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Hey, I’m Jake, a kid that goes to Centennial Jr. High. I’m the oldest brother in my family with 2 brothers and 2 step brothers. I’m 15 and I am a guy. My last name is pretty whack, it’s Heairld. I am new to this school, it’s my first year here and its pretty chill. I live in Farmington, Utah, not too far from the school. My favorite color is blue, my favorite animal is a lion. My favorite food is shrimp, and my favorite number is 11. My favorite sport is football and my favorite drink is probably monster or water. I haven’t gone on too many trips but two that I remember would be the trip to Carlsbad, California visiting my step-dad’s family. It was super fun and had some super cool skate spots. Another trip I remember was when I went to visit my family on my dad’s side in Denver, Colorado. We went kayaking, paddle boarding, and a lot of skate parks. School this year has been pretty cool, school is pretty good, work is kinda lame, but hanging our with kids and skating after school is pretty cool. I have two favorite hobbies. I love skateboarding and snowboarding. I still remember the first time I did a kick flip skating, it felt so good to do something you spent a long time working at, even though its not that hard of a trick, it still felt cool. Snowboarding is also really cool, my favorite things to do snowboarding is the rails and the jumps. I love the feeling when your in the air from a jump and you just fly to the landing, where you smoothly move on to the next jump. That’s pretty much me and some of the stuff I like.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.