Today I’m starting a #Blogtown tradition! Every Tuesday (God willing!), I’ll share a 5-question interview with a member of #Blogtown. My first guest is Ian at Orthodox Trucker.

How did your blog gets its name?

I first started Orthodox Trucker in the fall of 2013. It was just after I graduated from Commercial Driving School and had earned my CDL. I then created a (now deleted) YouTube channel where I talked about Trucking, life on the road, and the Orthodox Christian faith. I was an Orthodox Christian and a trucker, so calling myself Orthodox Trucker seemed like a no-brainer. This initial version of Orthodox Trucker lasted for about a year before it was discontinued.

See, after a year of trucking, I actually quit and got out of the industry. I actually hated it. Since I was no longer a trucker, I saw no need to continue the Orthodox Trucker persona. It was more than a year later when I finally got back into a truck in order to support my then-pregnant wife. It would be another four years before I finally decided to resurrect Orthodox Trucker. Around this time last year, I started having observations about the faith in everyday aspects of my life and in my job and started writing about them. I had no blog at the time, so I just shared them to Facebook and the Orthodox Hipster group. With encouragement from my wife and my new internet friends, I finally decided to resurrect Orthodox Trucker. This time in blog form.

What would you say is the defining characteristic of your blog?

Raw honesty. Everything that happens in my life, and all the lessons I learned, plus everything that I struggle with is fair game. I don’t hold anything back.

Sometimes that gets me in trouble as there are some things that most people wouldn’t share, but if I’m going to have a blog that is based upon my life and my experiences, then I’m going to do my best to be as real and honest as possible.

What’s your favorite thing about blogging? Least favorite?

My favorite thing about blogging is the excitement I feel when I have finished a particularly difficult post, or when I know I have a really good idea, a lot of times it feels like the blog post just writes itself. My least favorite thing is writer’s block and the struggle to come up with new content 3 days a week, or when my work life gets too busy and I can’t work on my blog.

You’re a member of Blogtown, a social blogging collaborative. How is blogging social for you?

It’s definitely allowed me to make new friends, and I feel like those friends are more important than just your typical Facebook friend. Here there is engagement driven by human connection. Since joining blogtown, I have felt such love and encouragement from my fellow bloggers, and it’s a really nice feeling.

Tell us 3 things we’d know about you if we’d grown up with you.

Three things… I was a band nerd in high school playing Alto and tenor sax in concert band and Jazz Band. I got to travel to Hawaii once for an international High School band competition and had the opportunity as a junior to play with a couple Emmy Award winning Jazz musicians. That was pretty cool.

My nickname in elementary school was Speedy, not because I was fast but because the shoes I wore had these large metal buckles on the sides and every time I tried to run, the buckles caught, tripping me and making me fall to the ground. I actually took this nickname to heart though and became one of the fastest kids at PE whenever we did track and field exercises. Sadly I injured my knees and never got to explore that sport in junior high.

I convinced several of my friends to join the Boy Scouts with me and surprisingly nearly all of them including myself made it all the way to Eagle Scout. I like to think that I made it all possible by encouraging them to join hahaha.

Thank you, Ian!

You can connect with Ian at Orthodox Trucker! See you in #Blogtown!