Chepooka

Back when I blogged back then

I stumbled upon an old blog entry this morning, as far as I can tell it was the first ever blog entry I ever wrote, it dates back to May 28, 2002.

Of course back then I did everything in Dreamweaver, I remember trying to figure out Blogger and then not really understanding the point. lol So I updated this little site, probably a dozen entries or so tops, no commenting system. I was just puttin’ it out there, I guess I needed to write. But I wrote a lot about really random stupid stuff, nonsense. Maybe that’s why I decided on Chepooka.com as my domain, it’s Russian for “nonsense”, which I know because it’s used in one of my favorite books/movies, A Clockwork Orange. (Now you know, the secret’s out! lol)

This blog really didn’t plant roots until 2004, when a pal of mine (her blog is no longer active so don’t bother clicking) and I left a graphic design forum because it was getting too politically-charged, lots of arguing about with the whole WMD thing and things got ugly. We took the conversation to our blogs.

I figured out Blogger and used that for a few weeks, but then quickly decided to install Movable Type because all the cool kids had that (I remember it took me the better part of a Saturday morning to get it up and running). I began discovering other blogs, people with the same passions. (I was delighted to learn, upon my return to blogging, that a few of them are still around. Hi! *waves*)

My interest in web design was sparked as well. At the time I had only a passing familiarity with CSS and XHTML what?! Thank God for blogging or who knows how long it would have taken me to graduate from WYSIWYG web design and to learn a thing or two about web standards.

It was exciting to me to experience design on such a personal level (rather than commercial, where it’s all about branding and communicating to customers). Blog design was about expressing individuality, it was more playful and fun. It’s how I connected with some of the world’s best blog designers, some of whom I consider friends to this day. I still love seeing a really well-done blog design, and I still love designing blogs more than anything (although I don’t get much chance to do personal sites anymore now that the corporate world has caught on to this new-fangled technology).

I blogged a lot about the election and politics. Then, I was disappointed. Then, I didn’t want to indulge in expressing my emotions, beliefs and passions so much anymore. And so for the most part, I stopped.

Blogging has since changed a lot (note to self: don’t go on hiatus or the world will pass you by). Social networking, oy. Have you hoiyd of theese?

There are now a virtual TON of blogs out there that address the “strategy of blogging”—how to do it, how to make money at it, how to write better posts, how often to post, how to drive traffic, how to blog while you’re sleeping or from your car when all that’s available to you is a zippo lighter and some dental floss.

I’m guilty of reading those blogs and writing such articles myself. But the core of the blogging world is still about unfiltered, raw, passionate, honest, personal expression. I love finding new blogs that fit into this category.

Anyway, here I am again. Maybe I’m back to where I started - it’s just about nonsense that goes on in my head and my life. Can that be a mission statement for a blog? Heck yeah it can, IT’S MY BLOG. It’s even ok if nobody reads this (thank you for reading this).

I have always journaled. I used to write letters back when I was young and had less control over my emotions. Most of them I wouldn’t send, but looking back, I feel sorry for the recipients for those I did. 20-pages worth of angst and frustration and emotion that I didn’t know what to do with. I haven’t written one of those in awhile.

As for the journals I’ve written, I’ve never kept them. I always felt that it was best to leave the past behind, that the pages were just to get things out, not to bring back in. But we never leave the past behind anyway, we just learn to recall things differently as time passes. Maybe it would have been better if I were able to go back and see how far I’ve come, how much I’ve grown, how much I’ve survived, and even hey—remember that it really wasn’t all that bad, in fact, it’s been quite good.

I know I’ve lost archives for Chepooka but I may go back at some point and see what I can recover. I think it would be a good exercise for me. Anyway. Enough waxing nostalgic, here’s the post that started it all.

Posted by chepooka on 06/15 at 10:58 AM

Comments

Meanwhle, I’m glad you’re back to blogging! Five years is a LONG ass time.

Posted by Malnurtured Snay on 06/16 at 04:20 AM

TyTy! And? I’m glad you’re still here. Hi *waves*

Posted by chepooka on 06/16 at 09:08 AM

This post made me think, “When did I start blogging?” Like, actually blogging news and shit. I had a couple of websites off shitty free domains back in 2000 and 2001… I didn’t even use Dreamweaver, it was just straight HTML. None of the archives exist for those. I didn’t know about blogging software back then, but I was posting my thoughts online and I even had a message board, so technically, it was blogging.

Before then, I had a eGroups (later Yahoo Groups) thing setup for my old band, which quickly became a place where I ranted about news items I read. My first post there was from way back in August, 1999.

And back in the BBS days, I rans my own BBS and had a newsletter. That’s all pre-internet, though.

So I’ve been kicking, like, forever.

On blogging itself, I read a theory that states that the importance of blogging is that it took thhe rumblings of those in newsgroups andmessage boards and it brought those thoughts to the surface—making them more accessibl, thus people started taking thme more seriously. Because personal posting has been around for a while.. Hell, everybody must have had a shitty Geocities page at one point. But homepage technology evolved into blogging software, and now having a website that’s updated everyday became easier because there was no need to construct a seperate HTML file for everything you wanted to post. It allowed lazy people to join the game.

But running a “blog"/constantly updated website was time consuming without the blogging software we all know and love today. For example, I just found an archive of the news section of a campaign website I designed and administrated in 2002: Gerritt for Mayor. Looks blog-esque, no? But it was all manual editing of HTML files. Talk about fucking annoying.

Posted by tas on 06/17 at 09:53 PM