Retrospective: One Month of Itching

The first week of April marks one month of my blogging activities. I started wanting to blog seeing how much fun Nisak had constructing her Sarah & Amar, but what really tipped me over was definitely reading Kenakelayan’s blog (ergo: Kenakelayan is bad influence!)

Originally, I set out to blog about things I’m interested in; stuff that I thought my friends Orang-Kilang, Kenakelayan and Uncle & Auntie De would also like to read about. I envisioned my blog as a nexus for interchange of ideas among my (admittedly very, very, very, very, verrrrry small (one friend for every “very”)) circle of friends. However, I was surprised to find that itchiness seemed to carry a life of its own and went in directions I initially hadn’t planned. For example, I’d never planned for my site’s theme to be so Japanese, but I guess, my most prominent interest is Japan and that unintentionally showed in my postings.

I also did not plan to write stories of myself. I wanted to distance myself from the blog and refrain from e.g. putting up personal stuff and pictures. But since Nisak freely posts about me in her blog, that plan went up in the air. Do you guys notice she never puts up pictures of herself?
Also against planning to keep distant, is when I had written my first anime review and found that there is nothing to differentiate that review to THOUSANDS others out there. What could make a difference, however, is if I break the rule of having to be objective in reviews and to be more subjective and personal. I learnt this from reading Ayumi-san’s manga review in Mirkwood. Ayumi-san was being herself that it made the review much more interesting to read (hoping for more reviews in Mirkwood in the future!).

I really thought blogging would be a useless activity. No way in the world would ANYONE be interested in reading ramblings of a random stranger. That was until I began reading what other people have posted on their blogs. I slowly began finding people with the same interests, attitude and the same outlook on life as me. Some have the same occupation and have shared their stories working in different parts of the world. I frequent some people’s blogs regularly now, ever awaiting postings and updates (while waiting for your updates, I busy myself reading previous posts). Keep up the good work and please know: even if you think no one is reading, I bet someone, somewhere is interested.

It’s exhilarating reading other people’s thoughts on interests you have in common. There is such a large and close community out there that reading their posts and writing for them has always been a pleasure. I wish uncle & auntie De, O-K, Ojou and many others would know how fun (and shockingly addictive) blogging is, and I wish they would start blogs of their own. I’d definitely be at least one of the readers.
Even now, I’m still confused and unsure of where I am heading with itchiness.. I guess I will have to let itchiness evolve on its own and let see what happens (but I guarantee it’ll be a journey full of poor grammar, atrocious spelling errors, distasteful videos and arguable reviews :p).

Starting this month I’ve already made several changes to the blog. My sidebar (it took me forever to learn coding html!) now has links to my favourite bloggers, websites & podcasts. Also, at the end of the sidebar please notice a “This Week” section, another thing I learnt (read: copied, ripped off) from Mirkwood. Did you guys notice that the “edit me” link I had for yonks is now gone? That link symbolised the crutches itchiness had taking its first steps, and now the crutches have been removed.

If you are a reader of itchiness, thank you for your readership & I have always appreciated your comments. Please look forward to future postings!