For those few who follow this blog, you may have noticed an uptick in posts. I made a decision that I needed to either blog regularly or give it up. The algorithm heard me and presented me with Blaugust 2026, a daily blogging challenge held each August that has been around since 2014. The original mastermind, Belghast, died earlier this summer, but the community is continuing on. Today’s prompt asked about your first blog. Hmmm…it was at least 20 years ago or more and was probably created with Blogger. I used the tool to create newsletters for several state-wide grants. I was pleasantly surprised to find the blog for Virginia’s Community of Learning. It accompanied the larger Community of Learning, a collaboration between several education organizations started in 2000 to help teachers grapple with this new thing called the Internet. As for personal blogging, I suspect there was an early Blogger version, but I pivoted to WordPress pretty quickly, using it as a web publishing tool under my own domain. In this inaugural post at Simply Karen from September 21, 2004, I mention two personal blogs being combined into this one blog. Hence the name: In One Place. During graduate school, I decided I needed a stand-along blog to accompany an independent study in media and media literacy. The current blog was born in 2006. I maintained both blogs until January 2023 when I decided I was going to use Simply Karen for daily photos. That plan did not pan out, but I did move my active blogging to In Another Place. As with many technologies, I have been involved with blogs since they appeared. I remember that at the start, blogging was meant to be a way to connect people. Bloggers linked to other bloggers and commented on their ideas. That is part of the impetus behind Blaugust. Not just writing but connecting, a throwback to the original intent of the tool. Easy to publish writing that connected to a larger community. It seems as though connection is still a focus but in a more commercialized way, with SEO and ad revenue playing a larger role. But then, I suppose that is the story of the history of the Internet. I would like to believe old fashioned blogging can still play a role. Welcome Blaugust 2026!