Happy New Year

I only posted to this blog five times in 2013.  But since it seemed like I wasn't blogging at all, I'm kind-of surprised by that number.  And since this is my first post of 2014, I guess this blog isn't completely dead yet.  And I wonder how long it can exist?  Will it still be here somewhere on the internets ten years from now if I don't purposely take it down? Will it still be here in twenty years? Fifty?  I doubt that.  But who knows.

I didn't take as many creative photos last year as I usually do.  But here are some of my favorites from 2013:

Two Years of Counting

It's been two years now since I added a hit counter to this blog and I'm pretty amazed at the results - especially considering how infrequently I put things up and how little promotion I do.

4,379 visits have been made since 12/24/09.

78% of people who click onto this blog come from the United States, but it has been visited by people from 79 countries, including Bulgaria, Jordan, Ireland, Russia, and Estonia!

I know that just because someone happens to click onto this blog for whatever reason doesn't mean that they actually read any of it, but still.... it boggles my mind.

I really like the idea of blogging, but I think this kind of blog - a personal blog - has pretty much been replaced by Facebook. In an amazingly short amount of time, blogging has begun to seem somewhat old-fashioned!

I say I don't have the time to blog, but I do find the time each day to visit Facebook. I scroll through all the recent status updates, maybe play a video clip or two, look at some photos, make a few comments, and play a few games of Scrabble. I wonder how much time that eats up?

If you're one of the few people who actually reads my posts, and especially if you've actually read this one: Best Wishes for a happy new year!

a year of counting

Exactly one year ago today I added a hit counter to my blog. Since then I've had 2081visits, and the visitors have come from 51 countries!

This is pretty amazing to me since I do so little to encourage visits to my blog. I don't spend a lot of time reading or commenting upon other blogs, and only occasionally self-promote my posts on Facebook.

1741 of my hits this past year have come from the USA. 66 have come from Canada. 44 from New Zealand, and 42 from Britain. I've also gotten 24 from Germany, 21 from Russia, and 17 from Australia.



I'm sure a lot of these hits are accidental - people who end up here by clicking the "next blog" button. A lot of hits probably also come from the links on my Flickr and Facebook profiles.

I probably get a lot of hits from people who come just to have a look and then don't return. But I do have some regular followers, and I appreciate the comments I get from them. It's so nice to know that someone is actually out there!





The majority of my hits (353) have come from Grand Rapids - which I'm sure have come from friends and family there. As well as the 66 hits that have come from Kalamazoo. What's odd to me is that I get more comments from strangers than I do from family and friends.

If I were to send my friends a letter in the mail - a nice chatty letter full of news and observations, a letter with photographs tucked in - I'm sure they'd enjoy it. They'd sit down and read it and maybe even write back, the way they did before the internet. But they never (or very rarely) comment on my blog.

Oh well. Comments are nice, but I'm sure I'll keep posting with or without them. I still have a fat stack of potential blog topics I'd like to write about someday. You know... that someday we all dream of when time is easy & all the chores are done.

some questions

So. Here's the thing... I'm still not completely clear about what I'm doing here. Is this just something meant to entertain myself, my family and friends, or should I be aiming my thoughts and observations at a larger audience?

I'm still not sure how this all works. It's not like Flickr where I can look at other people's work and comment upon it, or if it is like that then I haven't figured it out yet. I imagine there must be something like groups of bloggers interested in the same topics, but how do I find them? How do they find me?

It bugs me that we're living in a time when we're meant to learn new things intuitively, and no one bothers to write directions or instruction manuals anymore. I miss instruction manuals. Reading and comprehending instructions and directions was something I was good at; a valuable skill that's now almost completely obsolete.

In order to learn something new these days we're expected to spend a lot of time stumbling around until we figure things out for ourselves - which sometimes makes me feel like a lab rat in a maze. Or maybe I'm just guilty about the inordinate amount of time I've already spent fooling around online?