My First Blog Post

Google Trends: Mental health and Climate Change in the Philippines

Have extreme weather events disturbed the nation’s wellbeing?

Comparison of search volume for ‘Climate change’ and ‘Mental health’ in the Philippines in the 3 months leading up to 2nd Feb, 2020

The red line for ‘mental health’ seems to follow quite closely the blue line for ‘climate change’; the peaks for the red line seem to fit almost perfectly within those of the blue line, and the two lines sag in sync in the middle. We can infer from the graph that there is some association between mental health and climate change in the Philippines at the moment. One possibility is that climate change events lead people to search for this term, but also impact negatively on people’s mental health and lead them to seek support online.

***there have been many climate-related events recently…*** – interestingly it is during December there’s a lull. Could it be that internet-use in general goes down during events? check for other time points

Typhoon Kammuri – one of many recent extreme weather events in the Phillipines – led to floods and landslides in December 2019, which is likely to have affected web searches.

An article published by the Straits Times on 3rd December, 2019, stated that “Typhoon season used to end in October but has stretched to December since the year 2000, a phenomenon experts blamed on climate change.” This seems similar to the effects that climate change may be having on bush-fires in Australia: they have existed for a long time, but now the bush-fire season has begun to start earlier.

Introduce Yourself (Example Post)

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.