Happy First Birthday!

This blog is officially one year old today.

Happy First Birthday to my travel blog.

It has been an interesting journey of discovery, frustration, elation and a very steep learning curve. This blog commenced while I was staying with my son and daughter-in-law in Sydney last year. We were having a short holiday there and Simon did all the technical stuff setting up my three blogs. He still does all the maintenance on our blogs.

Thanks Sim’.

What have I learned?

1. Connecting: The writer’s life can be lonely at times – but on the positive side, I’ve made many contacts with people all over the world through their comments and links to this blog and my other sites. Thanks to all of you.
2. Selecting: The blogging world is an interesting place to live in; there are many wonderful writers who are forward looking in their thinking and express that in their writing. There’s just not enough time in each day to read it all, so one has to be very selective.
3. Focussing: The writer’s and blogger’s life needs to be very focussed on the task at hand. The internet can be a huge distraction and hours just fly off into the unknown leaving little time for the real work of actually writing.
4. Absorbing: There are so many things one needs to learn how to do to make the writer’s life and one’s blogging ventures successful. At times I felt like a giant sponge soaking up all the information about this new venture. Putting it all into practice was a challenge. Sometimes, like the sponge, I felt so bloated; at other times all wrung out and dry.
5. Rewarding: Being able to write over 900 blog posts for the last year has been very rewarding, giving me a great sense of achievement. Having a readership in the many thousands every month has its own rewards, especially when people connect via comments, some returning frequently. Receiving my first payment from my blogging was another reward and, though modest at this stage, it is a start.

So there you have it.

Happy First Birthday.

Reader’s Questions:

• How long have you been blogging?
• What have you learned from writing and blogging?