogging journey – a fresh start, a clean slate. Like Bilbo Baggins, I wanted to have a change of scenery, but I didn’t know how to achieve it and I was also in college at the time, so I didn’t have enough time to change my theme or make other reforms lol.
My last post (the Raskolnikov one – sorry to all the people from Instagram who tried to access it but only found a blank page) was made during my final semester in university, and I was burdened finishing my capstone – writing and illustrating a 43-page graphic novel at that – and deadlines and the flurry of graduating and figuring out what to do next. I became the valedictorian of my batch (something I have been meaning to write about – how I feel about it and so on) and have been taking a gap year (I’m currently waiting on my master’s application results). Now I feel I have more time to write.
Since this current site is empty, I’ll repost some of my old blog posts that are still in my files – like, my “Greatest Hits”…
I had always liked my first blog on Google’s Blogspot (Kalam Argument/“What are the odds?”) because I felt freest when I wrote there, but when I moved to WordPress, I felt it wasn’t as heartfelt as before, even before I got my own domain. I guess I was at a time of transition (I moved from Nepal to Armenia) and too concerned with how to write the “right” way, according to all the (then-)new “how to blog” posts I had read. How to make your blog more productive, more appealing. I think I forgot what it was like to write for myself. There was a joy in blogging that I had missed. Or perhaps because, back with Kalam Argument, I was in the blissful cocoon of life in Nepal, discovering my passions and consuming works like Lord of the Rings, BBC Sherlock, interviews and news articles (on actual newspapers like The Kathmandu Post), playing philosophical games on Kongregate, and so on. The earthquake in Nepal broke my consistency, as it also coincided with my move to WordPress.
Anyways, this is supposed to be a first-blog post kind of thing, and not a journal introspection/reflection, but yeah. I just recall Adam Young (Owl City)’s first post: he has this beloved blog that used to be on Tumblr, and his posts are very witty and punny and sometimes poetically heart-wrenching (I just checked again and the dude just jumped right into a random blog post about a Chilean swimming pool – one of the biggest in the world lol)
But I don’t want to copy him… I forgot what I was going to write, gah! Anyways, it feels good to be back on the saddle.
Now, what can you expect from this blog? Ever since I got this new site seven years ago, I had always aimed to write travel and lifestyle posts. That has grown to reviews and life updates, plus some analyses of pop culture. But yeah, I’m fighting a losing battle for attention here, what with the tyranny of TikTok, Youtube, and Instagram and other social media. Like Egon Spengler says in Ghostbusters, “Print is dead.” – is blogging dead?
Is it only for readers, bookworm types like me who pounce at random blogs found through websearches for projects? (For example, I found this photography blog about parkour artists? enthusiasts? climbing up a Bangkok rooftop for a photoshoot while watching a K-drama – where the characters in an office building all ran up to the roof during a fire alarm, and I was researching whether this was unrealistic hogwash or actually what people do in an emergency)? Or is there still potential that people of this day and age would still read blogs like mine?
Well, only one way to find out. I must keep writing.
I’ll keep writing here. I’m asking myself, should I just write for my own sake? If not many people are going to read this, why bother with writing for them as an audience, which is sometimes cumbersome for me since I have to edit so much and consider what is gonna grab their (your) attention? Why don’t I just write things that only I – and a handful of other people/nerds – would understand? But, what would Vladimir Nabokov say? Are Good Readers all gone to the enemy side of the YT reels-scrollers and TikTokers, doomed to have ever-shortening attention spans and a hatred for long text? Honestly, I don’t think so… I think Good Readers do still exist.
Anyways, I’ll stop being a drama queen here and just keep writing. I’ve missed writing a good travel blog (Warsaw, Romania, and Doha are up next) and am currently gazing at the other blog post ideas that have accumulated over the years on my left-hand side of the Notes app I’m using to write this right now. So those posts are up next.
Well, to go back to the “Is blogging dead?” question – ah, I remember how I always found it funny here in Armenia and other countries to hear that term “blogger” nowadays – “she’s a blogger”; “you should consider being a blogger!” – when they mean Instagram influencer or Youtube vlogger. Since I have written on an actual blog for more than a decade (12 years now) I’ve always considered “blogging” as writing on a blog, and think that “blogging” or being a “blogger” as is thrown around in common parlance today should be termed “influencer” or “vlogger” as they technically are, but I may be too much of a purist. I think kids these days don’t know what a blog is anymore, or have never really read one, but yeah.
I don’t think blogging is dead because – here I am, writing one 😂, but also I’ve found certain creatives – like that photographer I mentioned, plus some hobby sites like those of Doctor Who cosplayers and someone who dedicated a whole blog to William Shatner’s wigs – still like to document their works and life on a digital page.
Anyways, I’ll continue blogging because I love this medium and it’s still a way for me to share my thoughts in a longform way, unlike the ephemeral Instagram stories (which is often a beautiful art form itself) and the small text of Instagram and Facebook posts that people read on phones, inundated with other posts and stories and ads. This website is – shall be – a refuge for myself, and hopefully whoever else likes to read these kinds of things.
I have missed writing like this, and I’ve reflected on how the past four years in university honed a skill and a passion that was already there. I’ve seen that I can adapt like a chameleon to many styles of writing (email, professional, certain social media posts, etc.) and have embraced journalistic styles of writing (AP Style eyyyo). And I have gained a dearth of life experiences and grown into adulthood in more ways. Heck, I lived through two wars and a global pandemic, and those and other griefs have shaped my experience and tempered my youthful scribbles in past blogs. So I look forward to getting to write again.
Yes, I’m probably gonna have bouts of no posts again once I enter graduate school and get a job, but it’s good to start again. Welcome back (or welcome for the first time), and I hope you enjoy your stay.