As someone that just finished high school last year, I have spent the majority of my life doing academics, extracurricular activities, and basically preparing for college.

In my free time, however, I indulged in different activities that offered me an escape from my hectic student life. One was reading – that’s how I a) learned English, and b) delved into the lives of characters of my childhood books. The other was writing – from writing on cute notebook-sized bookstore diaries to online custom-designed WordPress diaries, writing offered me that free escape. Of course, I also joined another community for several years when I was younger, which enabled me to become more passionate about blogging overall.

Though these actions may seem mundane and did not directly ‘help’ with my academic career, I came back to the blogging world for several reasons:

1. Materialize my thoughts. I’m both shy and introverted by nature, so I’m not the best public speaker or improviser. Most of the things I do, I do with careful thought and plan. By planning and organizing my thoughts for each post I make here, I enable my mind to get accustomed to this thought process.
2. Become a better writer. I think this is pretty obvious, isn’t it? Most of the people I’ve interacted in this community are all passionate about books, publishing, blogging, and book-related careers. But regardless of what career path I choose, writing will always remain an essential part of my linguistic growth.
3. Expand my creativity. This is such an essential skill that academics didn’t teach me. The activities I was involved with enabled me to see this importance, so regardless of what I blog about, some form of spark of creativity will ignite in my mind and hopefully that will help me break the monotony of my work.
4. Develop a healthy habit. One of my blogging goals was to blog every week day (if I could afford it). Right now, I’m utterly distressed about college admissions responses, which are bound to arrive within these 2 weeks. I could be lying on my bed, letting my thoughts eat my happiness away. Or I could find a distraction. A good, purposeful distraction. Blogging satisfies all of that, and more than anything, it makes me happy. Regardless of how many people read my posts.
5. Become my own therapist. Though I usually blog about things that don’t involve much of my personal lives or feelings, it feels cathartic to be able to write and ramble on about my views and my perspectives about any subject I want, and be heard by at least a few people.
6. Meet new people. The internet offers so many ways to connect with the rest of the world. It would be a shame not to take advantage of it. In less than 3 months, I have interacted with people with different ethnicities and perspectives with one similar interest that binds us all together. (It also compensates for my lack of sociability IRL).
7. It’s a free world and I can do whatever the hell I want if I can afford it, it harms nobody, and I have the slightest chance of inspiring others to do the same. So far, so good 🙂

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Why do YOU blog or vlog?

Love,