Many thanks to Rory for posing this week’s 24 hour blog question.
Find out more and play along here
Just a bit of casual and carefree fun … but!
Do you remember your early days?
Like for instance, when you first got an internet connection? Dial up as opposed to broadband?
When was your first time with a blog, or a forum or even a game online?
Do you remember YOUR first times?
What mistakes did you make the first time ever that you … you can fill in the rest yourself. But this is about your early days as a writer online, or a gamer online – when was your first ever blog or forum?
What mistakes did you make back in the early days?
Funny, I did a post years ago on ‘Firsts’. You can read that here if you’d like to.
Computers though, oh yeah. I remember the days of dial up, not being able to use the telephone and computer at the same time, that awful two tone screeeeech when you dialled in, and forever dropping hubby’s connection whenever I picked up the phone.
I’d never really used a computer until I joined the bank in 1989, not even for playing games. It didn’t actually interested me, and was definitely not something we used when I was at school. Hell, I couldn’t even get on with a slide rule!
My blog came into being in September 2013 and seems to be doing OK.
I remember the first time I was nominated for an award and ignored it because I didn’t know what to do! How excited I was the first time I had over 100 views in a day, my first comments, followers, and when someone reblogged something I’d written, WOW!
I think the biggest ‘mistake’ in those early days was volume. I know I post a lot every day now, but when I started, my posts were usually over 1000 words long. On some subjects, like budgets, that may have been warranted, but other times, I waffled on a bit….. OK a lot! 😀
Now I try to take a leaf out of my own book and keep my posts around 250 – 500 words, as too long a post tends to lose my interest and that is one thing I hope to retain of the reader with whatever I write. I’m glad WP have decided to put the word count back on the screen when we’re preparing our posts!
pensitivity101 
Great lessons, Di. I vaguely remember a dialup connection but luckily, we upgraded soon. I didn’t know that we can see the word count in WP!
It disappeared for a while, but shows at the bottom left hand side in the classic block which is what I’m still able to use.
Oh. I don’t use the classic block anymore. I guess that’s why it doesn’t show up
I’m glad of the word count too. Shorter posts are easier all the way, to write and read.
I much prefer them, though sometimes longer ones can be better depending on the topic.
Yeah, that’s true.
I also remember that dang screech too Di and the line dropping if the phone rang and if you were downloading something it would break the connection and you had to start again 😦
Hubby was not impressed when he was working on something specific.
Yes, l know the feeling l set up a 600 page website on dial up and was bitterly upset if the phone rang and my then wife picked it up.
oops!
Oh yes, my posts used to be much longer than they are now, and even now WP tells me they are 454 words on average. Great post, this one. I’ll pop over to Rory’s to check out if others have answered his question too.
Enjoy Astrid. Thanks for commenting.
It is interesting for an “older” woman like me to remember when the computer age began. So many experiences.
The first computer I ever saw took up and entire room!!
My first computer was an Apple IIe. We had dial up and it took so very long to connect… The first game I played was pong and I had to get into the program using DOS commands! I started blogging in 2007 on Xanga. I still miss that platform and those people – but some have come to WP and I’ve reconnected…