Quarterly Review of Blogging. #2

I’ve been blogging for 6 months now. No longer brand new, and still on a fairly steep learning curve. Most of what I said 3 months ago in my first Quarterly Review of Blogging still applies. I’m very much enjoying the community of bloggers, and I remain surprised at how often I’m posting and how much I am enjoying it.

About that word blog, though. Hmmm. I understand its origins, etc, but it seems so ungainly.

So what are my learnings for this six month adventure?

I like to write, more than I had realized. I am also recognizing that writing fiction is unlikely to be my thing. I’m enjoying essays and in another surprise, poetry in a limited sense. I do recall enjoying writing haiku when it was introduced in Jr. High, but I hadn’t really done it since. What’s a 50 year hiatus?

My community has grown a bit. Each month, I’ve added some followers, and have now broken (gasp) 90. With that, the average number of views on my posts has also grown. Just as I finished writing this, I got a notification from WP that I’ve hit 1000 likes! Still small potatoes, and that’s fine with me. I can get caught up in responses and numbers and so for me it’s important to recall that the point of my writing is self exploration and expression, with some sharing of stuff I find entertaining thrown in along the way.

I’m continuing to gain knowledge  from a technical perspective, expanding my rudimentary computer skills. I’m improving my editing and like many others, I’m still surprised at what escapes my notice prior to publishing. The good news is that I’ve learned how to make corrections post-publication.

What’s next for me? Continued improvement and skill-building, I think. I want to learn more about haiku and its related friends, going beyond the basic syllable structure. I have some ideas for some small series, featuring a variety of topics, including cats and signs. On the technical side, there are some things I’d like to learn and improve on site presentation and organization.

In my monthly review of my triathlon training, I pose the following questions to myself each time. Am I having fun? Is this a good use of my time and energy? Do I want to continue? Applying these questions to my blog, the answers are yes, yes and yes.

So thanks for reading and following and stay tuned for whatever comes next as we greet 2018.