I have decided to tell you the story of how I started blogging, this will be a series of posts- as much for your info as for my personal documentation. Enjoy!
It all started in June of 2006, I was dreading the words they told me at my current job, in lieu of budget season you all staff will have to stay in the office until session has ended for the evening. I was working for the New York State Assembly at the time and like always, budget negotiations were lasting way past their April deadline, haggling between Silver, Bruno and Pataki would be going on during joint budget sessions and all sorts of hearings until the wee hours of the morning and although it sounds exciting to the outsider I was not thrilled at all. I was nearing the end of my internship and the last thing I wanted to do during the first hot summer nights was sit at a desk playing solitaire and reading the rants and raves section on criagslist, I needed an outlet, something that could take away the pain, and I needed it fast.
So like any bored fellow I began to write, I had all the time in the world, so when the clock went past 5 and the other guys in the office stared out the 7th floor window and tried to look at the set of legs walking towards the Capitol building, I would sit at the computer noisily slamming my fingers across the keyboard and ranting my brains out. At this point I had no idea what a blog was, and I was writing mostly for the shear pleasure of writing something I could forward to a few friends, and so I decided for fun to put a few of my “essays” up in the New York City Craigslist rants and raves section.
My first essay was entitled “A Rant About Shadchuns” I cannot remember exactly how it happened but about a day after posting that rant, I started receiving emails, not just one or two, but dozens upon dozens of them, making me feel real special, that is of course before all the hate mail claiming I was some very knowledgeable new school neo-nazi poured in. To think people not only read my half assed essay on dating and shadchuns was very cool to say the least and the fact that they must have bored enough at work like me to respond was even better.
A few weeks after this happened I was really getting into writing and I felt that I had some talent, considering the only stuff I had ever written were hastily written papers for school which always used my knowledge of Judaism to my advantage, due to the fact there were no Jews in my school. I starting writing more and more, until one weekend I was visiting with my friends the Zeldman family in Toronto. That is when I learned about the world of blogs.
Sarah gave me the lowdown after I had described my newly found fascination with writing and how it was allowing me to express myself like never before. She was giddy with excitement, since she was and is a serial blogger and online business person. She laid down the roots and convinced me to go with wordpress instead of blogger and I chose a name, and immediately posted everything I had written in the past few weeks. It was June 25th 2006 and my life as a blogger had begun.
Take a look at my first month of posts from June 2006