I see a lot of the people starts off with a trend of Why I _____ and I figured that I will do one for blog. People have already started a few trends of “Why I” such as “WhyIVlog”, “WhyISign” and others. To my knowledge, I may be wrong and if I am wrong then please correct me by leaving a comment below here so I can make a correction note on here. That the “Why I” was originally started by the Deaf community with #WhyISign where anyone who knows American Sign Language and breath in American Sign Language to make a short videos to share why they sign. You can find #WhyISign on Twitter and Facebook if you are interested in see some responses from the people who shares their reason to why they use American Sign Language. So I am going to do one for the blog and this is #WhyIBlog! Hope that all of you enjoy reading some of my reasons to why I blog and I encourage that all of you bloggers to do the same by making a post on your blog with the title “Why I Blog” then use the hashtag on social media #WhyIBlog so that all of bloggers can read some responses from the blogosphere via social media like Twitter or Facebook.
For mine I am going to go ahead and start off my Why I Blog one for the blogosphere to read so I hope that all of you will enjoy my response to why I blog.
Why I Blog and How I Started
Over a decade ago, in the year of 2004 I wasn’t very good with English and I had grammar nazi on my tail daily when I signed up for an account with a small social networking website called ShowMyPro but it is no longer in service though which is a bit unfortunate I think as it was starting to get large at that time when they would start to get about three to five thousands members sign ups monthly. ShowMyPro was practically the alternative social networking website that many of people goes to if they are tired of MySpace as at that time Facebook wasn’t opened to the public as at that time it was only access to a few universities then ShowMyPro was sold to someone and the new owner couldn’t handle the growth so he decided to push a kill button on it. Nonetheless before that happened, I was one of frequent member on that social networking website, it had a forum along with arcade and chatroom so basically it had everything to offer for it members to social with other members or to connect with thousands of other members that was registered on that website. I would be often found in their forum, as I would always discuss with several members on the forum and in while doing so there always is a grammar nazi that would bound to pop up in the forum. After while I started posting in the forum, enjoyed having some conversation with other members and I immediately became the main target for a group of grammar nazi because at that time I admit I was truly sucks in English. I didn’t know how to use comma, period or to write paragraph properly so in a way my posts on that forum had no stops or pauses and not only that I didn’t spell properly either.
Example: im gonna to watch sum movies 2night ne one kno wat gud movies i cud watch?
That just gave me a flashback but yes, my English were actually worse than that but that is just to give a similarity of how my English were at that time so of course that will set all kinds of alarms for grammar nazi obviously. Not just that, my English were backward at that time too as English is not my first language because American Sign Language is my first language and that’s what not many of people don’t understand the excuse at that time. I have tried to explain and I even had a couple of people over there who know how American Sign Language goes in writing. American Sign Language isn’t a writing language, but at that time I was writing in American Sign Language but in English way some sort and it was not easy for me as I was constantly under attack by grammar nazi. The group of grammar nazi failed to understand that the Deaf people does not receive proper education especially if it is coming from mainstream school which I was in and that is a problem with the education all over the United States. The majority of mainstream schools doesn’t offer any education programs for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing students so I was stuck with the failed education system as there were no schools close to here that offer bilingual-bicultural education program that every mainstream school should offer in the first place but unfortunately they don’t so I was one among thousands of Deaf students who didn’t get the right tools for our education so that left me only one language and that’s American Sign Language that I learned from the early on before I started going to school.
Click here to read about bilingual-bicultural education.
Fast-forward to about a year later, after being under attack of the grammar nazi group constantly after their failed understanding of the fact that it wasn’t my fault that I was not able to write properly in English due to not being able to receive proper tools for my education throughout my school years and didn’t even bother to do a research which if they did then they would have found some studies that many of us couldn’t learn how to write English properly is due to mainstream school’s fault. So after a lot of scars that I had gotten from the grammar nazi group, I had enough of them so I decided that I take matters in hands of my own and started working on my English on myself because at that time I had already graduated from high school. So I would start reading a lot of news on the internet, CNN, USAToday, Google News, Yahoo News, Bing/MSN news and some local newspapers that we would be getting twice a week I think. After a few months of reading so much news, this is where I started getting the spark in my interest in journalism and I decided to do some search to see if I could submit some news or write something for some news as at that time I didn’t know as such as a blog exists. That was when I stumbled upon an information about starting a blog, so from there I decided to look up for some blogs and read some blogs for a few weeks to learn how they blog. I saw the difference between news and blogs because it seems that blogs is more personal which is allows the readers to have a better feel of the connection than they would with the news.
At that time I already knew CSS, PHP and HTML coding so I know how to build a website because the owner of ShowMyPro and I became a friend. At that time we both built a file sharing website together to help the users to upload some images or videos and give them BBCode with files to post in ShowMyPro forums. So I used that skills I learned from him, built a very small blog using Google’s blogspot service at that time and wrote a few articles to practice my English. From the year of 2005 to 2007, two years later I realized that my grammar and spelling have improved drastically, at least to the point where anyone can understand what I am saying. My English isn’t perfect and they never will be but I still work on it since that year to this day. In that year of 2005 on ShowMyPro, the grammar nazi group started seeing that I have improved my English and they started attacking me less; What a relief.
So that year in the 2007 that is when I feel confident enough to start a real blog and that is the birth of JoshiesWorld in August 8th, 2007. When I was reading news from many outlets to try to improve my reading and my writing I started having a strong interest in journalism so knowing that with how my English writing is at that time I knew there would be no way that I could write a column or such for local news that I have wanted to since then so that’s where I found out that there was the other way that I could do so and that’s blog! I love sharing my opinions and share what I have experienced or what I have seen with everybody through blog so that’s why I blog.
I am hoping that one day in future that I would have a chance to become an editor for local news, such as Herald Leader in Lexington, Ky or Appalachian News Express in Pikeville, Ky and or Williamson Daily News for Williamson, Wv. I have a passion in journalism and to at least have my part in the newspaper for once before I drop dead is one of few on my bucket list.
I guess that if it wasn’t for the grammar nazi attacking me on that up and coming social networking website at that time on their forums I may not get that feeling where I must improve my writing so in a way I have to thank these people who attacked me at that time due to my crappy grammar and spelling at the time. Even I may still not perfected my grammar and spelling, what I take pride in is that I know at least I pushed myself to where my writing can be understandable enough so that’s the most important. Every day and every night since the year of 2004 I am still reading news and blogs to improve both of my English and my blog. So if any one of you would like to become a blogger but you are in fear that you would be attacked due to your English, don’t be discouraged because you can become a blogger and sucks at grammar but what is matter is that as long as you start improving your grammar from there then your readers will thank you for it.
With that being said, another reason I blog is because I want to try my best to share my experience and my opinions with everybody as much as I can so that the others may learn from them too or so that whoever had the same experiences especially if they are the bad ones so that they can know that they aren’t the only one that have experienced a such thing. Bottom line is why I blog is because blogging is what allows me to have a voice and share my voice with the public so that even if they are negative ones then that hopefully make them to realize to fix whatever it is that I have a negative opinion of.
Thank you for your time reading my Why I Blog and I would love to hear yours. Feel free to trackback to this article with your Why I Blog article on your blog and or leave a link to your Why I Blog in the comment section below so I can read them! I hope that all of you have a good night and as for you bloggers – keep on blogging! P.S. I would like to ask some help from you, if you have any ideas on what topics you would like for me to share my thoughts or opinions about, please suggest some topics in the comment section below or click here to submit and I would greatly appreciate it!
Joshua “Joshie” Sullivan.
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