The Story About Ian That Ian Doesn't Know [Guest Blog]

My name is Ashley and I blog at Writing To Reach You. I am nearing the end of a blog tour, but I had to stop here at Ian’s blog to tell a story he doesn’t know. About this time two years ago, I decided that I wanted to vlog every day in August and a few of my blog friends decided to join me, so we did a little organizing and chose some topics, and I posted about it on my blog to get others of our blog friends to join in.

Then this guy in Liverpool found my post and said he wanted to participate, and I was a little hesitant, because I didn’t expect strangers to join us.  He didn’t even have a blog, which was the thing that bonded the rest of us.  He left a comment on my blog and messaged me on YouTube.  When I didn’t respond right away, he replied to me a couple times on twitter asking again to join. I was like, “OMG, who is this guy and why won’t he leave me alone?”

This is probably a good time to admit that I’m a weird person and anyone trying that hard to get my attention makes me want to run the other direction.  I’m more the kind of person you have to creep up on slowly. What I’m saying is that it’s a miracle I have any friends at all.  So I let this guy join because there was no real reason not to and I figured he was going to keep bothering me until I added his name to the list.  But, I kept my distance.

Then my friends started referring to someone named Ian and I realized it was the same guy from Liverpool.  My mind was already made up that he was kind of weird, but my friends seemed to think he was okay, so I started watching his vlogs.  It turned out that he was nice and funny, and I was the weird one.

That August, Ian became one of us, and now I can’t imagine #VEDA without him.  And I totally benefited from his friendliness and persistence when we were at VidCon and he started chatting up my idol, Ze Frank.  I, of course, was as awkward as possible, but I got to shake Ze’s hand, and I probably wouldn’t have done that if Ian hadn’t broken the ice.  Oh, and I treat strangers who join #VEDA with way less suspicion now. We don’t want to miss out on another Ian!