Happy Birthday to My Blog

By Jim Hagarty

One year ago today, lifetimesentences.com was sprung on an unsuspecting world. After months of being urged by my daughter and a friend who has been blogging for more than 10 years, I gave in and took the plunge. I found a good video on YouTube from a blogger who blogs about how to set up blogs. He was actually pretty helpful and at minimal cost, I was up and running about 24 hours later.

I started off with a bang and ignored my blogging friend’s caution to take it easy or I might burn out. Me? Ha! Nonsense. I was heading for the moon Alice. Pow, right in the kisser!

After about six months of contributing several stories, poems, photos and songs every day, I walked over onto the dark side of the moon and burned out. So there was a lull. This fall, my productivity slowed down and I began letting things slide. First I missed a day or two where I didn’t post at all and soon I was comfortable with letting a whole week slide without contributing anything. Amazingly, it seems, I didn’t lose the number of viewers I thought I might.

But I began to find my footing again around Christmas time and by mid-winter I was back to a pretty good rate of production, though not matching my outburst during the first six months.

So I have settled into a bit of a routine and while I am trying my best at the moment, I would like to step it up a bit as time goes by. I have learned a few things along the way, with still lots to learn. It is a pretty great pastime and though my stats counter quit for a month a while back before I noticed it and got it going again, I believe I have had about 50,000 page views over the past 12 months. I am pleased with that. I am not sure how many individual readers that represents but I am guessing the blog is attracting almost 100 people a day. More from the United States than Canada where I live and some from several other countries around the world including Great Britain, Australia and even Russia.

Thanks for tagging along these past 365 days. I appreciate your interest. The endeavour is evolving and this next year I might experiment with a few changes to the design and content. I am going to have to call a meeting with myself and sit down to decide where I want to take this.

I hope good things only lie ahead.

Author: Jim Hagarty

I am a 72-year-old retired journalist, busy recovering from a lifelong career as an unretired journalist. This year marks a half century of my scratching out little fables about life. My interests include genealogy, humour and music. I live in a little blue shack in Canada and spend most of my time trying to stay out of trouble. I am not that good at it. I also spent years teaching journalism. Poor state of journalism today: My fault. I have a family I don't deserve, a dog that adores me, and two cars the junk yard refuses to accept. My prized possessions include my old guitar and a razor my Dad gave me when I was 14 and which I still use when I bother to shave. Oh, and my great-great-grandfather's blackthorn stick he brought from Ireland in the 1850s. I have only one opinion but it is a good one: People take too many showers.