I don’t know to start this.

Really, I don’t know how to write this post. How does one introduce themselves to a world full of readers? What do I say about myself that will make you think ‘oh yeah, I’ll follow her, she’s interesting.’

Interesting. That key buzzword. The thing we all aspire to be but interesting doesn’t work when you’re boring does it? So how am I, a boring person, meant to be interesting to you, the reader?

It’s okay if you don’t know, I don’t either. Though I’d probably like you more if you could tell me.

So I did what we all do when we don’t know something these days, I didn’t open a book, I didn’t ask someone who might know, I asked a faceless search engine: Google.

Spoiler alert: Google wasn’t a lot of help.

If you search ‘how to write an introductory blog post for your blog’ (first time I searched this I wrote ‘introductionary’ and it took me about twenty minutes to realise that wasn’t a word), 922,000,000 results come up. It’s a tad overwhelming really, but what isn’t these days?

If you click on a site titled ‘How to Write Irresistible Blog Post Introductions That’ll Keep Your Reader Reading’ by Julie Neidlinger on coschedule.com you’ll promptly be told readers only read 18% of a blog post, which was such an encouraging notion I almost cancelled this domain name, shut my laptop and crawled back into my little hermit existence.

Once you get past that punch to the stomach you’ll find six “useful” tips and you’re probably thinking: Evelyn, what more could you ask for? That’s exactly what you were looking for isn’t it?

No, it wasn’t, because the third tip is that I use an anecdote to hook the readers, and Julie so kindly gives the example of an anecdote she’s used before: “I once wrote a newspaper story that killed a man”.

Well that’s all well and good for you Julie, but not for me, because pardon me for being extremely dull, but I’ve never killed a man before!

Is that the standard now? Do I have to kill a man to be interesting enough to write a blog post? Because telling you all more relatable anecdotes about dropping my phone on my face, spilling something or do something embarrassing isn’t going to cut it now, the stakes have been raised to murder and somehow I’m expected to live up to that.

(However please comment suggestions for victims.)

After spending too much time gawking at the screen and not believing the sheer audacity of Julie in telling us to tell people we murdered someone, I went looking elsewhere: Expresswriters.com

They were equally as depressing in claiming the average human’s attention span is now only 8 seconds, which is bloody fantastic isn’t it? I’ve now got to hook a bunch of goldfish in this introduction post.

I quit that site before I could read the rest and be told to “use the second person” again in a very over-friendly yet somehow patronising tone.

But every site I went onto after that offered the same general advice that could be boiled down to including who I was, what I wanted the blog to be about, what people may want to know about that subject, and how they could help your blog.

And it all sounded so boring.

But I have no better ideas, so I’ll try to answer those prompts anyway:

• My name is Evelyn Brown, I’m 21, I have lots of mental health problems and endometriosis, and I like to read. (See? Boring.)
• I don’t know what I want the blog to be about, me maybe? I’m guessing me.
• What do people want to know about me? I have a dog! (maybe that will make you like me more.)
• I don’t know, give me validation I guess.

There’s not much more to say about me or this blog, other than I want to write about what I want to write about. Maybe some days I’ll want to post pictures, or on others talk about my mental health or endometriosis, maybe I’ll talk about something very mundane in my life instead.

I don’t know!

I don’t think anyone knows what their creations are for initially or where they might go, and I think that’s okay – I hope it’s okay other wise I am screwed.

But if you want to stick around with me and watch me figure out who I am and what this, and maybe watch me descend into becoming a Julie Neidlinger who one day accidentally kills a man, that would be nice.

This is likely the start of nothing considering I’ve just insulted and turned my nose up at every piece of blogging advice I could find, but maybe I could start something small and personal instead and even though I’m a bit of a critic that could be “good”.

So come be a goldfish, or a sheep or whatever blog followers are now if you like, and if not goodbye, hope you find whatever you’re looking for.

And if you choose to stay, hello! I hope I don’t let you down (though I probably would, I’m very good at disappointing people).