Why The Digital Awakening? This is one topic that I have wanted to blog about for the longest time but never got around to doing it. Instead, I have written about the people who had inspired me to start blogging several times already. Now is as good as any time to explain how this blog got its name as it will be five years old in a few days time.
When I first started at Blogspot, this blog was christened The Chomping Block or something to that effect. I cannot remember the exact name now. It sounded corny and was discarded not long afterwards when I got a domain name and moved to paid hosting. The blog was running on Movable Type then. It has been running on WordPress since September 21, 2005.
I was not that prolific those first few months. It was also a time of great distress for me as the beginning of this blog coincided with a time when Mum’s health began its downward spiral. In some ways, I am glad that I had the opportunity to chronicle those times of grief. It allowed me to understand myself better as I sieved through the multitude of emotions and expressed them openly for all to read.
For many years, I had no inkling of what I wanted to do. I saw my paralysis as an impediment and accepted that I could never look after myself and be independent again. Mum’s illness made me realised many things. She can never be there to look after me forever. There was no question to what I had to do. Either I learnt to manage myself or be swept away by my apathy. That was the beginning of my awakening.
Having a blog for me to express issues that I could never talk openly about was truly a blessing in disguise. This digital medium is better than the handwritten journals that I had kept and lost. I could actually write and rewrite entries until I was fully satisfied that it represented and interpreted the struggle within me precisely. This is one of the beauties of blogging as compared to keeping a physical diary.
With that, it is not difficult to see how I came up with The Digital Awakening. Even now, every thought that I put into words here teaches me something new about myself. It was through understanding myself that I realised the direction my life should take. The milestones are already laid. The Digital Awakening is all about me living one day at a time as I get closer and closer to those markers. It is about celebrating life and accepting all the good and bad, the happy and the sad, the joyous and the frustrations as a process of living. The Digital Awakening is my life chronicled.