Happy Birthday, Blog
Sixteen years ago today, I started a Blogger called Bklyn Bulging. It was a primarily a moblog with photos and text composed and uploaded from my Treo 600.1
Not surprisingly, the first post featured my cat.
It felt like magic to instantly share images and thoughts from wherever I was at the moment. Blogging pushed all kinds of creative and nerd buttons within me. I loved it.
2004 was also the midst of a tough time in my life and I was in a very introspective place, trying to figure out how I got to where I was and where I could go next. The blog, along with the journaling I’d been doing for years, was a way to help myself sort the situation. Sharing what I saw around me and connecting it to other things on my mind and in my heart was, if nothing else, therapeutic.
(Public Service Announcement: actual official therapy from a professional was immensely helpful too. If you’re struggling and you think you need to talk to someone, do not hesitate like I did for too many years. Just please go try it.)
Blogging was also a way for me to continue to practice writing for an audience again. Peeling, the wonderful NYC Asian-American theater collective I was a member of, had recently gone defunct, closing the only public outlet I had for writing.
At the time, I hadn’t made any films yet but very badly wanted to get started. Bklyn Blggng helped keep those muscles working while I taught myself how to write and direct short films. Writing begets more writing, in my experience.
In the next installment of this series, I’ll cover more of the journey back to blogging. But today I just wanna wish the blog HBD and reflect a bit on the passage of sixteen years.
The hoodie’s still in good shape.
1In 2020, we clearly recognize this as social media, but in 2004 it was a pretty rare thing. And I remind you young whippersnappers that when Twitter got started, they were known as a microblogging service.