5 years and 2 days ago, I started my first blog and made blogging one of my main hobbies in life. In celebration of me blogging for over half a decade, this post shall be about the various blogs I've made throughout the years, my posting styles, my blog topics, etc. Let's time travel again, shall we?

Introduction

My foray into the world of blogging wasn't a planned nor coordinated attempt, it was just a spur-of-the-moment decision. I wanted to talk about my life, to pen down my thoughts, and to publish all the little feelings I have onto the Internet. At first, I started to think about writing stuff under the "Notes" section of my Facebook profile. But since I figured that the classmates, teachers, and relatives that I have befriended on Facebook will see my posts, so I've decided to opt-in for a much more "obscure" platform, one where I can be myself and just write.

Apparently, the first step to being myself was by hiding myself, hence my first blog and posts being started under a pseudonym: Lance Anderson. Lance Anderson was my former pseudonym online. Since my name is such a disturbingly unique name, posts, comments, and videos I make can easily be attributed to me just by searching for my name. So, I made an account with the name Lance Anderson, visited Blogger.com and started my first blog.

The Metro Diary

My first blog was created here, on Blogger/Blogspot. While looking for a viable blogging platform, I found Tumblr's interface slow and clunky and it wasn't as prominent of a blogging platform back then, so I didn't use it. WordPress was... boring for me, I also found its interface archaic. LiveJournal didn't allow for theming options (I believe) and blogs there looked rather shabby. Eventually, and like most of the blogs I shall talk about, Google's Blogger platform had the cleanest interface and was already being used by my friends and teachers. And from there on, my blogging life had begun.

The hundreds of posts I had on my old blog were dramatic, to say the least. It was filled with stuff from my cringy online teenage years. I blogged there from ages 13–15, of course it was going to be cringy as hell. Needless to say, it did serve its initial purpose: a platform where I could share my everyday thoughts and emotions.

My old blog is a treasure trove of memories. My big sister left a message for me, I learned how to write code for designing web pages, I wrote various reviews, and even talked about my first JS Prom as well as my second JS Prom.

Still, the biggest milestone I've reached on that blog was reaching over 100,000 (accumulated) pageviews.

I have to be honest here and say that my biggest accomplishment, as well as contribution, during my time was a Sone (Girls' Generation fan) was finding and compiling Tiffany Hwang's Xanga blogs. Yup, my most popular blog post was about me looking for a famous artist's old blogs.

At the time, you couldn't find a single site that linked to all of Tiffany's Xanga blogs. My post basically compiled them all, got reposted onto various sites (Asian Junkie, Onehallyu, Reddit, etc.), and eventually shared around the Internet. Until now, searching for "Tiffany Xanga" shows my blog post as one of the first links (if not, the first link).

At this point, it was no secret that blogging is one of the things I love in this world. I loved reading the blog of my high school teacher, I loved reading the blog of my big sister, and even today I love reading the blog of my officemate.

Memoirs of an Undergrad

When I graduated high school and started college, I continued to blog on The Metro Diary but I had another blog at the time. For some wonderfully odd reason, blogging was actually the integral part of one class I had in my first collegiate term. Basically, my entire class was forced to write blog posts over the course of our English term at Asia Pacific College. I started another blog for college and my blog, yet again, received a significant amount of attention.

However, the attention I got this time was an academic one. Our wonderful professor for that class, Miss Elizabeth, had noticed my blog and she loved reading all of my posts. At the end of the term, she even said that one post I made would be shared with the future classes and would serve as the main tutorial on how to make a blog for the English term.

At this time, I loved blogging and I easily hammered out 30 blog posts over the course of 4 months—I even doubled the required amount of posts needed to pass the term (15). I don't mean to brag, but I got a 4.0 for that class, the highest possible grade you could get for a class in APC. The blogs of my ever-so-wonderful classmates were a wonderful read, too. I read them from time to time or when I just miss them. And the links to their blogs could be found on this sidebar.

My Website

Eventually, I decided that I would need a personal website, but I didn't want a simple page that said, "Hey, here's me and here are links to his social media." Instead, I decided upon the idea of making another blog—a main blog. This blog would contain the best of the best from me, the cream of the crop. This blog would have code that (the majority of which) would be written by me, it would also need to have post images designed/made by me, and it would (finally) have proofread posts.

After months of hard work, I started on my website and it became my main blog ever since. Truth be told, writing a blog post on my main blog is a rather tedious process. I have to think of a post first (obviously), and then I have to create a post image in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator that fit well with the content, and then I'd have to write drafts, proofread, and reach a final revision. It was like making a speech.

The process itself is honestly what hinders me from publishing posts regularly there. Still, the blog itself is actually hosted on Blogger underneath. I just managed to link it to the domain I bought. Yup, in the 5 years I've been blogging, I have never left Google's Blogger platform. (It's just so easy to use, can you blame me?)

The Stowaway Seagull

Here we are now, The Stowaway Seagull. This blog was made for the sole purpose of "offloading pent-up thoughts" I have, that's why the majority of the posts here are dramatic undertones. It's honestly reminiscent of my first blog, just that now my posts are published under my real name.

After 5 years, I'm still unapologetically me. I still like SNSD (albeit, to a lesser degree now) and I still sneak in references to them. (The "passage" underneath this blog's title is actually a line from the English translation of the song "Divine.") I still talk about the various gripes, the trials and tribulations I go through every day.

Blogging is, as always, one of my passions in life and I have no intention to stop soon. I primarily write to express rather than impress. And, while my posts right now seem rather trivial (a farewell to my college classmates, heartaches, etc.), I'm sure that they'll be about "adult stuff" soon.

A dream of mine is to blog about my children, the family I shall soon build with my future spouse, and the various crazy things we do in our household. In the future, I want my children to read my blogs, no matter how cringy or trivial they appear to be. Showing them my stories as a teen will be a genuine delight and I want them to ask me questions like "Daddy, who is that girl you talk about in your blogs? Is she related to mom?" and I'd laugh while talking about it.

I've grown a lot in the past 5 years, haven't I? From annoying, immature, closed-minded teenage schoolboy into a blossoming young adult. The past 5 years were a wild ride for me and I have more stories to share about 'em. The personal growth I've gone through is quite a lot, the kind of growth I'd like to see a person go through in 5 years. Now that time has gone by, I wonder, how will I grow as a person after another 5 years?

Whatever happens, I suppose we'll just have to wait and see. Here's to my 5 years of blogging!

" >
Life

Blogging

Dartegnian Velarde

7 min read
Blogging
Photo by Katie Harp / Unsplash

It's official. 5 years and 2 days ago, I started my first blog and made blogging one of my main hobbies in life. In celebration of me blogging for over half a decade, this post shall be about the various blogs I've made throughout the years, my posting styles, my blog topics, etc. Let's time travel again, shall we?

Introduction

My foray into the world of blogging wasn't a planned nor coordinated attempt, it was just a spur-of-the-moment decision. I wanted to talk about my life, to pen down my thoughts, and to publish all the little feelings I have onto the Internet. At first, I started to think about writing stuff under the "Notes" section of my Facebook profile. But since I figured that the classmates, teachers, and relatives that I have befriended on Facebook will see my posts, so I've decided to opt-in for a much more "obscure" platform, one where I can be myself and just write.

Apparently, the first step to being myself was by hiding myself, hence my first blog and posts being started under a pseudonym: Lance Anderson. Lance Anderson was my former pseudonym online. Since my name is such a disturbingly unique name, posts, comments, and videos I make can easily be attributed to me just by searching for my name. So, I made an account with the name Lance Anderson, visited Blogger.com and started my first blog.

The Metro Diary

My first blog was created here, on Blogger/Blogspot. While looking for a viable blogging platform, I found Tumblr's interface slow and clunky and it wasn't as prominent of a blogging platform back then, so I didn't use it. WordPress was... boring for me, I also found its interface archaic. LiveJournal didn't allow for theming options (I believe) and blogs there looked rather shabby. Eventually, and like most of the blogs I shall talk about, Google's Blogger platform had the cleanest interface and was already being used by my friends and teachers. And from there on, my blogging life had begun.

The hundreds of posts I had on my old blog were dramatic, to say the least. It was filled with stuff from my cringy online teenage years. I blogged there from ages 13–15, of course it was going to be cringy as hell. Needless to say, it did serve its initial purpose: a platform where I could share my everyday thoughts and emotions.

My old blog is a treasure trove of memories. My big sister left a message for me, I learned how to write code for designing web pages, I wrote various reviews, and even talked about my first JS Prom as well as my second JS Prom.

Still, the biggest milestone I've reached on that blog was reaching over 100,000 (accumulated) pageviews.

I have to be honest here and say that my biggest accomplishment, as well as contribution, during my time was a Sone (Girls' Generation fan) was finding and compiling Tiffany Hwang's Xanga blogs. Yup, my most popular blog post was about me looking for a famous artist's old blogs.

At the time, you couldn't find a single site that linked to all of Tiffany's Xanga blogs. My post basically compiled them all, got reposted onto various sites (Asian Junkie, Onehallyu, Reddit, etc.), and eventually shared around the Internet. Until now, searching for "Tiffany Xanga" shows my blog post as one of the first links (if not, the first link).

At this point, it was no secret that blogging is one of the things I love in this world. I loved reading the blog of my high school teacher, I loved reading the blog of my big sister, and even today I love reading the blog of my officemate.

Memoirs of an Undergrad

When I graduated high school and started college, I continued to blog on The Metro Diary but I had another blog at the time. For some wonderfully odd reason, blogging was actually the integral part of one class I had in my first collegiate term. Basically, my entire class was forced to write blog posts over the course of our English term at Asia Pacific College. I started another blog for college and my blog, yet again, received a significant amount of attention.

However, the attention I got this time was an academic one. Our wonderful professor for that class, Miss Elizabeth, had noticed my blog and she loved reading all of my posts. At the end of the term, she even said that one post I made would be shared with the future classes and would serve as the main tutorial on how to make a blog for the English term.

At this time, I loved blogging and I easily hammered out 30 blog posts over the course of 4 months—I even doubled the required amount of posts needed to pass the term (15). I don't mean to brag, but I got a 4.0 for that class, the highest possible grade you could get for a class in APC. The blogs of my ever-so-wonderful classmates were a wonderful read, too. I read them from time to time or when I just miss them. And the links to their blogs could be found on this sidebar.

My Website

Eventually, I decided that I would need a personal website, but I didn't want a simple page that said, "Hey, here's me and here are links to his social media." Instead, I decided upon the idea of making another blog—a main blog. This blog would contain the best of the best from me, the cream of the crop. This blog would have code that (the majority of which) would be written by me, it would also need to have post images designed/made by me, and it would (finally) have proofread posts.

After months of hard work, I started on my website and it became my main blog ever since. Truth be told, writing a blog post on my main blog is a rather tedious process. I have to think of a post first (obviously), and then I have to create a post image in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator that fit well with the content, and then I'd have to write drafts, proofread, and reach a final revision. It was like making a speech.

The process itself is honestly what hinders me from publishing posts regularly there. Still, the blog itself is actually hosted on Blogger underneath. I just managed to link it to the domain I bought. Yup, in the 5 years I've been blogging, I have never left Google's Blogger platform. (It's just so easy to use, can you blame me?)

The Stowaway Seagull

Here we are now, The Stowaway Seagull. This blog was made for the sole purpose of "offloading pent-up thoughts" I have, that's why the majority of the posts here are dramatic undertones. It's honestly reminiscent of my first blog, just that now my posts are published under my real name.

After 5 years, I'm still unapologetically me. I still like SNSD (albeit, to a lesser degree now) and I still sneak in references to them. (The "passage" underneath this blog's title is actually a line from the English translation of the song "Divine.") I still talk about the various gripes, the trials and tribulations I go through every day.

Blogging is, as always, one of my passions in life and I have no intention to stop soon. I primarily write to express rather than impress. And, while my posts right now seem rather trivial (a farewell to my college classmates, heartaches, etc.), I'm sure that they'll be about "adult stuff" soon.

A dream of mine is to blog about my children, the family I shall soon build with my future spouse, and the various crazy things we do in our household. In the future, I want my children to read my blogs, no matter how cringy or trivial they appear to be. Showing them my stories as a teen will be a genuine delight and I want them to ask me questions like "Daddy, who is that girl you talk about in your blogs? Is she related to mom?" and I'd laugh while talking about it.

I've grown a lot in the past 5 years, haven't I? From annoying, immature, closed-minded teenage schoolboy into a blossoming young adult. The past 5 years were a wild ride for me and I have more stories to share about 'em. The personal growth I've gone through is quite a lot, the kind of growth I'd like to see a person go through in 5 years. Now that time has gone by, I wonder, how will I grow as a person after another 5 years?

Whatever happens, I suppose we'll just have to wait and see. Here's to my 5 years of blogging!