I now have 2 decades of experience in blogging and 1 decade of making YouTube videos.
First, my blogging.
To learn the history behind my blogging, check out the following posts
from 2013 "1 decade anniversary of this blog" https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2013/10/1-decade-anniversary-of-this-blog.html
Actually, I joined Blogger in April 2003 as part of a group blog called "The Fiftieth Star". That was with me, Stuart Hayashi and a few others who wanted to promote an alternative to the center-left bias of the Ka Leo, the Honolulu daily papers and the Honolulu Weekly.
http://50thstar.blogspot.com/(yeah, I know, it hasn't been updated in a while)
At the time, I was an undergraduate student at UH-Manoa and have been writing opinion articles in the school's newspaper Ka Leo O Hawaii.
As a writer, I had a small group of fans. But I also had an enemy named Tobin Jones who wrote screaming rants in response to my articles. I don't mind rational disagreements with my points, but Tobin Jones doesn't do rational disagreements, he does vicious slanders and accusations of me believing in stuff I dont believe in.
Well in October of 2003, Tobin Jones made another unhinged rant about another of my Ka Leo articles. Now, this was war!
So I started my blog. I shattered his cliches into pieces.
Eventually, that conflict faded and I used my blog to comment on a whole bunch of other topics.
I also wrote more on my blog history in this 2018 blog post " This blog is now 15 years old" https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2018/10/this-blog-is-now-15-years-old.html
Anyways, lots of things have changed in those 15 years!
Back then, things like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter didn't even exist yet! But now, they're the center of many news reports and basically the center of mainstream life!
Back then, the word "viral" still focused on diseases! The word now refers to anything widely shared on YouTube, facebook and twitter (as I mentioned, didn't exist yet when I started my blog).
Interestingly, 2 years after that post, the coronavirus crisis has happened, so now, the word "viral" has now focused on viruses again.
More from that 15th-anniversary post
Also within the 15-year time-frame, my life circumstances and some opinions do change.
Back in 2003, I was 23 years old and still an undergraduate student at UH-Manoa. This "real world" that older people talk about? What is that?
Since then, I've started working different jobs in very different work environments, with the main one being a substitute teacher (that one started in 2005). That means I had serious role model responsibilities, for which I really had to mature! Some perspectives, attitudes and behaviors had to change!
Which was why some former classmates were shocked when I no longer had the same attitudes and opinions that I had when I was a student in high school.
So yes, you might notice that some blog posts from 2003 and the few following years will have opinions that are different from what I express in recent years.
Part of that is growth & maturity, but part of that is also the changing world around us.
And yes, I have evolved more since that 2018 post, mostly due to the coronavirus crisis that started in 2020.
I'll just say I've become more germophobic and less likely to attend public events.
More classic paragraphs from the 15th-anniversary post
Some people might ask "why you put so much stuff on your blog, aren't you worried about how people might react?"
What do you mean "so much stuff"?
Actually, there's so much stuff I was planning to blog about, but haven't had the time to add it to my blog!
Of course I think of how people are going to react. Everyone does!
But you have to take risks in life! You can't satisfy everyone!
If you're not telling your story, someone else who don't have your best interests at heart will tell the world your story from their point of view.
That's not something you want to risk in a "viral" world, where people have their 15-minutes of fame when they least expect it!
People can write what they want about me, I can still write my side of the story!
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And now, about my 1 decade on YouTube,
My YouTube channel is https://www.youtube.com/@pablo_wegesend
It was October 2013 when I finally got a smartphone.
So yes, it's now a decade since I got my first smartphone, which I blogged about at "One decade with a smartphone" https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2023/10/one-decade-with-smartphone.html
So now that I have a video-recording device that can fit into my pocket, I can finally make video speeches that I can post online.
Plus, I can reach more people on YouTube than I could with just a blog.
At the time, I still didn't have a desktop computer at home and had to go to the library to use the computer.
Also, at the time, I just returned to UH-Manoa as a graduate student. A contrast to when I started my blog as an undergraduate student.
At the time, the campus's Sinclair Library had computers that had an SD drive where I could upload videos I took with my smartphone and put in on YouTube.
In September 2015, I finally got my own desktop computer. That computer came with Windows Movie Maker, a video-editing app.
So if you watch my earlier videos, you notice
- they're unedited, I just upload what I recorded
- Videos now start with a title thumbnail
- Videos now end with a "Thank you for watching" and sometimes, with credits
- I can cut out stuff from the video before I upload
- I can add captions to the videos, plus additional images
