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My reasons for starting a blog were completely different from those of most people.
In fact, when I started The Limelight, I only vaguely knew what a blog was. I had been shockingly out of the loop, especially considering how central computers have always been in my life. I have had a long time interest in web design, having built my first websites back in the dark ages of 1996. I suppose my day to day life and simply left me with little time to devote to reading computer magazines, and tinkering with on the internet.
Sometime in 2002 I registered the domain name, inthelimelight.net (and foolishly did not also register the .com and .org equivalents) without any clear idea of what I wanted to do with it. I had an inkling I wanted to make a website, but I had no solid ideas, and after a couple of false starts, I gave up on the idea. You can see some of those false starts thanks the to wayback machine at the internet archive here, here, and here. After that the site was as good as dead for nearly four years!
So fast forward to January of 2008 (astonishingly to me, more than two years ago) and the urge to have my own website hit again. This time I had heard rumblings of something called WordPress being the hot thing, so I decided that’s what I would use. I set to work modifying a free theme I found online that was simple and basic enough for me and my rusty HTML skills to understand. I made something that wasn’t flashy, but it was fairly unique. For content? Damned if I knew, so I decided just to write about what I was feeling at the time. Over the next few weeks I wrote a rather random collection of articles on topics ranging from personal finance to movie reviews. Somewhere along the line I heard you could make money with a blog, so I started adding Amazon affiliate links. As you might expect I made no money, had no visitors, and did not have a clue what I was doing. I also had a full time job that took up 15 hours a day. The factors combined led to me forgetting about the blog entirely once again.
Two months passed, and in that time I had turned my life upside down. I gave up my well paying but stressful job, and packed up and moved 700km away to a quaint little town in the mountains (no really!). I found myself working a very low paying, but very low stress desk job at a small inn, and suddenly had a life of remarkable peace, and with lots of free time. I would start my work day by lighting a stick of incense, and brewing coffee for the lobby. I’d then sit at the front desk listening to sweet sounding music, and thinking, thinking and more thinking. The conditions were ripe for a new run for The Limelight, and this time I was going to do it right. I set to work building myself a custom theme from scratch. I tweaked it relentlessly. I wrote many original articles which all seemed to naturally gravitate towards a personal development theme. They were good articles because I believed in what I was saying. I was living it. I watched my subscribers climb steadily. My visitor account increased every month. The inn attracted many interesting an inspiring people who provided ample inspiration for articles. I was very content, and it showed in my writing. If my life had continued on this path I believe I would be much further along today in my blogging journey.
Alas, life did not turn out that way. I suffered an unpleasant break-up, was forced to move back to the city much sooner than I anticipated, and a found myself in a place very un-conducive to writing inspiration material. Over the year my posting was very sporadic. The only posts that had any passion behind them were a piece of melancholy poetry, and a related article about setting love free. My personal development blog was dead. You cannot write what you are not living.
This situation continued until September of last year when I, still not feeling inspired enough to write constantly, began posting photos on a semi-regular basis. Excited by the sudden upswing in visitor levels I decided that some housekeeping was in order. I deleted many articles that were of questionable value or relevance, I tweaked the layout, I added a web-store. For a moment I toyed with the idea of wiping the slate clean and starting over completely but quickly came to my senses.
What I did do for the first time is determine what The Limelight should be. I had never been comfortable with the popular wisdom of sticking to a single niche, and having multiple blogs if you want to write about multiple topics. I like to keep life simple, I am not a collector for the most part, I like to have a few things I can devote a lot of attention to, so multiple blogs was out of the question. So I made the decision that I would write about whatever I wanted, in the way that I wanted, and that I would present to my readers my own vision of what personal development is, rather than the “bookstore isle” definition. That meant that The Limelight could include articles on money and art and hobbies and even technology and news and still be on topic. It was okay to include posts that were just photos, photos can make you think just as much as words can. I would inject more of my own personality into my writing, be less robotic, stop writing in character and just be me. I would give myself permission to make things personal, if I was angry or happy or sad about something, it would be okay to let that show in my writing. Personal development comes in many forms, it’s not all about daily affirmations and positive thinking.
Today I am once again well on my way to success as a blogger. My readership is growing again. I am posting articles on a regular basis. I have started reading blogs again, and find myself inspired every day. And finally, inspired by Paul Piotrowski, I am making plans to launch a video component on my blog. The future of The Limelight is brighter than ever, and I look forward to continuing to share my vision of life with the world.
