Demographics

Mood: well-fed
Listening to: 'One Less Lonely Girl' by Justin Bieber
Hungry for: dessert

I must say, I'm very proud of my blog. It is about two and a half years old now, and it's more successful than I ever hoped for it to be. It's really boosted my confidence in my writing, improved my writing skills and fine-tuned my abilities to entertain, and been an essential lifeline during times of pain and stress.

For my new readers, here is the history of the blog:

I've always been a sort of angsty, opinionated kind of person, and I got into all sorts of trouble by voicing my opinions in rather crude and uncivilized means at school. As I grew older, my opinions became more defined and my belief in them much more religious. I needed an outlet for all of my opinions. I wanted to show however small a percentage of the world's population that cared what I thought.

Growing up, I'd always been the 'weird' kid. I didn't conform to your stereotypical nerd image - I was studious but I also cared obsessively about my appearance, I was bookish but also involved in all sorts of societies and clubs - and I copped a lot of teasing from my classmates - a mixture of the thuggish seeking ego boosting, the cruel preying on the week, jealous rivals and confused xenophobics. This did nothing other than to make myself even more eccentric and different.

Also, growing up, I was obsessed with being recognised and rewarded for my efforts and talents. Nothing would tick me off than missing out on an award that I thought I deserved - which happened often, because I grew up in a rather xenophobic and rasicst school - in fact, I was passed over for the English Award at primary school graduation, and I was so disappointed that I couldn't sing the graduation song and graduated crying. You might think that's petty, and what I'm about to say is arrogant, but I truly deserved that award. I worked so hard for it - it was like training and competing the Olympics, and then being told you're not going to be given the medal because you weren't the stereotype for the winner of the event. I was told later that it was because I was obsessed with the Twilight series, but I figured out later that the main reason was because I was always at loggerheads with the teachers, and because I was Asian. I hoped that, since my school had failed to recognise me, that maybe the world would.

So I started my blog. Blogger was the most practical choice, because it was free, easy to access and easy to use. So my blog, which was then called 'The Secret World of a Misunderstood Writer', was born in October 2008, a few months before primary school graduation.

My web alter-ego, Lady Renegade, is basically a louder version of me - my inner persona unleashed. Lady Renegade lives purely off the passion and dedication I have to keep suppressed so much in the real world - Lady Renegade helps me live the life I wish I could live. A little insight into how I created the name - the 'Lady' part comes from the fact that I come from Korean nobility on my paternal side, and also has some feminist undertones, and 'Renegade' is just a fancy word for 'rebel', which is essentially what I am - or, at least, what Lady Renegade is. I am only Lady Renegade on the web - at school I almost forget about the connection. But, Lady Renegade is my best friend in times of need - she helps me to battle on. Is she and I one and the same? That's what I've been asking myself since I created Lady Renegade.

My first blog posts were, I admit, rather childish, but the time I started my blog also marked one of my first bad experiences with boys - the infamous BSC. This blog has essentially been there for me ever since the drama began.

And so the blog began to progress, and as it got more popular from my Wikipedia buddies (I used to edit Wikipedia for fun, and use my Wikipedia page as a MySpace page so much to the point I got blocked for being useless), word of mouth and my persistent advertising at my school. I gained a lot of enemies from this blog, but I stuck to posting about how I saw the world - no-one could stop me. That's one of the things I love about blogging. You feel invincible, and it's a very good bullying repellant - because where teachers fail, blogging doesn't.

In September last year, I changed the blog name to 'This Is How a Renegade Thinks', and formatted my blog pretty much how it is now, only the background was black. I changed the name one, because The Secret World of a Misunderstood Writer is a huge tongue twister, and two, because I didn't really feel like my world was so secret anymore - I liked having my opinions out in the open. I changed the background to black because at that point in time, I was going through a couple of rough patches with my (now ex) best friend. In December, I rechristened it Tempestuous (I wrote a post about the name change in the December archives) and at some point I changed the background to white, because people were complaining they couldn't read it and that I was emo.

I think my writing has really improved because of my blogging, and I feel a lot healthier having an outlet for all my anger and passion - keeping it bottled up was like a time bomb, just waiting to explode at any given moment. My list of Followers has increased steadily, now at twenty (I never dreamed it would get to this number, but now I'm thinking big - 100 followers) and I now get traffic from all over the world, also something I never thought would happen (I doubted it would ever get out of Australia, but now most of my readers are from the U.S).

I'd like to thank everyone who has kept this blog running - that is, you. I want to thank you for reading my writing, and appreciating a different, slightly darker, take on life. Without you, this blog would be just like most of the other high school blogs - a crash and burn sort of thing, where the only readers are the occasional sympathetic friend. I thank you for supporting me in times of pain, and I thank you for being there to share my times of joy. I hope you'll continue to follow me as I try to find my place in the world. Thank you for letting me dream big. I love you all.

LADY RENEGADE.