Four!

Howdy!

My little blog is four. It has over 1,000+ blog posts covering a hundred topics. I never thought I’d still be here blogging my life away, but here I am! I’ve been blogging since 2009, but this is my second blog. I’m glad I switched over to WordPress from Blogger in 2011, because I think back then my other blog was kind of keeping me down. I made that blog for part of my Grammar class during my senior year and always wondered if my old teacher was secretly followed me. So I thought I needed a new blog to start anew. I was smart with the first blog, as much as I talked about it with my family, I don’t think I ever let them see it. Once I made up this one, I started sharing the posts on my Facebook and Twitter and more family members finally got a peak into my mind. I’m still wondering if that was a mistake or not.

Even though I’ve been blogging all this time, this is still a baby blog. I didn’t have an overnight success like some do and I’m glad I didn’t. I don’t think I could deal with that kind of pressure. Whenever I look at my stats and see what country is leading in the most views of the day, it’s a little weird to see some of the countries on there. Every time I see a “1” for Poland I always think oh, looks like Ania has been reading my blog today! In 2012 I had my highest views ever, over 600+ views in one freaking day! I’m lucky if I get past 40 in a week nowadays. I’ve had a hard time dealing with it, I’ve discussed it with my mom and other bloggers and they all agree–stop looking at the stats! As much as I love seeing all of the different countries reading my blog, the declining numbers upset me. Have I become boring to people? Am I not relatable to people because I’ve chosen to talk more about disability issues?

A big difference from the past three years is that I feel like I’ve gotten bolder in certain subjects. Since reading and doing the book reviews of erotica novels, I’m a little bit more open to discuss love and sex. I finally got a chance to add music to my blog on a regular basis. I’m still surprised that I’ve continued to do my Tune Tuesday posts. I literally thought I’d give up on those after week three. I started doing more Life Lately posts and they have become a new favorite of mine! I try to do at least two a month! Once the new year I wanted to start doing OOTD posts and even though I’ve been publishing less than I wanted to, if I remember to remind my mom or sister to take a picture of my outfit then I’ll make a post. I’ve even adopted something that I hardly did in school–proofread! I’ve just started doing that because as I go to look back on my past blog posts I have a lot of mistakes. I’ve either misspelled a word or left it out altogether! I know I’m not the greatest writer in the world nor do I ever want to be. I just want to be somebody’s escape from life for five or ten minutes. I want somebody to have a small understanding what goes on in my day or in my mind. You won’t understand everything, but it will be enough.

Since getting in deeper in the blogging community last year, I have made a lot of new friends. I’ve also seen a lot of people with disabilities with blogs. At the start of my first blog, I would go on splurges on Google to try to find more people like me with blogs but there weren’t a lot out there. Now I’m happy to say, there are bloggers like Hayley-Eszti, Bloo, and Beth who are all disabled and blog just like me! It feels so good to find a place where you belong. I never felt like I could do that in school, mostly because you had to play sports to be popular. I’m still not popular but at least I feel like I am apart of something longer than a few weeks like when I did Powder Puff Football. Everybody can say what they want about people having a life on the internet. A lot of people around me five years ago wanted me to go to school to become a writer. There is no way in hell I’d ever become a journalist/reporter. I’m a blogger, I write about my life and everything in between! A blogger’s life is a life for me!

So thank you for the four awesome years of reading, inspiring, and giving me feedback! I am very excited for what’s to come later on and I hope you are ready too! 🙂

Meg(z)han.

Song Review: “You Are My Weapon” by Upon Wings

I am very difficult when it comes to new artists and bands. I tend to stay away from them because when I get into something I go on a binge and want everything from the selected artist/band, the genre, and others like them. I got into symphonic metal music in 2009, so towards the end of last year I was finding less and less big bands that sounded like Within Temptation, Delain, etc.  I’m used to caving and only four smaller bands have captured me. One of the smaller bands is from the US, actually a state away from me! Upon Wings is a female fronted rock band that uses operatic influences in their music. The band consists of Anne Autumn Erickson as lead vocalist, guitars Kevin Kardine, and Peter Tzaferis on drums. They are from Michigan, so I’m hoping that if they do touring in the Midwest in the near future, they come somewhere close to me so I can see and meet them! Anne is super nice to talk to on Twitter! So it would be great to get an actual hug from her one day!

Anyways, back in February the band released their new song “You Are My Weapon” and I have been addicted to it ever since it popped on Spotify! You know how I love intros and it has my kind of introduction. I love Anne’s vocals on this track. She sounds so powerful and yet delicate too! When you first hear it, you feel you can sing right along with her but then you realize you need to work on controlling your breathes a little before jumping in. Yes, I am speaking from experience! It took me two weeks to get my breathing under controlled until I felt like I could hit the same high notes. The actual sound of the song is really good, I love the guitars but I do feel that with Anne’s vocals the guitars and drums seem a little lost. The band just released the music video for this song I think a few weeks ago. I’m still waiting to read those lyrics, but I almost know half of the words. There’s nothing like getting a tweet from a band saying they’ve just released a song or music video. I keep forgetting that’s one of the perks of new bands, you become a hardcore fan very quickly and they tend to remember you as time goes on!