So. I've started a blog.
When I stop to think about how busy I am, I wonder what the heck I was thinking.
Blogs, also known as web logs, have been going on for quite a while. Several other writers here have, or have had, blogs loosely associated with their newspaper work.
I have a friend who has been urging me for years to start a blog. She told me my other column, Dressing Room, essentially already was one. She said it was a way to get my name even further out there and, based on ad clicks, make some money too.
But for some reason I resisted. It's sort of like the reason it took me so long to drop back into college and get my degree after dropping out: The effort just seemed too herculean to think about.
Same for my husband, who has an Internet publication, The Empowerment Initiative Online Newsletter, which he first started as a bachelor in Monroe, La., as a printed product, but then sent out via email as economic limitations manifested themselves. Several people urged him to put the newsletter in a blog. But to him even more so than me, it seemed too big a task to get around to. One sure thing I've found about middle age: When it comes to dealing with anything computer-y, gadget-y or otherwise technical, procrastination can be quite a stronghold.
But finally, one recent day, I decided that, darn it, I'd do it. I'd become a blogger.
The one blog website that had lodged itself in my mind was Blogspot.com, so I went to it. And quickly found that it, along with Blogger.com, had become the property of the mighty Google. (Boy, nothing is merger-safe.)
Somehow -- and I still don't know how it came about -- I had a profile on Google Plus, which seems to be the fake Facebook but doesn't seem as sexy. I'd periodically get a message saying that some Facebook friend or another associate had added me to their circle or was inviting me to something. But I didn't know how to acknowledge these come-hithers, and didn't have much interest. Until I decided to start the blog. Then I got all interested in developing my profile, which was a jumping-off point for creating the blog and doing the circle thing.
Noting how my timing has worked in the past, I can only hope that blogs do not soon become the newest things the popular culture in-crowd proclaims as passe, responding with a patronizing chuckle when someone announces that they've started one.
The blog is called The Day Before Payday, and the origin of the title is the stuff of one of its first posts. It was what I'd always intended to name my autobiography ... a wry reference to my noting, as a much younger struggling journalist who was no Suze Orman, that the "last day to pay" on my utility shut-off notices always seemed to fall on the day before payday. It also had a more positive reference -- that of looking forward to Fridays in general, and payday Fridays in particular.
So far, it looks like posts will consist of what I'll call "Let's Talk Extra" stuff, things that I -- now an older struggling journalist -- won't go into like I'd want to because of space limitations. Or editors. That's the good thing about blogs; the editors can't parent you. Of course there's a flip side to that ... with a blog, there are no editors to keep you from making a fool of yourself in cyberspace. Ah, well.
Once I set up my blog, I helped set up my husband's blog. He's posted one newsletter. I also started a second blog, one that will have a more spiritual bent.
So we're over the hump. We are bloggers.
But as I've indicated, the trick is to keep on posting. Which leads me back to my busy life, and how I'll find the time to blog. I don't want to be one of those bloggers who begins each post with "Sorry I haven't posted anything for a while." That's too much like what I do on my Twitter accounts.
We'll see. Meanwhile, you're welcome to pay daybeforepayday.blogspot.com a visit.
And you're welcome to email me at:
Style on 02/22/2015