There is a moment in my life seared across my memory like an invisible START line no one else can see.
I was warming myself up for writing leadership curriculum at Leadership Broward in the summer of 2005 and I came across an article that had the word "blog."
Blog? Sounds like a booger, I thought, but it couldn't be because the article was about an insider in the "beauty industry" writing under a psyuedonym; I searched the blog and read it for a second.
My eyes were pulled to the top corner.
An icon proclaimed "Create your own blog" and I clicked on it to see what this was all about.
It took me a few seconds to realize that the service was free. And easy.
I had in front of me something that Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and James Monroe (not Jackson, he wasn't much of a "writer") would have drooled over -- a truly free and democratic arena to write and be read.
No stamp tax, no editors, and best of all, no one in the whole world telling me what to write, when to write, or who I was even writing for.
I had no deadline, no target audience, nothing but space and freedom to write nothing or write something, the American way.
In the 8 years since I started blogging the world has made a humongous jump forward in connectivity. Now we have more places to meet freely - Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and whatever new media just popped up and my daughter wisely hiding from me.
There is now another step forward; people can publish a book for free, all on their own, without the need for agents, editors (well, um, don't skip that one) and any limitations of money. I can on
I was warming myself up for writing leadership curriculum at Leadership Broward in the summer of 2005 and I came across an article that had the word "blog."
Blog? Sounds like a booger, I thought, but it couldn't be because the article was about an insider in the "beauty industry" writing under a psyuedonym; I searched the blog and read it for a second.
My eyes were pulled to the top corner.
An icon proclaimed "Create your own blog" and I clicked on it to see what this was all about.
It took me a few seconds to realize that the service was free. And easy.
I had in front of me something that Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and James Monroe (not Jackson, he wasn't much of a "writer") would have drooled over -- a truly free and democratic arena to write and be read.
No stamp tax, no editors, and best of all, no one in the whole world telling me what to write, when to write, or who I was even writing for.
I had no deadline, no target audience, nothing but space and freedom to write nothing or write something, the American way.
In the 8 years since I started blogging the world has made a humongous jump forward in connectivity. Now we have more places to meet freely - Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and whatever new media just popped up and my daughter wisely hiding from me.
There is now another step forward; people can publish a book for free, all on their own, without the need for agents, editors (well, um, don't skip that one) and any limitations of money. I can on
