Day 12 - How you found out about blogging and why you have a blog

This post was originally posted about a year ago on another blog of mine.  Rather than rewriting the same post over again, I figured I'd just post this one again!  The reasons are still the same.  And this was a pretty good post, really.

See this gorgeous girl I'm hugging' on?  This is Naomi.  She's been my buddy since 9th grade.  You can blame her for my blogging.  When we were 14, she showed me her blog.  I was intrigued!  A diary?  Online?  AWESOME!  I have now been blogging for about 12 years.  Back in the day, before the internet got all fancy I even wrote my own HTML code for that blog.  I made a new blog every few months, when I got tired of people who I didn't want reading it having easy access to my thoughts.  Why it never occurred to me to just make it a private blog, I will never know!  But anyways, Naomi is the one who first told me about blogging.

Fast forward a few years.  Elder M. Russell Ballard gave a commencement address in 2007 at BYU-Hawaii.  He talked about the importance of using the internet for good, and how members of the church can use their personal blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts and other types of social media to stand as examples of what it really means to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today.  He invited members of the church to join the conversation on the internet.  You can read the talk here.  Or even watch a clip of the talk below.

This talk has been mentioned by other LDS bloggers, but it truly affected me.  I've become a lot more open about my faith online now.  It's a big part of my life, and I love to share what I believe.  I love having conversations and discussions about what I believe, and learning about what other people believe.  Why not do that on my blog?

Another reason that I blog is to have a record of my life.  I have always, always kept a journal.  I may not write every day, or even consistently.  But I do write.  I also have this blog.  Someday, I'd like to scan all of my old diaries and put them into one book.  I'd like to print these blogs out, and bind them.  I want to have my remembrances in one place, rather than 15!  I blog to preserve my story, and hopefully, to leave something behind for my progeny.