{"id":123,"date":"2003-02-05T19:18:56","date_gmt":"2003-02-06T00:18:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/martinepage.com\/wp\/2003\/02\/05\/90283451\/"},"modified":"2003-02-05T19:18:56","modified_gmt":"2003-02-06T00:18:56","slug":"90283451","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/2003\/02\/05\/90283451\/","title":{"rendered":"90283451"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Was it as good for you as it was for me?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Last year, <a href=\"http:\/\/martine.blogspot.com\/2002_02_01_martine_archive.html#9413675\">on February 5th<\/a>, I created this blog and posted my very first entry. I had looked into Blogger a year before, in 2001, but I didn&rsquo;t quite get it and put it in my &laquo; read more about this &raquo; list. It wasn&rsquo;t until a full year had passed that I was finally able to explore the subject some more. I was doing research for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.largeur.com\/expArt.asp?artID=1009\">an article about blogging<\/a>, and I thought that the best way to understand this phenomenon was to create a blog, in order to familiarize myself with the tools available. I didn&rsquo;t know where I was going with this and had no idea if I would keep it up or not. The idea of maintaining such a personal space on the Web made me a bit nervous, and I was rather naive about the whole scene, technically and socially, even though I was aware (as an ex San Franciscan who worked in high tech) that this was a very hip thing to do, if you did it right (and if you had started publishing your blog in 1999&#8230;).<\/p>\n<p>Here I am, a year and many many posts later. Has my life changed since this self-publishing habit? Not fundamentally, but my daily routine has. My Web reading now comprises 75% blogs vs other sites, such as Wired News, Salon, The New York Times, etc. I am familiar with the passions, interests and other follies of a fascinating bunch of men and women from different countries around the world. With their help, I find out about great Web sites, news stories and events I might not have been exposed to otherwise. Their creativity is very contagious. Plus, in an hour or so, I will head out to go to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.billegible.org\/yulblog\/\">YULblog get-together<\/a> in Montr\u00c3\u00af\u00c2\u00bf\u00c2\u00bdal and I will meet people who would have not crossed my path otherwise. Hell, I even met my one-of-a-kind beau through one of these meetings, so yes, there have been a few life changes because of blogging!<\/p>\n<p>Even though I already wrote magazine articles for a living (alongside television directing and a few other things), writing on this blog &#8211; with its small audience which has been consistently increasing in the last year &#8211; has given me a much needed discipline and has helped me warm up those typing muscles. I do not believe it is a total coincidence that I have finally started to work <a href=\"http:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/2003_01_01_archive.html#90247424\">on a novel<\/a> after promising myself that I would do so for years and years. I am starting to see more clearly want I want to do and where I&rsquo;m not willing to go, and this means that as a freelancer, I&rsquo;m getting better at saying no to jobs I don&rsquo;t truly care for. It&rsquo;s a newly found focus which I appreciate very much.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, blogging has been very good for me.<\/p>\n<p>Alors joyeux anniversaire, ni vu ni connu !<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Was it as good for you as it was for me? Last year, on February 5th, I created this blog and posted my very first entry. I had looked into Blogger a year before, in 2001, but I didn&rsquo;t quite get it and put it in my &laquo; read more about this &raquo; list. It&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/2003\/02\/05\/90283451\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">90283451<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}