Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great

Mark Twain

I don’t think that I’ve ever told you the story of my first encounter with the word ‘blog’. It was during the time when I was hunting for a work-from-home job on a local employment website that the job-post from a French lifestyle magazine caught my eyes — it was an offshore job-offer to freelancers, or any other companies that had their own website or blog, where they also stipulated that the offer was as well opened to those who worked from home; and that’s where, after I deduced that this job-post was the answer to my question of where should I begin if I want to work from home, that this love for blogging began.

I was still an internet newbie who knew nothing about all of these digital terms that built the webosphere, I wasn’t at all tech-savvy, and I wasn’t at all interested by the internet; I only found myself here after that I understood that I needed to practice my computer skills so as to be employable; thus I had to search for ‘what is a blog’, and that’s how, through using chrome (my sister’s advice), I landed on a tech forum that buzzed with geeky French and English interactions; I clicked on the blog-link of a user who then seemed to be tech-savvy; found I was right, it was the blog of a techie whose writing style attracted me right away.

As I meticulously went through his blog I was enthused by the fact that I was reading an authentic diary filled with personal thoughts, and as well as interesting happenings in that person’s work-life, and I was amazed by the fact that one could share thoughts, ideas, likes, and express feelings through a blog; blogging captivated me right away.

This first interaction with this digital medium of expression sparked in me the type of strong interest that I thought long dead. Also, being a great fan of reality show, I too wanted to share my experiences, thoughts, and the happenings in my life; I thought of the possibilities of using a blogsite to showcase skills that potential employers could be interested in… but what skills! I still didn’t know, then proceeded to research the subject more deeply; I then had an urge to blog, I needed to create a blog account so as to start blogging.

That’s when I landed on a WordPress.org tutoring website; I was then lost amidst a plethora of techie terms and designations that left me in the same state as a disoriented chicken; but fortunately the video of a wonderful lady sitting at her desk in front of a wall filled with pins of the logos of renown websites captivated my attention right away; and though she explained the product in a formal manner with her French-Canadian accent, I was then too digitally illiterate to find my way through these explanations that sounded too foreign and alien to me; but, on that day my mind made a fixation on one’s belonging to a digital community… my mind made a strange connection, and there my fascination for the creative web culture began.

Afterwards I found a French blogging site feeded by the famous fictional character Mia Wallace from the movie ‘Pulp Fiction’, who also wrote a lot about WordPress, while also writing a little bit about herself; and as I’m a woman of the world, the famous photo of Mia Wallace on bed, and as well as her blogging style, pushed me towards that daring endeavour; I once more accepted that call from adventure, I then signed up for my first blog ‘Lovelyricism’ through WordPress.com, and here I am, eight or nine years later, still learning, still trying, still pushing… still here.

Concerning my choice to blog in English instead of French, when Mia wrote in French, is still a mystery to me till this day… perhaps what influenced my decision to write mainly in English was all of these poems I read back then on social-media — these great poems written by Lang Leav, Christopher Poindexter, Pablo Neruda, Atticus, e.h., Tyler Knot Gregson, Maya Angelou, Rumi, Hafez — this tribe of poets whose words are shared online, and that surely influenced my inner compass.

I also have to say here that building French sentences come more easily to me than English, for when I write in the Shakespearean language I have to ponder a lot, or even ceaselessly consult my English-French dictionary so as to find the right words; also, as the English vocabulary is made up of a plethora of words that are useful for the flow of sentences, I have to memorise the whole English vocabulary so as to be able to call on inspiration through words spelling.

Thus that’s how I found blogging — through the instances, vagaries, and intricacies of life, through some serendipitous encounters, through the theory of the marvellous, through the door of curiosity, and through a pint of mystery.