Dispatches from Todd: Confessions of a Blogging Latecomer

I must admit: it takes me a while to appreciate something. It’s not that I’m not aware of things when they happen. But to really understand, appreciate, and eventually love something, I usually have to give myself some time. It took me until their fourth album to realize thatRadiohead was my favorite band in the world. It took me viewing after viewing of his films to realize that Stanley Kubrick is the greatest film director that ever lived. And although I had been to every home game throughout my college life, it took me graduating from college to realize how important a part of my life Penn State football is.

And so it also went with social media. I remember hearing about Facebook when I was a sophomore at Penn State. Like most things, I was skeptical. “You’re telling me to sign up for a site where I put up all my personal information on the internet for all to see? Why?” My private nature could not comprehend the need for such a thing. Eventually, after seeing how other people used it and how vital it can be in connecting to and meeting others, I caved. Now I check my wall every few hours and sometimes learn more about people through their Facebook Profiles than I do actually speaking to them. (Is that sad?)

The relationship between blogs and I followed a similar path. Again, I had friends in college who started blogging early and, again, I could not comprehend why. I thought of blogs more as online diaries where people wrote their innermost thoughts for all the world to see. My private side once again got the better of me and shielded me from seeing the other possibilities blogs can bring. When I left college and started working for Dscape Interactive, a media company in New Jersey, I started to see the value of blogs. This value came in various forms: information,entertainment, and, most importantly for my purposes at the time, business (Benjamin Moore was one of our clients).

So now, as we start this semester and you begin to cultivate your blogs, I am very excited. From what I have read so far, food and drink, sports, and pop culture seem to be the biggest themes, however the variety between all of them is great! I hope that my appreciation for blogging grows as I get to delve into what each of you are interested in. I have already learned a lot about pizza (thanks Lauren!), photography (thanks Sandi!), and fancy, overpriced Aqua gel bags (thanks Alec!), and am looking forward to see what else you guys can come up with. If you haven’t already, remember to include lots of links, blog rolls, and about pages so that we can learn more about you. In the end, though I may have been a latecomer to blogs, like everything else in my life, I am now a huge fan and I’m sure my appreciation will grow when we get to see what your blogs can expand into throughout the semester.