tales of an ordinary girl

John over at Evolutionary Middleman has tagged me for an evolutionary meme. The central theme of the meme is to write about how this blog has changed since I started it in 2006, but I'll probably go back all the way to the ancient livejournal days of 2004. :)

On livejournal 80% of my posts were private or "friended" posts meaning only people who I've friended can read them. They tended to be a lot more personal and often I didn't want the whole world to know what was going on in my head. I found one from 2004, Visit, Family issues, Travel that represented a lot of what I wrote at that time. I never did take that EarthWatch trip, but I'm starting to think again about going next October.

I vented a lot about work in those days, which was something I think I needed. I don't do that now because there is a policy against blogging about work at my current job, I have co-workers that read my blog now (*waves*), and I think I'm much happier not writing about my issues with work day in and day out. I still vent to people I know sometimes, but I think I handle the issues much easier if I just deal with them rather than complain.

When I moved to blogger it was a little different. I could no longer post private posts, though I cheated a little and sometimes wrote drafts that I never published. But for the most part, everything I wrote was for the public eye. Here's a post, spring is in the air, from early 2006 that I wrote about the feeling I was having at a particular moment. I later turned it into a poem and published it on my writing blog (which is now private). My poetry isn't good, but I might write again one day and re-open the blog.

Early this year I wrote a post about charity. The event wasn't that big of a deal really, but it did have an impact on my life. I changed a lot because of it, not just with helping out someone asking for money, but in general my perception of people. And I think the blog started to change about this time to talk more about social issues, the news, and science than so much about myself.

But, of course, it was back to me when I came out of the closet as an atheist in a post about How I became an atheist part I. I wrote more about atheism and religion in general, probably scaring off some of my regular readers, but being more honest about myself in the process.

In May I started keeping a book list of the books I was reading in Book list for May and starting posting more official reviews of books, movies, and music. All of which was a natural compliment to my eventual membership in the Nonbelieving Literati. My reviews are still sporadic and sometimes it's just more fun to write a little about what the book or movie meant to me rather than a formal review.

The last part of the meme is tagging 5 people to blog about how their blogs have changed since they started. I tag:

God Has Wheels
Life is a PB Sandwich
Cafe Philos
A wide angle view of India
Big Boned Movie