I was in two minds as to whether or not to publish a blog
this week; I’m sure that even the most enthusiastic followers of any blog (let
alone mine), have enough on their plates this week to push reading a blog down
their list of priorities. On the other hand though, as we are nearly at the end
of the year it is as good a time as any to look back at my first year of
blogging.
In one of my very early blogs, “It’s Life Jim, but not as we
knew it,” (http://rulesfoolsandwisemen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/its-life-jim-but-not-as-we-know-it.html)
I said that “One of the reasons for starting this blog is that I’ve always
enjoyed writing, either for work or for fun, and it can be quite a cathartic
process, even if no one else reads it. For better or for worse, I’m going to
try adding to this blog once a week at least.” Now it remains true to say that
I enjoy writing and it is cathartic
at times and when the need has arisen, I’ve enjoyed digging around for
information to include in my blog. But did I care if people read it or not? Of
course I cared.
As far I can see, there is no accurate or reliable
information on exactly how many blogs there are out there on the net, but
earlier this year Tumblr.com had over 101.7 Million blogs, WordPress.com had in
excess of 63 Million blogs, Livejournal reports 62.6 million blogs and Weebly
over 12 million, and a quick look at the worldometers website (http://www.worldometers.info/blogs/)
shows that nearly 1.2 billion blog posts have been written in 2013 so far. With
that number of blogs competing for attention, any number of hits I got was
going to be a bonus but I would be lying if I said that I would have carried on
if I had not had some sort of readership.
What did surprise me (and gratify me too) was that each week
when I published my blog there would be a respectable number of hits, and while
I knew that a few friends would take a look, there were always some hits from
outside the UK. As you might expect, the bulk of my audience appears to be in
the UK, but the US, Spain, Germany, France, Russia and Poland also feature
regularly, which is nice!
Sometimes the subject matter for my blog readily suggests
itself, possibly because of some news item I have read or seen; alternatively
it may be because I have done something particular that week. Then there are
the subjects that I just think would be interesting. One such was A Midland
Odyssey (http://rulesfoolsandwisemen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/a-midland-odyssey.html).
Now when I say interesting, I have to admit that I thought of it as chiefly of
interest to me (and possibly anyone who worked for or had worked for, Midland
Bank or HSBC) but possibly not to many other people; I thought it might be a
little self indulgent. To my surprise, this proved to be my most popular blog
to date.
Like so many things associated with computing and the
internet, blogging is so much easier than it was years ago; basically there is
a template, you chose your design, decide on a name, type in your content
and...well, that’s pretty much it really. The trickier thing is having some
sort of inspiration as to what to write and the time to write it. The latter is
of course far less of a problem if you aren’t holding down a full-time job.
Before I actually started doing so I had hankered after the idea of writing a
blog; there were a couple of false starts before I published anything. As with
many things, I was uncertain as to how it would work and whether I could
sustain the momentum, especially since it became clear that publishing every
Thursday put a little pressure on. But
that has been a good thing; I’ve banged on about liking routine, so having to
sit down once a week and write something and then publish it has been
beneficial.
Having blogged for a year now I would thoroughly recommend
it, so if you have been thinking about it and maybe putting it off, why not
give it a go? It’s easy, it’s free and having people read what you have written
is rewarding.
That’s it for 2013, thank you for reading! Rules, Fools and Wise Men will return on
January 2nd, so until then, Happy New Year!
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