This blog has had a little over 1,000 views since I started it back in July 2013, which of course caused me to reflect on all of my blogging experience (limited though it is).
It starting with the inkling of an idea. The idea grew at the suggestion of a couple of friends that I start a blog. Once I decided to start the blog, I felt pressure to create it before I went on my trip to the Netherlands last year. At the beginning of July, LivingDaringly.com was born!
Since then I’ve written 38 posts. My most popular post was about house concerts. Coming in second was one about self reflection, followed by one about keeping it together. Rocking the boat came in a close fourth…
People have visited my blog from 17 different countries! Aside from the obvious ones (e.g. the U.S. and Canada), there were visitors from Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Lebanon, Grenada, the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, India, New Zealand, Mali, and Japan. Some of those locations are more obvious to me than others, but I appreciate the support no matter who or where it comes from.
I’m also excited about the feedback I’ve gotten about my blog. My little blog doesn’t get a whole lot of traffic right now, so I sometimes wonder if there’s anyone out there. Then someone will message me on Facebook and tell me that they know just how I feel. Or they’ll thank me for sharing my thoughts and feelings about challenging issues. That’s what I wanted when I started this blog! I wanted to share my stories and for them to help in some way. It feels really good that this blog is already having an impact, even if it is a small one.
I’m also excited about entering new blogging territory. After writing about the Peter Mulvey house concert I attended recently, the concert hosts contacted me and asked me to come and blog about their next show, Acoustic Eidolon. To emphasize my excitement: people liked something I wrote and specifically asked me to come and write something else. I’m incredibly flattered to have been asked, and I’m looking forward to experiencing Acoustic Eidolon’s music for the first time on February 22. You’ll have to wait until then to read my fantastic blog post about that experience.
I may also be foraying into the territory of “professional blogger.” I’m getting involved with the Tampa Bay Bloggers, and I look forward to working with them to promote events that I care about and am interested in: like the Electodash 5k. In exchange for my blog about the Electrodash, I received free registration codes to give away, a discount code to encourage people who don’t receive free registration, and I get free registration too (bonus!). Payment (in free registration) to write about running, which I already like to do anyway? Pretty awesome…
After 6 months of writing, I find that I love writing my blog posts. It allows me to explore ideas more fully than I might otherwise, and it allows me to share those ideas with the world. It allows me to support events and organizations that I care about and share them with the community. It allows me to go outside of my comfort zone, and recently it seems to be showing me doors that I would never have even known were there. Surely it’s a more productive hobby than sitting on my bum and Facebooking…
My mom sent me this today: Write Your Story to Find Healing. I find that LivingDaringly.com is helping me to do that, but I think it is so important for all of us to share our stories. Especially the hard ones! When we do that, we quickly learn that we aren’t alone. And if nothing else, I hope people take that away from my blog: you are not alone. And as Brené Brown would say: you are enough.
So thank you to everyone who has supported this project. I appreciate every comment, share, like, and view that you send my way. I look forward to writing many more posts and sharing my story with you.
And I’m also proud of myself. When I first began the blog I was worried: 1) I would quickly run out of things to write about and 2) people would think that the topics I chose were irrelevant or outright stupid. By living daringly and taking a risk, I proved myself wrong.
Being wrong is a good thing sometimes!