Bear Blog Question Challenge
After reading Robert's "Can't blog? Blog." post I decided to do exactly that. And because writing on my own blog is still new and awkward for me, I'm taking Robert's advice and starting with Ava's "bear blog question challenge."
1. Why did you make the blog in the first place?
As you can already see, one of my biggest hobbies is photography. And like every (wannabe) photographer, I wanted to share my photos on Instagram. That got me burned out, because in the end I was more focused on getting likes than on enjoying taking photos. It got so bad that I really got exhausted from photographing, because I thought no one liked my photography. It took nearly a year to recover from that.
After I started taking pictures again I realized that I wanted to do something with my photos. Not because I wanted appreciation again, but because I need an incentive to take the camera with me. From time to time I print my photos with a Canon Selphy or put together some sort of photo book. But because I also love to tinker digitally, I decided to build my own small corner of the web, where I can present and revisit my own creations on my own terms.
2. Why did you choose Bearblog?
At first I started on Pika from the awesome guys at Good Enough. I wanted a platform that is easy to use because I didn't want to do a lot of customizing at first. But after realizing that my vision for my blog needs more scripting freedom, I decided to do a little test run. Here's a short quote from one of my posts:
At first I was put off by the minimalism approach. But after I saw what Robert, Sylvia and all the other bear creators did with this platform, I began the tinkering.
And now, after a few weeks, I'm so happy with what I've achieved with the help of the bear community that I can hardly go back.
3. Have you blogged on other platforms before?
Not really, although I had my own self-hosted WordPress site. But I only did that because everyone else back then did it. I had no idea what to do with a blog, no goal. Although I did a lot of CSS work for WordPress, I never had content to post.
4. Do you write your posts directly in the editor or in another software?
I'm a big fan of Noteplan. I'm writing this post right now with it and I plan to use it more for writing. But to be honest, most of my photo posts I wrote directly in the Bear editor.
5. When do you feel most inspired to write?
Ha! You'll be the first to know when I do. But these "blog challenges" help me to get started. As far as photography is concerned, I love taking photos during golden hour and on overcast days.
6. Do you publish immediately after writing or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
On my photo posts: Save as draft → View draft → Edit and rearrange → Save as draft → View draft → Edit and rearrange... AAARGH!!!
7. Your favorite post on your blog?
A stroll through Marburg. I love how these pictures turned out. My daughter and I spent a day there, and that city just gets me every time. ❤️
8. Any future plans for your blog?
Hell yeah! After already tweaking Robert's Bearming theme to my liking, I want to improve my existing pages, the navigation and the photo stream so I (and maybe you) can browse via tags or categories. I also want to build some more /pages and implement a changelog for my blog. Integrating some toys from omg.lol is on the menu too.
On top of that, I want to write more actual blog posts. Not clue what about yet, but maybe there are a few more blog challenges out there.