How blogging connected me to the numerous opportunities that exist on the web

A story is told of a man who played a prank on some lady. At night, the lady sure that the man was dead asleep, took all the man’s money from his pockets and stashed the money into her handbag. But later in the night, the man woke up and took all the money from the lady’s handbag including that of the woman and hid it under the carpet. The woman made off in the morning thinking she had made a killing but the man had had “the last laugh”. Such and many others are the kind of humorous tales that Tumusiime Rushedge also known as Old Fox told in his weekly column in the Sunday Vision back in the day. I never grew up reading his column. I actually started reading his column after his death when the most interesting of his stories were being re-run in honour of the contributions he had always made to the paper.

His stories are the kind that I would have loved to read over and over plus catch up on those I had missed out reading. But they were not readily available, at least on line. A few years back when I tried searching for the stories on line, I could barely find any, I realised the need for keeping my work on line or at least some of it.

One day I will die like Tumusiime Rushedge but I don’t want my stories to die with me or forever remain locked up in the archives of some national daily. It was Rushedge’s story; I didn’t want it to be my story. So, I started blogging.

Some stories are timeless and the lessons they teach are transcendent. It is only prudent that these stories should be preserved in forms which will be easily accessible for the generations that will come after us.  

Personally, I know there are people who will know of my stories many years after I die and some will find them interesting and others may want to read each of the stories. I don’t want to deny them that opportunity.

I want that even after many years, when someone wants to trace these stories; it will be as easy as Google-ing the Wireless Connection.

That is why even though my blogging journey has not been without its own setbacks, when I look back I can only be glad that I took the leap and crossed the line.

Over my 4 years of blogging, I have technically trained myself in certain basics of web design because I always wanted my blog to have a professional touch to it. I always took time to personalize every tool on the blog.

I shared its content on various social media forums. I was forced to read more about Facebook and Twitter. In the process, I learnt that such were tools of trade and not mere interaction forums for redundant status updates, worthless chit chats and bogus tweets from some bored Ugandans. In the end my eyes were opened to the boundless opportunities that exist in these online tools and forums.