Why I am starting a blog in mid-2021
It’s the middle of 2021, and around nine months since I set myself a goal to be more creative at the start of my sophomore year in university. I have been taking active steps to do just that, such as trying to film day in my life videos, putting in more effort to decorating my hall room and most recently, venturing into freelancing as a creative.
I’ll admit— I’ve been massively inspired by content creators on YouTube. Daniel Tamago, Richard Yu, Ali Abdaal, you name it. I don’t know if I’ll ever take vlogging seriously, but the work ethic and that kind of disciplined creativity has pushed me to embrace the hustle of constantly being on the lookout for something to create. Most importantly, they taught me to make the most of the time and resources that I have been blessed with as a young person.
So I decided to start a blog, well this blog in particular, as part of putting disciplined creativity into practice (I’ll be sure to expand on this topic in another post). Fun fact: I’ve had two blogs before in my lifetime. Let me break them down.
#1. Blogger (2013-2014)
Yes, good ol’ Blogger. I honestly cringe thinking about it. Picture a 14 year old trying to mess around with Blogger when she actually was better off doing her math homework. But anyway, it was my first foray and as embarrassing as that blog was, it gave me my first taste of putting myself out there and putting my thoughts from head to paper (well, keyboard). I’m pretty sure this blog had a name but I really cannot remember it for the life of me. Oh well.
I think I wrote about random topics and documented remotely interesting places I went to. Plus, I must have felt really cool, cos I thought that Blogger was the 'in' thing at its heyday. Chuckles. Don’t bother trying to find it online because I locked it and I myself have long forgotten the password.
#2 兴起/发光, Tumblr (2015-2019)
Alright hold your horses people of the Internet— trust me when I say I really stumbled upon Tumblr and I did NOT set out to become a basic white girl. I roughly recall being curious about Tumblr as a social media platform and I created an account before I realised that people used it as a blog. It was then where I had an "oh why not" moment and started to post my thoughts there.
I named the blog after part of the Chinese translation of Isaiah 60:1. It means "arise and shine", which I feel is an apt clarion call for this generation to step out boldly, and also for me to embody the voice that God has given me.
The content covered mostly my reflections on my days in prayer group back in polytechnic. I believe I would have reposted most of the long form posts on my Facebook account. What I really loved about Tumblr was the fact that I could post longer entries, repost content, as well as post short quotes that I particularly liked. It gave the site somewhat of a Twitter feel.
I considered just continuing blogging on that Tumblr account, but somehow it feels amateurish and it’s just really hard to read at some point. Sure it’s pretty and all but at the end of the day it just feels like a second Twitter to me. Nonetheless, the content that I have put up there has been and will always be close to my heart. I still read it from time to time and marvel at the journey that God as brought me through and the revelations I have received.
So as a testament for that amazing season of my life, I’ve decided not to lock or delete the site. Though I will not be updating it anymore, it’ll still be up, chiefly as a reminder of His faithfulness in my life. It has been a good run for https://sayhitobel.tumblr.com/; you can go have a peek if you want to, but please don’t stalk me too far back I’m shy 😂
—
Here we are, at blog #3. I foresee many uphill climbs, weeks where I'll not know what to write, and days where I'd procrastinate sitting at my laptop and just churn the post out. On the flipside though, I see many opportunities for me to hone my communication skills, process my messy thoughts and refine my own voice.
I wasn’t the most consistent writer in my previous blogs; I’d often go for months without even remembering that I had a blog. Third time’s the charm maybe? And who knows where we’ll go from here, or what other doors (or lack thereof :p) blogging will open up.
Thank you so much for your support, and I'll see you in the next one :)
