Why Joe Is Starting a Blog

Why am I starting a blog?

My answer is pretty straightforward—I just want to help folks live better, happier lives.

The idea of being able to make a positive impact on someone’s life is truly remarkable! What could I do to have this positive impact? Life is ridiculously demanding leaving me with little time over the last more than several years to figure something out. I’m just a Joe. I’m a husband and a father. I spend 9 to 5 giving my time to an honest job to support my family. Really, what could I possibly do to help a ridiculously large amount of people? That was the question, and I certainly had a hard time figuring it out.

Time continued to pass, and my wife and I continued to grace the world with baby after baby five times. Bring on the anxiety! I feel like we have it figured out pretty well now, but we were indeed a hot mess at the beginning of our parenting days.

We were young newlyweds living the military life over 900 miles away from our families when our first son was born. I was 22 years old, and my beautiful bride was only 20. We were on our own, and it was scary. We didn’t know how to take care of this little bundle of giggles they call a baby.

 I found a lot of helpful articles on the internet that helped me learn. 

As these babies grow and grow, our bank account seems to shrink and shrink. I joined the military when I was 19 years old with over $30,000 in student loan debt—I didn’t know anything about managing family finances.

I found a lot of helpful articles on the internet that helped me learn. 

Looking back, I never really stopped to think about where all those parenting and finance articles I read on the world wide web originated. I guess I assumed it was someone else’s 9 to 5 to write this kind of stuff and put it out there for some reason unknown to me.

Blogging Is Not What I Thought It Was

I don’t remember when I first learned about blogging, but I’m sure I thought it was something of an online autobiography or something. Fast-forward 10 years. I’m older now—dare I say wiser—and a lot of that is thanks to a fantastic community of internet bloggers. Never would I have imagined that all those tidbits of information that helped me through my infant adult years were simply the works internet bloggers—someone trying to share their advice in the hopes of making a difference.

I eventually put 2 and 2 together and realized a blog isn’t just someone’s internet diary. While it certainly can be, it can also be a vehicle to reach and hopefully help many people. I learned some more crazy stuff as I further investigated this strange world of blogging over the last three years. Did you know a blogger can be just an average person like you, or even me? I certainly didn’t. I assumed large companies ran them, but that’s certainly not the case.

Come to find out, all it takes is a little know-how and a little time. I’m the type who always likes to learn something new, so I figured I get the know-how part down. The time part was a different story. It seems like the older you get, the more you realize how precious your time is. Helping others really means a lot to me, though, and it’s a value I want our children to grow up and possess.

So Now We’re Starting a Blog

Like I said, time is so precious. Not just your personal time, but family time as well. I didn’t want to go this alone, so my wife Angela and I decided to skip down this road of bloggin’ together—she likes helping people too. Rather than clicking on the TV after we put our kiddos to bed, we decided to start spending our evenings working on “blog stuff.” Early on in this create-a-blog endeavor, I told Angela I would take care of the techie computer side of things. 

We’re a large family operating on a single income, so farming this thing out to be designed and built just wasn’t in the cards for us. The only way we were going to be able to do this was if we did it on our own, and let me tell you, this sucker right here took some learning! What I do for a living is estimate and project manage commercial construction projects. What I do not do for a living is develop websites. Long story short, I’m not a web developer, I didn’t—and still don’t—know much about writing code, and I had definitely never built a website before.

The old saying rings true—you can learn just about anything on YouTube!

This project has been a love/hate relationship! I like being challenged, and the thought of helping other people just like us was something Angela and I were absolutely wanting to do. After a bunch of strikeouts, I found some folks online who I felt I could learn something about blogging from, and I just started taking it all in. Many nights I felt overwhelmed and like I had bit off more than I could chew. At one point, I even took an almost four and a half month hiatus where I didn’t do any “blog stuff” at all—I was so burnt out.

After some big time frustrations, I motivated myself to get back in the saddle. Now here we are! Angela and I are making our first posts together one year and ten months after we decided to do this thing. 

What We Want to Do With Our Blog

Angela and I are nowhere near perfect—not even close! We’re not experts in marriage, we’re still raising our kids, and we’re certainly haven’t figured out to do that thing where the money works to make more money. We are very interested and invested in all those things, which is why we decided to build our blog. We’ve struggled with marriage. Seriously, who hasn’t? We’ve struggled with balancing our family life, and we’ve struggled with our financials. There is always room for improvement, and we want all those things to be better!

Our goal is to use this blog to achieve those things and hopefully help others like us in the process. Maybe no one ever reads what we post. That would suck because we won’t be helping anyone out there. We will still be helping those within our own home, though, and that doesn’t suck. There’s no better way to learn about who you are and the world around you than by absorbing others’ wisdom, especially your families. 

Final Thoughts

The world of amazing internet bloggers plays a positive role in the lives of many everyday folks like you and me. What an awesome thing to be able to sit at your computer, type out something you’ve found works for you, and potentially help someone you’ve never met—and likely never will—with the same problem you had. Angela and I have spent A LOT of time researching blogs and everything that goes into one. We’ve invested a little here and there to hopefully do our part on our almost nothing budget because we wholeheartedly believe in two guiding principles:

Number one!

“The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” – Mark 12:31

And number two!

“If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” – Mother Teresa

Building this blog entirely on our own up to this point has been such an incredibly excellent experience! Our blog has already brought Angela and me closer together, and we’re only on our first post! We are going to keep this sucker going. Maybe—just maybe—we’ll even be blessed enough to bring some other great folks along for the ride!

Reach out to me in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you!