It’s been one year since I decided to officially create a weB LOG. The journey of my blogging has been quite ugly. For anyone who has been around since last May, I think you would agree.

I’ve blogged for years, just never officially, err, I mean through a dedicated blog consistently. I remember when ‘blogging’ first surfaced. I created a ‘blog’ through blogger. I think I might have posted every so often, just some random thoughts. It never really amounted to anything. Mostly me rambling.

Then I joined Yahoo! 360 (yes, one of the few). I started mingling and chatting. Then I started ‘blogging’ through the 360 platform, which was extremely limited.

Through the demise of Yahoo! 360 I discovered and found other blogging platforms.

One thing lead to another and last year I surfaced with ’2bestrong’ on wordpress.com, here is my first post. I knew I liked to blog, but I wasn’t ready to ‘reveal’ me. So I blogged and had a social media pseudonym.

I was hooked. From that point on I kept blogging mostly about exercise-related info. Over the summer I think I changed my mind 3 times on where I wanted to blog, what my domain name would be, what the blog should look like, etc. I was a new blogger looking through rose-colored glasses who was a victim of information overload. I read and saw such amazing blogs. I had all sorts of thought running through my mind, including the crazy idea of making money from my blog!

Fall semester came and I realized I missed blogging about my nursing world. So I made another jump. This time I jumped from 2bestrong to the MyStrongMedicine domain. Ironically during that time there was a contest that I entered. The winning prize was a professionally designed blog with free hosting for a year!

I was one of the winners, and I was swept away by all the possibilities of having a self-hosted blog.

Things were good. Of course I still kept tinkering with the darn blog design, which I changed again and again.(My apologies to Shane)

Then this spring I had yet another crazy idea. I changed again. This time I ‘came out’. I revealed my true identity, changed all my social identities and then of course as habit would predict I changed my blog, the domain and the design.

After reflecting on my blogging-like activities over the past year, it’s quite embarrassing and entertaining. I never could sit still could I? I was changing something so often that anyone who read my blog for more than a month probably got lost and frustrated. My thoughts, ideas and concepts were so fragmented! It was quite distracting.

I promise you I had nothing but good intentions and maybe a few lofty dreams.

Well as of this summer, my lofty dreams have been nixed. Reality has a funny way of reminding you to keep an eye on your dreams but don’t leave your head in the clouds.

Blogging has and will always be a hobby, but it will only be just that. I’ll never make any revenue or income from this hobby I so much love.

It’s taken me a full year to finally grasp that idea.

All I’ve done over the past year is sink money into a dream that just ain’t-gonna-happen. Money on domain names, money on web hosting and web design. All had great intentions, but the reality is I don’t have the time or dedication to keep up with that type of blogging that is required. I have my full time job, and now I’m back in school part-time. I also started doing personal training. So it doesn’t leave a whole lot of free time in my life.

I’m gonna keep on blogging. Just don’t exactly know where. It will be either WordPress.com or Blogger.com. I’m going to revert back to the free hosting whenever my time runs out with my current host. I just cannot justify paying the money for hosting, not when this is really just a personal hobby.

Yep, I’ll definitely miss the flexibility and freedom of self-hosted blogging, but in these penny-pinching times there is no justification for making my hobby any more expensive than it needs to be.

I will be keeping at least one of my domain names. (sad that I’m saying ONE of my domain names) I have NO IDEA which one.

I jumped down the bethenextstep.com chute with hopes of garnering up some income from personal training. All that did was cost me more money. It will take me another year just to break even with that adventure. I am glad that I broke free of my pseudonym-identity (my wife would argue differently), but the question remains which domain to I stick with?

I’d love to hear your thoughts or suggestions on that one. Heh heh.

mystrongmedicine.com or bethenextstep.com???

So my reflection on my blogging has become humbling.

I really need to learn to just sit still.

Thanks for being a part of my journey.