Mindtrap 101
My first blog was called Mindtrap 101 and it was hosted on Blogspot.
I published my first article in 2008. It’s title was The Inner Void.
It was about strategies we use to escape feeling empty on the inside.
I don’t recall exactly what prompted me to start writing it.
But it had something to do with all the courses and books I was reading at the time.
Reading Eckhart Tolle and taking personal development courses made me think long an deep about what identity is beyond the one society assigns us.
I was inspired by Eckhart Tolle’s teachings. He was (and still is) an advocate for practicing presence, awareness, stillness and connecting deeply to nature.
You see, after reading his book, The Power Of Now, everything started shifting in my life.
My first blog served as an outlet to express these new thoughts and ideas that were entering my personal universe, back then.
I wrote about spirituality, psychology and introspection at a time when my focus was almost entirely on my programming career.
The blog is still there if you want to check it out.
Observatorul-MD
I started my second blog in 2010 and I named it Observatorul-MD (translation: The Observer-MD).
I published the first article on 2nd August 2010, and named it În Liniște (translated: In Silence).
That was the year when I decided to spend my birthday with people I’d just met through a personal development workshop.
The topics I wrote about were similar to Mindtrap’s, but writing in Romanian gave the blog a different flavor.
I wrote about presence, stillness, self-discovery and introspection. Again.
This one is still there, too, if you want to have a read at it (use Google translate on it, it’s in Romanian).
Voință De Fier
In 2010, I’d found the personal development blog of Steve Pavlina.
And I just couldn’t stop reading it. It was like a personal development haven.
I’d read the articles for hours at a time, imagining how my life would change for the better if I applied everything written in those articles.
Also, I wanted so much to start my own personal development blog. But I was afraid.
Of not being enough. Or of coming off as a fraud.
Or of not having enough personal development work done to assume the role of a personal development guru.
None of these fears should be enough to stop you from blogging if you want to.
I did purchase a domain: vointadefier.ro (translates as Iron Will).
I named it like this because back in my 20’s I’d lost 35-40 kilograms through strict dieting and going to the gym 5 days a week.
If that didn’t take an iron will to accomplish, I don’t know what else did.
Nonetheless, for some reason, I couldn’t get myself to write articles.
I fumbled. I postponed. I delayed.
I published at most two or three articles in 2010.
The life happened and I abandoned the blog, six months after purchasing the domain.
I cancelled the hosting service and for the next five years, I completely forgot that I still owned the domain name.
In 2015 , I checked owns that domain name now.
Surprise, surprise – it was me!
You see, at the time, domains that ended in .ro didn’t have to be renewed every year.
I felt inspired and decided to reboot the project, but this time to do the actual work.
I remember seeing some synchronicities nudging me to start already!
I kept seeing car plates with VDF written on them (Voință De Fier = VDF).
I took that as a sign from the universe that I should start writing.
After one and a half years, Voință De Fier became a full-fledged personal development blog.
I wrote articles in Romanian, about personal development, introspection, law of attraction and meditation.
Some of those articles went viral.
Mainly the ones about positive thinking, finding inner peace and meditation.
I don’t remember how many shares they got , but it must have been over 25K times, cumulated.
Maybe more? I don’t remember exact numbers.
I learned a lot about search engine optimization, about WordPress and all the technical nitty and gritty you have to know to make your site load fast.
A copy of the original blog is still available as a subdomain to this site (VoDeFi)
In 2017, I redirected the traffic from the blog to a new project, a Romanian YouTube Channel / Podcast dedicated to personal development (Idei Atipice & Transformare Personală)
It was a smart move, as my channel grew to become reasonably popular (8.9K subscribers and several tens of thousands views on some episodes).
I guess the universe was nudging me to start the blog for a reason.
What happened to Voință De Fier?
I bought a new domain danmunteanu.org.
And redirected the traffic to it.
But somehow, I felt this change made the site lose its essence.
Half a year later, I decided to shutdown danmunteanu.org.
And so, Voință De Fier died with it.
SteemIt
SteemIt is (was) a crypto-based platform that allowed you to be paid for writing articles.
As your articles got upvoted by members of the community, you could earn the platform’s cryptocurrency.
At the beginning, it was fun, interesting and it got heart.
By writing only a few articles, I earned some Steem (that’s the name of the cryptocurrency).
And I was able to transform said currency into real cash.
How much? Enough to pay for 3-days trip to the neighboring country’s capital – Budapest.
And also two pairs of jeans :))
Pretty neat, all from blogging on this platform.
Soon after, the platform was acquired and lost all it’s initial charm.
But it was a fun experiment to partake.
This episode happened sometimes between 2015 and 2017 if I recall correctly.
tools.realityframeworks.com
After shutting down my personal development site, I missed tinkering with WordPress.
I bought the realityframeworks.com domain in 2022, but I was not ready to start blogging again.
Not in public, at least.
So I set up a subdomain and just uploaded scans of my handwritten notes.
I wanted to keep this blog private.
But it turns out that on the internet, you can’t really keep anything private for too long.
After a while, I noticed in CPanel that some bots had already downloaded most of my “private” notes.
Maybe I was just bad at making my WordPress site secure enough.
Nonetheless, the loss wasn’t too big.
I’ve since taken the subdomain down and turned it into a private Obsidian vault.
And I turned my full attention upon…
RealityFrameworks.com
This is my newest and latest blogging endeavor.
I don’t have a clear direction for it yet, but there’s plenty of room I would like to explore.
Writing on this site helps me express who I am now.
It also helps me figure out who I want to be know and what I resonate with at this stage in my life.
I’ve recently turned 40. I am definitely not the person I used to be until a few years ago.
Who is this new person, I wonder? He is still in the making.
I’m actually curious to figure out how and what this guy is about.
Blogging brings me clarity.
Writing sharpens and focuses the mind.
And it helps me put things in perspective and to make new connections.
Writing helps with creating a clear picture of what matters to me now.
I want to be able to write about whatever the heck I want on this site.
And not to think too much about niching down and such.
Is it bad for business? Perhaps.
In the long run, I also intend to find one or multiple (ethical) ways of monetizing this site.
Conclusion
That’s it, thanks for reading this far!
This was my history with blogging.
If you like the idea, I challenge you to write your own “history with blogging” article.
I was inspired to do so by reading Lou Plummer’s blogging journey article.
See you soon!
