9th Blogging Anniversary – What Were You Doing 3287 Days Ago?

~ Amusives

Nine years ago (the aforementioned 3287 days) I published my first blog post: Did you Get the H1N1 Flu Shot in 2009. It was not highly successful and has been viewed a grand total of 13 times. At the other end of the scale,  Tricky Questions – Thinking Outside the Box has been quite popular with over 36,000 views. Go figure…

That’s the interesting thing about blogging. While I might have a general idea what my readers might find interesting or when it is a good time to catch them in a reading mood, I  have no idea how the Search Engines will promote or trash my posts! I do know this involves algorithms that judge, filter, penalize and reward content, but that is about the extent of my understanding!

While the stats for the Tricky Questions post are fascinating to watch,  I like the H1N1 post as much and I love the process of researching and writing.  I’m happy with my blog as a whole –  a scrapbook of my photos, thoughts and ideas – my Codex Vitae.

I think the pleasure of completed work is what makes blogging so popular. You have to believe most bloggers have few if any actual readers. The writers are in it for other reasons. Blogging is like work, but without coworkers thwarting you at every turn. All you get is the pleasure of a completed task.
– Scott Adams –

I’ve mapped out a plan for the next year of blogging at Fueled by Chocolate (because 9 years of blogging won’t be as newsworthy as 10 years of blogging!) I’m bringing over all my quotation posts from The Quippery and will roll them out, two every week, for the next six months. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I’ve enjoyed collecting them.

Old words are reborn with new faces.
– Criss Jami, Killosophy –

My Birds and Bugs will keep being updated.

When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
– E. O. Wilson –

I’ll also be taking a Conservative exploration of topics that include politics, the environment, media bias, free speech – but also the exciting possibility of a return to civil discourse!

The reason that free speech is so important… It keeps the balance between those two tendencies. You need the questioning, and you need the order. You think, “how much of each?” The answer is, “the recipe changes day to day.” And so you think, “well, if it changes day to day, how are we going to keep up?” The answer is, “by keeping up! Here we are. We’re alive. We can keep up, but we do that by thinking, and we think by talking, and we think and talk by disagreeing. And we better disagree conceptually, because then we don’t have to act out stupid ideas that would kill us.”
– Jordan Peterson, Oxford Union Address –

What were you doing 3287 days ago? What was the most popular post you have ever written? Which of your posts is your favourite?

10 thoughts on “9th Blogging Anniversary – What Were You Doing 3287 Days Ago?”

  1. I had two posts “Freshly Pressed” (back when WordPress actually promoted their bloggers by featuring posts on their home page) that got a lot of brief attention but by far my two consistently viewed posts are “When the Hummingbirds Return to Southern Ontario” and “Six Things About Sand”. The first is very popular in the springtime (when hundreds of people want to know when to put hummingbirds feeders) and the second gets hits here and there when, I suppose, teachers assign the topic of “sand” as a research project (the hits come in waves throughout the year). I blogged weekly for 3+ years but gradually slowed down because it was starting to feel like “work” and I was getting few hits, likes or comments. I like the quote you have above, though – I do get a good deal of satisfaction when I actually get something written and posted. I need to rethink why I gave up.

    Like

    1. The most important thing is that you write when it feels right!
      Last winter I did an Ikigai exercise – you know, the one where you draw overlapping circles, then fill them in with interests, etc. It was interesting to see how blogging helped to achieve what I was interested in doing.

      Like

      1. I’ll have to try that. I did follow “The Artist’s Way” a year ago and found it very helpful (even if I didn’t write much when I was done!)

        Like

  2. So this is interesting. I signed onto WordPress for some unknown reason tonight (it’s been a long time!), checked when my first post was (2009, so roughly 9 years ago). Then here’s your question, what were you doing “9 years ago”? 🙂 Probably why we met back then, two newbies. Glad to see your still at it!

    Like

    1. You just made my day, Steve. It is ever so pleasant to get a visit from a blogger from the ‘good old days’. Hope you and your family are doing well.
      I hopped back to one of your earliest posts – the flat tire one. It reminded me of an encounter this summer with a nephew who couldn’t get the wheel off his tractor (mower). He asked my husband for advice. My Hubby took him down the memory lane that only a Car Guy/oil field hand/son of a farmer-mechanic can have! Then we left the nephew to do the job, and curse if it helped…

      Liked by 1 person

  3. For reasons I simply don’t understand, my top 2 posts are about False Elephant Snout and Marmite vs Vegemite. I JUST DON’T GET IT. They are nothing pieces. It just goes to prove that I know nothing about blogging in spite of being at it for 6 years 😏

    I made a decision about a year ago to only save posts for about 2 years and then delete them. False Elephant Snout and Vegemite survived the purge because who was I to argue with blog hits? 😉

    Like

    1. 6 years! You are getting up there in terms of being a veteran!
      I see your Marmite vs Vegemite post has more comments than most of my posts combined! I can sure see why you would hang on to that one.

      Like

      1. Thanks Mary 🙂
        I really don’t understand why the Vegemite thing is so popular. It gets hits most days

        Like

  4. I hadn’t realised you’d started blogging here in 2009 – so did I, though I’ve had so many blogs both here and on other sites, over the years, that I’ve lost count of them!

    My current blog is no longer open to search engines so much of its success has simply been from people following commenters over from their own blogs, I think. On my current blog the most popular post is called ‘Something About Me’ and was a partial rant and a partial autobiographical piece (with a photo of myself that I coloured, too) but on past blogs, it was usually either the humorous pieces or sad ones that got the most views, one that springs to mind was actually a series of posts – episodic, really – in which I recounted the progress – or not – of a sick fledgling blackbird that my husband and I were looking after. It died and that was a very sad day for us and for my readers and followers. So.. well, it’s not always the posts we’d like to have become popular.

    Also, I hadn’t realised you had a bird blog, I’ll have to have a look at that. I’d intended to do the same, but although I have the blog itself, I’ve not put anything on it or made it public. yet.

    Like

    1. Hi Val – I remember you from your blogs many years ago! It was nice to see you blogging again with such an interesting and creative skill.
      I, like you, am always amazed by what grabs the interest of readers!

      Liked by 1 person

Comments are closed.