Along the path of blogging

UPDATE: I wrote this post on my Blogger blog before coming to this WordPress website a year later so its contents are not relevant to what I have now. Yet I decided to keep the post here as it shows the history of my blogging and where it took me.

I started my first blog about fifteen years ago on the Yahoo platform for the sole purpose of learning English and keeping in touch with my online teacher. Slowly but continuously the blog was getting a new face and finally I was sharing photos I took and thoughts I was pondering over. Then Yahoo came with the announcement that it would discontinue their service as a blog provider and I had to move. Most of my friends on Yahoo moved to the Multiply platform so I started my new blog there and continued with my blogging habits. Well, nothing lasts forever and when things started not to work properly on Multiply, I decided to leave it. I tried an Opera blog and then in 2008 I moved here to Blogger where I started my “sharingmyreflections” blog and later in 2014 my second “petpavphotography” blog.

I don’t remember the names of the previous blogs but as you can see, I had some experience with choosing blog’s names before naming the current blogs. Yet I’m not much satisfied with the current names… or rather with their links to be precise. You can change the name of the blog how many times you want but unfortunately, you can’t change its web address as easily…

Why “sharing my reflections”? I know, it doesn’t sound original at all, but I thought that I would share my reflections and thoughts, which I did at first, and the name seemed the best I was able to come up with in English. Nowadays my posts are different, I share especially my photos from the places I visit and accompanying information about the places, so I added “as well as photographs, experiences and memories” to the title of the blog. Recently I’ve decided to get back to those reflections and thoughts and make my blog more personal, so I’ve changed that addition a tiny bit and now it is “based on my photography, experience and memories”. It’s just a little change but to me it feels much better.

What about that weird “petpavphotography” for the other blog? Well, it’s just a link based on my name which was supposed to express briefly the contents of the blog. At the moment I call the blog “Enhancing my photography skills” which hopefully somewhat improves the link.

The question is, why two blogs? When I started my 52-week-photography project last year, I thought it would be better to start a new blog for that purpose. This year I’ve been participating in a be still course and use the new blog for posting my be-still images. On the one hand I like the separation, on the other hand I wish I could combine the blogs into one. They are connected via my Google+ account but that’s not enough. Was it a mistake to separate the posts? Should I start an entirely new blog and follow that path? Should I start the new blog at WordPress which seems to have so many more options than Blogger but doesn’t seem easy to be mastered? I find it difficult to decide, I’d need to have more free time in my hands.

I run both of my blogs on the free blogspot platform. I’d like to have my own domain yet I’m not sure it would be worth it to buy (or rather rent) one. My blogs are not much frequented and for the sake of my needs this seems enough at the moment.

As I’ve mentioned, I haven’t been satisfied with the recent contents and looks of this blog as sharing just photos of the places I visit is not something I want to restrict my blogging to. I need to dress my blog into new attire, unworn and freshly laundered, smelling good and feeling nice. To feel unsatisfied is easy, to actively want and work on a change is so much more challenging.

I’ve made first steps in this direction:

• I’ve changed the header to make it better connected with the name of this blog and also to highlight the polysemous character of reflections. You can understand the word in so many ways.
• You might have noticed that in my previous post I used a slightly larger format of photos – 800 pixels instead of the original 640 – which you can see when you click on a photo, it will enlarge.
• I’ve added social media icons showing the way to my other accounts.
• I’ve changed the home page of this blog – the posts are shortened by the “read more” reference so there are more posts displayed, each just with one photo. It’s faster to upload the page and I think it’s more interesting to see the variety.

Next, I intend to change the system of my labels and make them categories, they will not be so many and the system will be much simpler.

Well, I don’t have much time for blogging but the reason for creating my first blog hasn’t faded. I love to practise my English here. Combined with sharing what I find interesting and with meeting those many inspiring bloggers, it makes a tempting cocktail motivating me to keep going. I welcome the necessary changes that take place at last. Wish me luck…