I write because…

After many, many years, it’s back to the classroom for me today. Well, the virtual classroom at least. Still, it feels like a new beginning for my blogging life! I decided to join up for Writing 101 at the Wordpress university, to see where that journey would take me and my website. A perfect opportunity for me to hone my writing skills and to meet fellow bloggers. For the next two weeks I will try to write a daily blog, based upon the prompts I get. I’m quite exited actually, and as this was a new beginning of sorts, I decided that it was time for me to shed my Mii image, and replace it by my real image on this website. I chose a picture of me doing what I like best: gaming!

Anyway, back to the prompt: “I write because…” Like I wrote on my “about me” page the answer to why I started blogging is fairly easy. I’ve come to gaming late in life, and I’ve found that ever since I can’t stop talking about my games. I’ve met a lot of lovely fellow gamers in various forums over the years and with some I even developed a friendship online that goes beyond gaming and extends into real life. Still, in my daily life friends and family tend to look at me with a faraway look in their eyes when I try to talk about games to them. I can just tell that they are trying to humor me, but that they just don’t understand why a woman of my age would be enthusiastic about capturing another legendary Pokémon or going on a quest to battle a dragon in Fantasy Life. So this blog really started as a way to spare them!

I decided to put the thoughts that are constantly swirling in my mind about this topic into written words, and send them along the virtual highway. When I was much younger the thought of writing for a living seemed a beautiful but unobtainable dream. I even started writing a book, but didn’t get any further then two chapters in. My rational mind took over, telling me that there are so many aspiring writers out there, so why would I be able to make a living from it? So I stuck to my daytime job, and my writing aspirations were dormant until this blog came along. I was able to combine the two in a way that gives me a lot of positive energy without pressure: I write about things I love, I game to get input for my writing and sharing has become very easy online. At the same time, there’s no need to publish to make money.

For some reason though, after more than a year of blogging about games, other interests crept into my writing. I tag them on my website as “other things”, things that are unrelated to gaming, but always things I’m passionate about. This daily prompt will fit in there nicely, I hope you will join me on my journey on Writing 101. At the same time though, the gaming blogs will still be flowing freely!