I can’t remember when I first started writing blogs. I think I was 11 or 12 when I created a Blogspot page for the first time. I spent way too much time customising my blog theme and created my first post, thinking about the massive audience I would reach if I just wrote about the right thing. I don’t know whether I spent more time thinking about what to do for my first post or getting the HTML just right.

One of the first photos I took with my analog camera

After months thinking about actually creating a blog and weeks setting it up just how I wanted, I spent a few days thinking about what my first post should be. I remember when the idea just popped into my head: What letter of the alphabet has more results on a Google search? Until recently, Google would say how many results they’ve found and how quickly they did it (I just found out some people were really pissed that they stopped doing it) and I thought it would be a good idea to come up with some graphs and insights about which letter of the alphabet had more search results.

After stumbling upon this idea and refining it further in my head, days went by while I daydreamed about the colours I wanted to use on the pie charts and what I would write about my findings. One day, I had enough of pondering. I sat down, and in an afternoon, I had all the research and the post ready. It was exhilarating; my first blog post! Now I could finally become rich and famous just by writing what’s on my mind for all the world to see.

Most of the time doing something for the first time is hard

I can tell you that none of these things happened. Actually, what ended up happening was that I stopped creating blog posts for a while. Too much thinking, loads of expectations about it and -well- I was just a kid anyway. I much preferred to play Habbo Hotel or chat with my middle school friends after class using MSN rather than worry about what to write for a non-existent audience. I did come back to Blogspot after a few years. Together with some of my friends, we created Unissis. I just discovered that it still exists while writing this. Amazing.

Almost 20 years after writing publicly for the first time, I’m here again. I just got out of the shower and felt like taking action, as I’ve been thinking about having a blog again for a few weeks. Now I’m not writing for anyone or about anything specific yet. I just want to remove the cognitive load of getting this started.

This time it’s hardly my first. I’ve written quite a few “first posts” and quite a number of pieces here and there. However, now I don’t have any expectations, and I just want to, well, fuck around and find out.