Thoughts on two years of blogging

      Today marks the end of my second year of blogging.  When I began blogging two years ago I saw my blog as a way to inform and share information about the Howard County community.  Being a resident of Columbia my blog has slanted to news about Columbia.  Unlike other bloggers who have a consistent theme (i.e. political, food, etc.) I find that my blog has had many different themes.  I have a hard time staying on one topic as I have many different interests.  Once a week I have tried to do a food themed blog, usually on Friday, on some recipe or some restaurant I have tried.  Weekend blogs tend to be on activities in the County or some of the places I have hiked.  I have tried, but failed, to stay away from political blogs but the current politics draw me in often.  No one reading my blog can't help but be aware of my heavily liberal political beliefs.  After all Columbia's liberalism and diversity is what drew me here to begin with.
     I wanted to try to blog daily and for the most part I have been able to do this.  Many people have asked me how I can find something to blog about each day.  For me it is the opposite.  I typically throw up possible topics that I save to be later fleshed out into a blog.  Often I have 8-10 of these possible blog topics and 2-3 are written and saved for a day when I don't have time to write a blog or nothing seems interesting to blog about.  Unlike some other bloggers who blog less frequently I don't usually write heavily researched or extensively thought out blogs.  And yes I am regularly criticized for "cut and pasting" information.  I always clearly attribute the information to its original source.  If I am sharing information from another source why try to re-write what they have sent me? I get much of the information from emails from different organizations or from their Facebook posts.
     So how has blogging changed me?  I now find myself thinking as a blogger.  Blogging is like doing a daily diary and sharing it with the entire community. One thing I have tried to avoid is mentioning any of my family members, no matter how funny they can be at times.  When I see something interesting I think in terms of whether this could be made into a blog.  You would be surprised how often you can have an experience or observe something and it can be turned into a blog.

P.S.
    I have often included photos in my blog that I have taken or have come from the organization that sent me the information.  I usually credit photos when it may not be apparent  from where they came.  I have sometimes used images from Google images when I didn't have another image and I thought an image helped explain what I was blogging on.

P.S. 1
    Some time back I asked if anyone would like to do a guest blog and only had one person toke me up on this.  I extend the offer to anyone to try.  It is nice to have some diversity in this blog.