What is a Blog anyway

 I doubt anyone has noticed since I have a readership of like, maybe 10 people on a good day (not counting the Russian bots), but recently I went back and unpublished all the posts I made before I started my undergrad- so everything before September 2013. Reading those old entries was painful. Mostly because they were so badly written and clearly stream-of-consciousness, not because I was going through a lot at the time. I didn't really want those out there associated with me anymore, and I don't really want other people to be able to go back and read them even if they're able to picture a much younger version of myself writing them.

I've also been thinking a lot lately about actually using this blog for something. I don't know where I got this idea, but I have this sort of... itch in my brain to do something creative, and this has always been a really easy outlet for me. I have a lot of different ideas for things I could do, some of which work much better as a podcast, but the end goal is just to have a kind of project to work on that isn't related to grad school or therapy (even if I make a lot of blog posts about those things anyway).

Recently I've drafted several posts about little how-to guides, similar to the one I made a while back about getting into a master's degree. The motivation for that post was basically that I wish that guide had existed for me somewhere, so I made it assuming that other people were also in my shoes. The posts I have drafted are also similar- the goal with them is to use my own personal experience to help others and write the guides I wish I could have had. It's a bit like writing to my past self, in a way. Sometimes it's kind of comforting to think that if only I could have the wisdom of me from a year, five years, ten years, 20 years from now, I'd feel better, more capable, more confident, more secure, more trusting of goodness in my life. I also found at those points in my life that advice online never felt quite right, it never took into account the things I wanted it to. Sometimes the way I figure out how to do something new is by asking what I wish already existed but doesn't, and then asking if I can create that myself. In this case, the answer is obviously yes.

Sometimes it's tempting to think that I wouldn't be as depressed as I am now if I'd had those guides, whether that's because I wouldn't have made mistakes that led me to the wrong place or because I would have just been able to trust that things work out. Of course, I don't need to have guidance from my future self to have faith in those things anyway. I just really, really wish that having faith in them was easy, and it's not.

Ideally I'd like some more engagement- my mind runs wild with grandiose ideas that I could get a good patreon going and make an insane monthly salary just for producing content, but I have enough experience getting new things off the ground to know that even if that were a reality for me, it's a ways away. Groundwork has to be laid first, and then I have to build on that to get to a place where trying for something like that is even possible. But I can put in groundwork and building work, so really... it's not impossible.

I've been taking in a lot of stories of creative people lately- mostly from tiktok, don't judge- who have little etsy stores and work hard on them only to see them suddenly take off with a stroke of good, viral luck, and have that allow them to fulfill a dream. I see these little creators who are not rich by any stretch of the imagination, nor the best of their kind ever, happy because they are doing what they wanted to do, able to support themselves a bit with it, and also getting better at their craft every day. I'd like to think that's possible in writing through blogging.

I also ran this idea past some friends last night over drinks and dinner (this is something we can do where we are- servers and staff are required to wear masks, the menus are disposable, and the entire restaurant is set up to facilitate social distancing). It was so refreshing to realize it's not just me who thinks about things like starting a podcast, writing a book, doing something creative and putting it out there. Maybe that's just a feature of being in your 20s. The conversation wasn't necessarily super hopeful, but it was a good one nonetheless (a friend even suggested what I think is a good contender for a blog name).

People make blogs all the time to document, like, their eating disorders, or their struggle through college, or being a young parent. I'm a graduate student constantly riding that line of having problems but not really, even in retrospect. I have a lot of advice I wish I could give to my previous self- mostly concrete at the moment, and I really like to think there's someone out there who could benefit from either feeling like they're not the only one struggling now, at a similar place in life as I am, or feeling like they have another guide or more advice that I like to think is different or offers something new.

In all honesty it would be nice to get contributions from others. So if you are seeing this, I ask you this: think about a struggle you went through in your past where you felt like you couldn't find the right advice, or any good advice. It can be anything, it can be very concrete (getting into grad school, buying a car, etc) or more abstract (figuring out what to do with your life, realizing your mental health is a problem, etc). Write the guide you wish you had found when looking for help, advice, guidance, whatever. What do you wish was added to the considerations? What specifically did you learn only through experience? Who else do you think might have gone through something similar? Can your advice be tailored to them?

Those are basically the questions I go through, albeit more informally. When I wrote the post about getting into grad school, I remembered feeling frustrated that nothing seemed to be about a master's program. All the advice I could find about contacting professors felt stale, scripted, and useless. Most of the information was American. It did not take into account that I didn't have a stellar GPA, even if it was still good, so the advice about having a bad GPA didn't work either. It assumed that I was not depressed. It assumed that I was trying to get into a PhD program (this was actually the biggest problem). It assumed that I'd already done a lot of things- in high school, undergrad, whatever- that I maybe hadn't done. And then I started to think about my ideal guide- something that would have carried me perfectly through the process. And then I wrote it.

I think I'll stick to that theme for now. If anybody I know is reading this- message me with your thoughts if you're so inclined. If you want to comment, comment. I'd love to hear some thoughts.