Thing 1: Set Up Your Own Blog

I thought participating in 23 Things on a Stick would be a good way to spend the depths of a Minnesota winter. I have heard the words (Fllickr etc.) for a lot of web 2.0 skills but the names are all I know.

So I began with the first task--creating a blog. Now, I have read lots of blogs. I began with discovering blogs for some of my favorite authors. then I found some blogs about the profession, then I branched out into blogs about children's literature and young adult literature. Now I look at about 20 on a fairly regular basis.

However, I have never before felt the least desire to commit one. Looking at a blank sheet of paper for the purpose of committing my thoughts to it brings on more a feeling of panic than pleasure. I know that I don't have anything profound to share and feel that the Internet already has enough useless information. Aren't there statistics out there about how many blogs there are and how many are updated on anything like a regular basis? I seem to remember that the first number is large and the second is small.

But this was task one, so

• I visited blogger to begin.
• As a gmail user, setting up an account was easy
• Choosing a name for my Blog wasn't too bad either. Groucho's quote is one that I live by. If I find a t-shirt, I want it.
• Finding a URL was something of a challenge until I hit the help and found out that hyphens in URLs were acceptable
• Then came the avatar. I began to wonder if I were the demographic that they were designed for. I couldn't find any that accurately represented a plump, grey-haired, bespectacled 50-something. I suppose I could have chosen a warrior princess. But I'm not sure that I'm that ready to share my fantasies with the world!

So here I am -- tiptoeing out into the world of Web 2.0. Wish me luck.