Recently, Guylty suggested we join her in a bout of blogging omphaloskepsis or navel–gazing in her 15 Day Blog Introspection Challenge and I loved the idea. Several Armitage bloggers have started the challenge, and I can’t wait to hear the answers to some of these questions.
Very quickly, I may be somewhat MIA for a couple of days. I have my laptop, so who knows… but we’re currently ensconced at a large indoor water park. Between the water slides, the wave pool, the lazy river and the 101 other treasure hunts and similar kid activities, we’ll see how much Armitage-time I really have. Kids are passed out after a long day of travel and a long evening of swimming, so here goes:
Question 1: What Made Me Start Blogging?
Well, I’d been heavily interested in Richard Armitage for about 6 months when I started the PreoccupiedWithArmitage blog last September. Brief overview goes something like this:
Pride and Prejudice glom… if you like P&P, you might like North and South… watch North and South on Netflix… develop immediate gut reaction within seconds of “Stephens!!”… Google Richard Armitage… glom Richard Armitage on Netflix… start lurking on Richard Armitage websites and blogs… start watching Richard Armitage interviews on YouTube… start glomming Richard Armitage fanvids…. start amassing Richard Armitage images… join Richard Armitage Central Forum… order large number of DVDs and region-free DVD player… join Armitage Army Forum… schedule a trip to London to watch The Crucible… return home full of “stuff to say”…
I saw Richard Armitage performing live at The Old Vic Theatre toward the end of The Crucible run, and the idea of becoming a blogger wasn’t anywhere on my radar prior to that experience. It wasn’t until I returned from London that I began to consider starting my own blog. However, once I get an idea, I often act on it within a matter of days. All summer I’d been reading every account I could find, and when I returned from London, I wanted join the discussion about The Crucible… to share my perspective on a performance that affected me deeply, and tell about my exciting trips to The Stage Door. =)
Servetus and other bloggers had actually offered to publish such accounts as guest posts, but having been a lurker, I was too shy! I thought instead that I would just start my own blog, and perhaps nobody would find it or read it, but it would be out there, and with all the interest and buzz about The Crucible, there was potential that it would be discovered by those interested in the topic, and perhaps there might even be a few comments or discussions that followed.
So I went through the process of setting up the blog on WordPress within a few days of returning from London. On September 10, on my lunch hour, I wrote my inaugural post. I found that I would now have my own WordPress ID, and I decided that maybe I might start commenting on the blogs I’d been lurking on, so I decided to “follow” those blogs. I did have some idea that if I started commenting, it might draw attention to my own blog, but I thought that would be a gradual process. I didn’t realize yet that following those blogs would get me immediately noticed by the bloggers themselves… I thought I’d have to comment first. LOL. Anyway, I was in for a surprise. I set up the blog, composed my first post, published it, followed several Armitage-related blogs, and then my lunch break was over, so I went off to see an appointment.

It’s a wonder my fellow bloggers didn’t say this after my Day 1 Identity Theft issues…. =)
When I came back to my desk, I experienced a shock that almost felt like a scare when there were already several followers and gracious comments of welcome. I had a little adrenaline rush. A little “OMG what have I done?” moment! Servetus had reblogged me! There were hundreds of views already. My fingers were shaking. And then as if that weren’t enough excitement, there was some kind of a glitch on my blog where all the commenters were called “jholland” and their avatars were all the avatar of Servetus! Guylty gently pointed out “Something is going wrong with your blog right now. All commentators are called jholland and except for my own avatar everyone else has Serv’s avatar. Unless my computer is experiencing some kind of incident” … oops! Here I didn’t think anyone would be anywhere near my blog yet, as I was still planning to gently ease into it by posting about The Crucible and commenting here and there. I had no idea why my blog was stealing identities and replacing avatars, and no idea how to fix it! (It was the WordPress theme I’d chosen… a brand new theme that I picked because I liked the look of it… but they had a few glitches to work out. Thankfully the theme developer was quick to respond with a fix for myself and other newbie bloggers who were baffled by our new blogs’ identity-thieving tendencies!)
So there you have it. I started blogging in order to cover The Crucible. I thought it was possible that my blog would end after I’d blurbed my impressions on that front, but knowing how much new material was coming, how much old material I had to catch up on, and how severe my PreoccupationWithArmitage really was, I hoped I’d eventually find some like-minded readers and carry on writing for however long it took to get Richard Armitage out of my system. That hasn’t happened yet, and doesn’t look like it’ll happen any time soon. =)