Entry title blatantly stolen from Shari

First off, one of the people who made me continue to pursue my internet endeavors ma’am Janette Toral is publishing a new ebook entitled Blog This: How Blogs Empower Every Internet User. It’s really great to have people who are dedicated to their craft and this ebook is definitely going to change things in the blogging scene over our shores (hopefully). The ebook contains eight lessons ranging to setting up a blog to the more complicated web of social networking through blogging as well as a club member directory for all you link whores out there.

Since I’m still in line with this, I really find Ma’am Janette as a source of inspiration because I’ve been in touch with her since 2003 during my ’still feeling programmer and computer techie days’ back in high school. She’s been headlining the local schools Cyberfair (a web design and content contest for grade school and high schoolers) and I definitely must say that my experience through the Cyberfair development really pushed through for me to do some work and eventually, to blog more. Looking back at one of the first websites (OMG I DO WEBSITES PALA, HAHA) I made along with a group of friends for Claret-ASIN Look, ang daming hexagons at grids, and it’s orange!, an in-bred school organization with outreach programs to Mangyans, calamity assistance among others I’ve gone a long way. The experience with e-mailing Ms. Janette endlessly (and I hope you didn’t mind) regarding questions made me touch up on a lot of other topics.

Also, as Shari pointed out in her latest entry (OMG I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DO TRACKBACKS), a lot of the high-traffic blogs in the Philippine blogosphere are money and business-related. As a lot of people have been posting, blogging is a privilege, not a right so I’m lucky to earn some few bucks through blogging but we aren’t really the ones who ‘need’ the money. I feel guilty for my rhinoplasty and drug rehabilitation posts na tuloy, haha. I prioritize my personal blogging more though because it’s my first love and I’m afraid that yes, there is a possibility of blogging as total blatant advertising in the near future losing its actual purpose - and yet I’m writing this and contributing to that possibility but I can’t really position myself with regards to such issue. I’ve been scouring over a lot of SEO forums and linkhogging because it’s the google thing to do but it does hurt my blogging methinks, yet I couldn’t get away from this box of my main blog. Every single blog I make outside this /blog area ends up failing (but I do hope my new SEM blog would ‘work’) so there. I’m not making sense much, am I?

As for my blogging, I’ve really gone far beyond the ‘Today was boring. Wow I love this site’ entries from years back (too bad I lost all my 2002/03 archives except a few) and I must say that a lot has changed, specially with the emergence of blogs as means of entertainment and income - something that was unimaginable a few years back which makes me really envious that Carl is living in this generation. A lot of bloggers come and go, change their domains yet I must say that I’m really happy still standing here amidst certain controversies with a certain english teacher in Claret, three professors in Ateneo. Through blogging I really feel this sick notion of being a celebrity in my own right (besides my design league) because I’d never expect to receive fanmail and people ogling at my sister (and my other friends) asking them if they know me. I never was popular back during my younger days and blogging has been my manifestation of ‘popular’ if you could call it that. I mean, I’m not in the same league as the other pinoy bigwigs but I definitely have established my niche in the personal/design manner of things and well, I’m happy. If there’s one thing I regret about this experience is my November 2006 phase where I almost gave up on blogging because of personal and financial issues.

I was talking to my design professor the other day because he read my status message ‘why am I not eccentric when I’m offline’ and he just laughed over it which makes me wonder if I’ve really changed a lot. I still believe that I’m into an obsession phase with regards to SEO, that I’m afraid that it might die out soon but I hope it won’t (now I don’t know how that line came about in this paragraph.)

As a closing statement, I love blogging amidst all the new technologies, controversies and challenges it awaits to me and my life’s progression and I’m happy that I’m sharing my life (and my obsession for beef jerky, rhinoplasty, drug addiction and epitaph s) with you for the past 3, 4, 5 years or so.

GOD THIS SO EMO I WANNA FUCKING DELETE THIS POST.