Dr Tanya presents Blogging Insights every week on her Salted Caramel blog where she asks questions about blogging.

What is your Blogging Backstory? Why and how did you begin blogging?

I have told this story before but for those that don’t know it I’ll retell it.

Two things influenced me to start blogging. A bit over ten years ago I started a new volunteer job with a church in my neighbourhood. One of my jobs was to keep the church blog up to date. They had a blog with WordPress.org and I was shown how to upload posts, photos etc. I wanted to do a good job but I didn’t want to experiment on that blog and risk messing it up.

I was using Facebook more than I do now back then just to share stories and events. A family member commented that I ought to do a blog. So I thought, why not? I didn’t want to pay for a blog that I thought that I might not keep up for very long so I chose to go with WordPress.com instead.

One of the things that I read about starting a blog was that you should write about something you know. As I am a doll collector I decided to write about that. About a month after I started that blog I felt the need to write off topic. I didn’t want to turn my niche blog into something else so I decided to start a second one, this blog.

Well, both blogs have now been going for ten years. I’ve had the odd break when I’ve been away from home, when David passed away and when I moved but I have always come back.