Are bloggers megalomaniac? 10 years blogging and just now I could figure that out

A selfie taken for the first post ever published on Oct. 7th 2004

This title is gonna blow, in the good sense hahahaha. It contains the words BLOGGERS and MEGALOMANIAC; good ones for GOOGLE SEARCH. I have been told that a million times: "People on social media are megalomaniac and bloggers are the worst type." The answer to the title : yes, they are. However, in different levels. I am one of those nonsense narcissist megalomaniac bloggers.  I myself started this blog in 2004 when I had been living back in Brazil for less than 2 years, in a strange city where nobody knew who we were. During my first years in this place, I totalIy felt I was going to collapse due to loneliness and depression. Luckily those were the golden years for MSN and Torrents for music, films, the oldies MySpace, Buzznet, and to all the early blog providers such as Blogger, Wordpress, etc.

Back in those days, 2002 /2003 I even tried to develop my personal site myself. As I started becoming familiar with Blogspot, Wordpress, Buzznet and others, the idea of blogging sounded more realistic. I've always had this plan for writing two books. The plan is still up but I am not ready for this kind of commitment now. I thought of blogs and how they would be the easiest, coolest, and cheapest solution for self-publishing. Everyone who started blogs 10 years ago were interested in other people's blogs and everyone commented on each other's blogs and bloggers created bonds. Most of these bloggers I ran across back in those days are still my contacts on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and so forth.

Before social media networking became intrinsic world culture aspect, bloggers could quadruple the number of visitors to their blogs overnight by posting entries on these topics: Britney Spears, Facebook, How to get rich quick, British Airways, Lost, Friends whatever series was on TV, Five day weather forecast, and a few other words that they might not be appropriate to link to a teacher's blog. There were blog readers everywhere. In order to make my blogs my way, I had to teach myself html codes. At first, Blogger Blogs were quite difficult to edit. As I am a certified journalist, I did study in college a few things on editing and publishing printed materials. Blogs are digital, riiiiight, the color codes are similar, the types of fonts are the same too, and so on.

On my very first posts, I was not sure about opening to the readers facts about me or where I live. My first posts were cold and distant. Whereas, I've always published my poetry on my blogs. In truth, I even created an entire other blog dedicated to poetry. Click here. And lemme tell you, posting poetry can be a lot more personal. I confess that I did turn this blog a deposit of my old floppy disks txt files, at first. Later on, from 2005 on I made this place more like my trashcan. Huahuahauhau For a couple of years (2005~2007), this blogspot was read the most and very often commented too. Orkut had become the number one Internet spot in Brazil and from there, people swtiched off from blogging, including me.

My worst mistake as a blogger was the poor choice for my blog tittle. As I added the word PAWNSHOP to it, I've got several visitors who are interested in actually pawning. What I meant by adding the word "pawnshop" is to pay a tribute to Sir Charles Chaplin; the blog was entitled after one of his movies. It is also to be the title of a possible non-fiction novel that I've dreamed of writing for years and years.

Alright, in SEO (search engine optimization) terms, "PAWNSHOP" might not attract the kind of visitor that is necessarily interested in ESL teaching, psychological disorders, or makeups per se but I thought of this blog more as an experiment, a modern day Pavlov’s dogs if you will. Give them the keywords and they will salivate. Or something like that. I don't need readers who don't get the blogsphere thing. I don't write here to please anyone.

Is this a little arrogant? Yes, it is. Do I care? Nope. Are bloggers megalomaniacs? Some of them are. However, there is a slight difference between megalomania and narcissism. I know a megalomanic in real life, and this person does not write blogs. The symptoms are quite distinctive as pathology, however a low degree of megalomania is found in so many people as a way of defending against loss in everyday life.

This journal is turning 10 years old this month. My real life business is turning 12 and my marriage is turning 16 years old. I teach languages for a living: English, Portuguese, and German. I live in a small carpeted condo with a husband and 4 cats. I really deserve to write about me, my 3 college majors, and my work life. It is me who is writing using my own experienced hands. This has to be a virtual place about my life and nothing else. If I want to go crazy, I will. If I feel like posting a photo of my shit, I will do so and no one should resent that because it is no one's business. If you do not like this blog, do not ever come back here. 

I know, I know that it’s not quite so simple as that. Readers will love you, others will not mind you, or some will even hate you. Whereas, they keep coming back and they stop by for a while. I don't wanna sound like our presidentA Dilma, but you must fancy a few numbers. Here they are: 1,408 Published comments, 894 Published Posts, 19 Followers, 1,700 views last month, and 65,000 visitors from all over the world. ha! Megalomaniac, me? I sure am. ;)

I don’t really know what I’m doing here or where I am going. I am still figuring all out but I have a sneaky suspicion that there’s probably more to it than typing random words. (Then again, I also have a sneaky suspicion that it IS just a case of typing in random words.) The point is, I don’t know where I am going with my life. However I do see myself here blogging for 10 more years, minimum. And lastly, apparently, it’s seems not politically correct to admit having mental disorders or that we are narcissistic. Tsk. So there we have it, someone who is not afraid of being politically incorrect.

Experiment succeeded. Bamboozled. This is also my English grammar gym. Here I work out my ESL skills. It is mine and it is free. For sure I will keep coming back here every Saturdayish.