In May of 2005, I created my first blog and loved the experience. I found witty & thoughtful goofball friends who knew their way around a keyboard. We read each others’ stuff, commented, re-commented, re-re-commented and generally had a grand old time. It was a semi-anonymous experience, as my ‘fellow bloggers’ were from all over the globe, so we were not a part of each others everyday life. This left room for a certain openness that felt comfy. Unfortunately, it was also on an adult-oriented website (long story), so my efforts to get the people who ARE part of my life to come read my blog didn’t go over very well.

Well, life moved forward and we wandered away from that site, looking for something a little more mainstream and palatable to others in our worlds. To this day you can find traces of my blogging journey – from blogspot to my LiveJournal blog to the really cool WritersCafe, which managed to lose -yes LOSE- everything I posted. One of my favorite blogging experiences was on a site called Six Sentences. The catch was, each post is supposed to be exactly six sentences. Not five, not ten, but six. Way harder than it sounds and it’s a GREAT exercise for writers. My page is here and I hope I wander back some day.

A couple of years ago, I decided to create my own wordpress site, so MartiWrites was born. Originally intended to be a showcase where I park stuff that I considered “good” writing, it never really developed a personality and now is a little stuffy and not much fun.

These days, the omnipresence of Facebook, the fact that 50% of everyone I’ve ever known is there and my innate laziness makes it easy to just toss up semi-mindless soundbites, get good interaction and just forget about blogging altogether. However I recently found a wonderful group of Social Media experts/afficianados who know how to coalesce all these online apps and ops into something directed and purposeful. (Well, okay, maybe the purpose is to play, but that’s fine). Through them I joined a Maui Bloggers Group and if I don’t post something at least monthly, I’ll get kicked out. So here I am.

The blog site that I’m putting together right now is called Achieving Our Dreams, and it’s my first blog to actually have a purpose beyond the fact that I like to hear myself talk. Over the past year I’ve developed a three part workshop called “Manifest Your Dreams” which deals with the idea of manifestation; from both the pragmatic to borderline spiritual perspectives. One thing we’ve learned is that many of us need some outside motivation to keep us focused, some sort of accountability, something in our brain that says “wow, tomorrow someone’s gonna ask me if I did what I said I was gonna do, so I better do it.” [see Maui Bloggers Group comment above] Thus the blog. It’s not completed yet, but the point will be to supply those who are interested with a sort of gentle carrot/stick support. I like the focus.

But back to the point …
The online persona identity dilemma. Where should I blog? Everywhere? Do I keep them all or dump all but one? When I read some of my posts on blogspot, a site I hadn’t visited in three years before today, I was reminded of what I first loved about blogging. I wasn’t trying to “BE” a writer. I was simply having a conversation with anyone or everyone who might be interested in joining in. Sort of the poor man’s Dave Barry. That’s what I miss and that’s what I want to get back to.

Now WHERE I’m gonna do that – THAT’S the next question. Stay tuned, lol…