My Blog Journey
In this article instead of thinking about something, I wanted to reflect on something. On my about me page and my first article, I wrote something about what this blog is and what it means to me personally but back then I did not know what exactly I wanted to do with this blog. It was only a vague idea back then and after doing this for nearly half a year, I decided that it was time to put a name to the thing I have been doing for months now. I also wanted to reflect on what got me here and what I plan to do in the future.
Past
Believe it or not, this blog is actually not the first blog I have written for. On my about me page, I mentioned that I started blogging in 2015. That would technically be a lie since I did not publish anything back then and I do not believe it would be called blogging if one only writes something without sharing it. However, the previous statement would be a lie as well since I did publish an article all the way back in 2013 as part of a school assignment. 2013 was truly the first time I was exposed to the idea of blogging and writing about my interest. However, the article I wrote in 2013 was part of an assignment, which felt a bit forced, therefore I would not say that I started blogging in 2013.
It was only in 2015 when I decided to start. Little 13-year-old me was quickly excited and she believed that everyone wanted to know her opinion on certain topics. She wanted to blog about her opinions on entertainment media. Back in 2015, I really loved watching movies and one boring day I just decided to write a review since I was bored. That article was not published since thanks to my indecisiveness, I did not manage to finish that article. There was so much I wanted to put into that article but it felt a bit off. Now that I have grown up a bit, I also consider the idea of writing review on movies was a silly idea.
The next time I attempted blogging was in 2016. In 2016, I moved to Germany and came to a stunning realization. The realization I came to was that my experience was different. The people I met in Germany lived in Germany their whole lives and they did not know a lot about diversity. They only knew about themselves and only a tiny bit about the rest of the world. This makes them sound a bit closed-minded but the truth is that I did not know them well enough and the fact that they only talked about Germany probably gave me the wrong idea. Either way, this inspired me to write a travel blog.
I did start to write three articles but somehow it felt wrong. Not only did I need to research every aspect of the article but also the articles felt impersonal. I wanted to write about the cities I adore in some countries but those articles just turned into a fact sheet about that country. I did not write about my personal experience since it felt a bit odd to do it. The experience was not recent and I believed that I would only paint a biased picture of that city depending on the experiences gathered there. Therefore, the travel blog idea failed. However, I do believe that I will write an article about travel in the future; since there are some things, I wish to share.
After the travel blog failure of 2016, I still had the unsettling urge to silence the boredom. Luckily, one of my teachers ran the school blog and I just started blogging for the school newspaper blog in the late-2017s. Looking back, my contribution to that blog was minimal. I interviewed a few teachers and I wrote about recent news but again it felt a bit impersonal. The topics I wrote about never truly interested me that much. I mean my curiosity was sated by getting to know the teachers in the interviews and my boredom disappeared when I wrote about the news. However, there was something that unsettled me. The range of topics on the blog felt a bit limiting and not all articles are published since the school blog could not provide the platform for every topic.
In 2019, more students joined the reporting community at school. It just felt as if my ideas are drowned out by the louder voices surrounding me. I have no intention of bad-mouthing the reporting community at my old school but it just felt like kindergarten all over again where there are lots of loud discussions and nothing important was done in the meantime. Let´s just say being with too many people overwhelmed me and I could not really concentrate on the truly important matters. By stepping down as an active reporter helped me clear my head a bit. I in no way quit reporting but I just did not attend the meetings any longer since it felt like a cloud that just dampened my day.
I am not sure why but 2019 as a whole was not a productive year for me at all. I was constantly dwelling on something and I quit many things and clubs I used to enjoy. 2019 was a year where I barely wrote any articles since there was a lot going on and I did not find the time to write after the long days and tons of assignments.
Then came 2020 and oh boy did I not expect what was coming. I am pretty sure nobody expected 2020. To sum up that shit show of a year. In the first half of that year, I was studying for finals and I did not have the time or the platform to blog. In the second half of that year, I started university and I did not have the time or the platform to blog. I thought 2019 dampened my productivity but I have not met 2020 yet since 2020 was even less productive than any year that came before. 2020 was the year for brooding. Honestly, I believe that I spent most of 2020 worrying about what I should do next and what I want to do in the future.
Present
After what only felt like a few months finally came, 2021 when I finally decided to start my own blog. Not only did it provide a platform for my thoughts but it does not feel wrong or limiting. My personal failed blogs that came before did not allow me to see the bigger picture. The school blog only provided the platform for a limiting amount of topics to write about. After gaining a bit of experience with blogging made me realize that it was not as hard as I thought it would be and made me find what I want to write about. There was just so many ideas that came after I started this blog and I personally could not have been happier.
Start of AJH
As mentioned multiple times in the past, I get bored excessively easily and decided to do something about it by sharing my interests. Really random ideas just came on the night of the first of January 2021. Something happened and now I have a blog. That is basically the origin story of this blog.
My first article on this blog sounds ridiculously clique and I was not quite sure why I did what I did. To save some time, I just made promises I did not keep. Let´s just say that I started that blog at midnight and as we all know, one does not make the best decisions at midnight. In all honesty, I do not even know why I focused on the idea of creativity that much in my first article and literally threw that idea out the window with the second article. Honestly, on the first of January 2021, I probably wanted to start a DIY-Blog and that is the reason why I focused so heavily on creativity. That night was a blur and the initial plan for this blog does not matter that much. Let´s just leave it at, there are just so many ideas I want to pursue but I just do not have enough time to pursue them all.
For weeks, I have been writing articles and I believe that is something I would want to continue. Even though there are only a few people reading, which could be a good thing. There are some aspects of some articles I am slightly embarrassed by and the fewer people know the better. I am not even sure why exactly I am embarrassed by some statements and ideas but for unspecific reasons I just am. I digress.
My point is that I just enjoy writing down my ideas and thoughts since it allows me to fight boredom. Not only that but I believe that thinking about some aspects help me see something completely unrelated differently. Thinking about something specific also helped me to not think about other things like self-doubts and some other things that I do not want to state. I also found that writing down my thoughts helped me understand myself, the thought or the concept better. Writing the thoughts down forces me to put ideas into words, which makes the ideas seem more familiar and understandable.
Naming that idea
I have been posting articles about the thought of the week on this blog. To a certain extent, I also believe that this blog is kind of a huge mess. On one Friday I am writing about one topic and the following Friday I am literally writing about something totally unrelated. I believe that my indecisiveness is to blame for the lack of a common theme. There is just so much out there and just choosing one to focus on is a tad bit bland.
Thanks to the lack of a common theme, it was really hard to say what this blog is about. After thinking weeks about this, I finally want to put a name to the themelessness of this blog. I just believe that the thought of the week describes this blog quite nicely since I am only writing about the current thoughts and ideas I have.
Since I am already going into the theme of this blog, I also wanted to explain how I got to the name of AJH. I called my blog the AJH blog simply because I made an anagram of my real name. An anagram is just taking the letters in a sentence or a name to create a different sentence or name. The Anagram I created for my name was Aurelia J Hunter. I am not sure why that name since my name could have also spelt Ariel but it is what it is. Then I just abbreviated the created name to get AJH. That is it. Now that I have explained it, makes me realize how boring it sounds.
For weeks, I have been thinking about an extended version for AJH since Acronyms always come from a sentence and I just thought it would be cool if I could think of a sentence that describes my blog. I just can´t explain why but it was not easy at all. Then I realized that abbreviations do not always use the first letter of each word. Therefore, I just gave up and settled with “Another Journey aHead”. The reason behind the weird choice of words is because I just feel as if I am on a journey to find and understand myself. No matter where I am there is always another journey out there ahead of me whether I like it or not.
Future
Honestly, like always, I can´t say a lot about the future, since it is as unpredictable as ever. Somehow, Uni also started again, so I am not sure if I can keep this up. The previous statement is just a lazy excuse, honestly. My schedules are currently quite relaxed, so if I stopped posting then it just means I am a tad bit lazy or not creative enough to think of something new. However, as mentioned above, this is something I can continue for a while.
This blog serves its purposes and helps me understand what I previously did not think about and understand. One topic always leads to another and I do not believe that I will run of ideas anytime soon but in the eventuality, I do run out of ideas, I will probably just share really random things. I always wanted to share a few rare and unique words that I liked. Travel has always been a big part of my life, so I will probably write something about that in the future. There are a few topics I still want to write about to make it understandable for myself. For unspecific reasons, I want to tackle the concept of love. I am not sure why since I despise the idea of love and relationships. There are also topics about morality that I want to write about and the topic of immortality. Maybe I would continue photography and drawing so that I can share my works again. Maybe I would find a new medium I can express myself with and I would then share that.
All I am saying is that there are tons of things I want to explore and I am not quite done yet. Nevertheless, laying out a plan makes the future seem clearer even though the clear image may be false. Just like the initial idea for this blog, this plan may change from one day to the next but I believe that is the advantage of having such a broad theme. No matter what I do on this blog, it will always fit the theme ;-).