Saturday, May 16, 2009

Blog Bat Around: Why I Blog (a day or two late)

I suppose it is rather appropriate that I start working on my "Why I Blog" Bat-around post a day or two AFTER the deadline. It seems many of my posts appear in that fashion - a day or two later than I had hoped. As for me, that's not only par for the course, but also keeps me blogging in the first place. Perhaps I will eventually get back to that, but for now, follow along on a rather bizarre journey into the 'why' I blog (not only on here, but on the myriad of other sites, too).

I started 'blogging' back before there was even such a term or even the formalized concept. Back in 1993 or 1994, I had one of those static web pages that my ISP provided for me. I started out with several pages of information that never really seemed to change much. And then I had a thought: Why not update my page as often as possible, preferably daily? That lasted about two days. Frankly, no one was reading my personal page and updating it was an exercise in notepad, FTP, and holding my tongue juuuuust right.

Skip ahead a couple years. I was changing ISPs but still wanted some of the content to be saved. I created one of those Tripod pages. The content consisted of Indians-related baseball card information and some random thoughts from the space between my ears. I hated Tripod. That was a pain. And then came Blogger.

My original blog (poppedinmyhead) was started because I wanted a place to post all the things I had been storing on Tripod. Mainly, that consisted of a baseball card-related item or two, a list of things college students should know about the Pre-Raphealite Brotherhood, a list of keywords from an old Commodore 64 'game' called "Little Computer People" and whatever else popped in my head (hence the name of the blog).

Because I collect Indians cards, I found it hard to find places that just listed Tribe cards. Mainly, I was interested in checklists of the cards I needed, but did not KNOW that I needed. I spent a lot of time searching and searching. I started "Indians Baseball Cards" because I wanted to provide a place for fellow Indians collectors to get information about the little cardboard rectangles of their favorite team. The very first posts I did were checklists compiled from various sources. And then I strayed.

I started blogging anything about the Indians, and then anything about the hobby, and then whatever randomness seemed to fit into my card-collecting habit.

So, now that you have a history, let's talk about the meat of it - WHY do I blog about pictures of people on little bits of cardboard?

I turned 40 this year. Not a big deal, a lot of people turn 40 (and have already done so many moons ago). Though I am now 40, my brain still sees me as being somewhere between 13 and 25. And because my passion for collecting Indians cards never died (though it has waxed and waned throughout the years), I wanted a place that I could write out my thoughts about the hobby I've held on to since I was 5 or 6 years old.

I am a writer at heart. I've only had two things 'published' - one in a college literary magazine and the other on a card-collecting online magazine. Nonetheless, I love writing. Blogging about Indians baseball cards (or anything related... or not related) gives me a way to take all the thought I have in my head and let them out. And, if I am going to let them out, why not share them with anyone that happens to come along, right? In addition to poppedinmyhead and tribecards, I am a contributing member on "A Pack A Day" and "A Pack To Be Named Later." I love blogging on those sites because they allow me to write about cards I would not normally write about on here.

Here's the best part of blogging, though: Friends and fellow collectors. I have made some great friends through posting my random thoughts about Indians cards on here. I live in a very rural area on a farm. Let's just say there are very few collectors out here. Through blogging, I have traded cards with folks 35 miles down the road and folks in England and Canada and across the United States. Some of those trades were actual trades, while others were cards I sent off as part of giveaways.

I love giving away the cards that don't fit into my collecting criteria. And, since my criteria is basically "Indians cards or items I don't already have," well, as you can imagine, I have a LOT of things that I end up with that don't fit. My children have only a glancing interest in baseball cards. So, what better way to share than to give the cards away? And what better way to give them away than by blogging?

It's not always easy to come with a topic (which is why sometimes it's a day or three of five between posts), but in the back of my mind, I know there are things I still have yet to finish. I can always post a new checklist, a new scan of cards from my collection, or a new giveaway. When I started blogging, I told myself that I would post whatever I wanted to (on here), and that I would do it for my own enjoyment. If no one comes by to read it, I would be bummed out, but I wouldn't let that stop me from blogging. And so, I blog.

Did I even answer the question? I got a little sidetracked, I think.

1 comment:

  1. What an excellent view on the evolution of Tribe Cards!

    I was very late to the computer/blogging scene. So it's nice to see what it was like to someone who was there for the beginning -- actually, BEFORE the beginning!

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