Starting a Blog – Time to Show My Work

Welcome here to my blog, Blue Light Yonder, and to the beginning of a new series. First of all, I need to be totally honest with you. I am completely new at this blogging thing. I have exactly 4 months of experience in this area and am figuring things out one day at a time. So, if you’re like me, and starting a blog, too, sit back and have a good read.

In this series, I will be sharing the different things I am trying and how they work out. I will also be sharing as many free resources as I can. There are a lot of wonderful bloggers out there who are helping out us new folk!

if you’re an experienced blogger who is looking for advanced tips, maybe I’ve got something you haven’t come across before. If you wish to keep reading, I’ve got lots of book reviews and other tidbits for you. If you’re reading this, shrugging, and heading on out to continue your search, feel free to drop a nugget of wisdom or feedback in the comments.

Without further ado, welcome!

So, starting a blog was something fun

It’s still fun. Lots of fun! I had lots of reasons for doing this (I’ll going into those later), but one of my main ones is that I genuinely enjoy writing. I am a mom and a teacher, and I have recently started my Masters in Education. It’s been a bit of time since I was in school, so when I got back to doing coursework, a lot of things came back to me from being in university and in high school. One of the biggest things that I realized is that I really like to write. I was going to wait until after my Masters to start doing anything about it, then figured, and with some encouragement from my husband, let’s look into things now. One thing led to another, and I decided to start blogging part time, whenever I had some time.

However, I also want this process to be useful for people.

As I started to research around the internet on how to do this blogging thing, I realized that there are a lot of very smart and helpful people out there who are expert bloggers. There are people making lots of money. There are people creating amazing art. There are people creating whole movements with their ideas. There are blogs on all kinds of thoughts and ideas and projects and how-to’s and all manner of wonderful things.

But one thing I didn’t find a lot of were complete newbie bloggers who were stumbling along and sharing it. And that’s fair enough, it hadn’t occurred to me either.

But then I got to reading. If you haven’t read anything else on my blog yet, you might not know that I am a passionate reader. I read a lot. I read widely. It’s basically my main hobby. I am hungry for books. And in those travels I came across this book.

“Show Your Work” by Austin Kleon

I’m still in the process of reading it, so I will review it properly once I am finished, but one thing he argues is that one of the best ways of working creatively is to show the work you are doing as you do it. It invites feedback, collaboration, and new ideas, and I thought it was a great way of doing things (perhaps because I’m a teacher?).

It was the inspiration for this series on starting a blog by someone who is just figuring out how to start a blog. Because it’s just the kind of thing I would want to follow if I found someone doing it.

So, let me reintroduce myself:

I started a blog. I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m figuring it out. Slowly. It’s a lot of fun and a lot of work and the learning curve is steep! I started this process for a lot of different reasons and some of them might seem familiar to you.

I’m going to be honest…it’s not just for the art. Thought that’s part of it. Here’s my list of reasons why I started Blue Light Yonder.

Why I am starting a blog

In no particular order…

1. I want to talk about books with other people who love books the way I do. I love to share my ideas about what I’ve read and see what everyone else thought, too.
2. I like to write and this is a great forum for that.
3. I have two little boys and I would love to gain some flexibility so that I can spend more time with them.
4. I am a teacher and I know there are other teachers out there who could use some support. I’ve been teaching for 15 years and I might be able to share some resources or information that might help.
5. I want to see if I can make some money and add financial flexibility to my life. I feel as though teaching pays fine but that I do not have any control over what that pay is. I thought this might be a way to provide something extra for my family and me. And to help pay for the Masters, of course.

A series of posts that start at the beginning

So, if you are interested in following along on this journey, I will be posting in this series about once or twice a month, depending on what developments have happened. My next post will be a list of free or inexpensive resources that I have found useful so far.

I’m also going to be officially monetizing my blog starting next month. To be clear, as I am completely new at this, I will be attempting to monetize next month and trying to figure out what that looks like. Stay tuned to see how that one goes.

Welcome on this journey with me. Please feel free to check out my other posts, as well. I have my most recent round up of book reviews here. Also, for any teacher colleagues, I am trying to post the odd resource that I think might be useful here on my Teaching Resources page.

Please join me on this journey. Let’s share ideas and resources with each other. It’s all about collaboration and figuring it out together.