My History of Blogs

I have no idea how I initially came across it, but I know the first blog I ever read and subscribed to was Zen Habits. That is, now, I realize it's a blog. At the time, in my mind it was merely a "website", and it seemed pretty nifty that you could "subscribe" and get an email whenever they added new stuff to it.

Sometime after that, I also came across The Minimalists and Miss Minimalist. (Any guess where my interests lay at the time?) It was around here that I realized the concept of a "blog", and that that's what these websites were. 

Eventually my interest shifted slightly, and my knowledge of the blog world started to expand, and I started subscribing to many many blogs, primarily in the arena of environmentalism and reducing plastic. One of these, My Plastic-free Life, has a challenge to follow her lead and track your own plastic trash and share it on a forum on the site. 

I finally decided to start my own blog - about environmentalism, called Weighing the Waste. I enjoyed the topic, and was making connections with bloggers with similar topics, but started to feel constrained, so started a second blog to track the 30 Before 30 list I had started. (Most of those posts I've copied over to this blog with original publish dates, since I deleted the other blog - the handful of posts prior to July 2012 are originally from the 30 Before 30 blog.)

As time passed, I realized that I was more and more often reading and commenting on blogs that fit in to the genre known as "healthy living blogs" (aka HLBs) (and had taken up running as a real hobby). When I signed up for a summer "best body bootcamp" challenge, I decided to start yet another blog to document that. I chose the name "Balancing Meanderings", though, specifically to allow myself the flexibility to take it in other directions in the future.

If I had to classify it now, I guess I'd still called Balancing Meanderings an HLB/fitness/running blog, but I've definitely been enjoying using the platform to explore other things, such as feminist musings and rants, and talking about every day life.

As I'm exploring potential new niches within the blog, I wanted to get some feedback from you guys. Though in some ways this is essentially my diary (and running journal), and I'd likely enjoy and continue writing even if I didn't think I'd have any readers, it really does add a lot to try to make this a conversation and community!

With that in mind, I wold greatly appreciate if you would provide some tangible feedback by answer a short survey: here. It should only take a couple minutes - it's just ten questions, and three of those are optional comment boxes just in case you want to expand on your multiple-choice answers. Thank you in advance!

What was the first blog you ever read?

Have you answered my survey yet?