1000

I happened to catch some info on my blog's "dashboard" the other day that made this post much more complicated. I would have just tossed out some amusing (I'm sure) anecdote about a kid... but then I noticed that my next post would be a landmark - my 1000th post! That's huge, yet seems remarkably small given how long this blog has been in existence. I couldn't let the big number pass by without special recognition. Here are some thoughts my 1000th post have evoked:

This is what our family looked like about a month after I began blogging:

It was 2005. I was a working mom of two, and Nathaniel was still in grad school. Marianne is almost the exact age here that Rachel is now, so the similarity is striking, is it not? Ruth was about 7 months old, and was the first of our three nearly-identical babies, so if her face looks familiar, it's because Meg and Peter kept that look alive for so long. Nathaniel still wears that suit, but has gotten cooler glasses. My hair was a lot thicker then, and I cannot remember the last time I wore a turtleneck.

I've had a great time these past few days, going through old posts, and remembering some of the hilarious stuff I chose to focus on. I had a different site on which we posted photos of the family then, with the blog used mostly for writing.

I thought I'd find that I'd posted MUCH more frequently in the early days, but not so much. Those first few months I had 20 to 30 posts per month, but I tapered off quickly to more like 15, and for several years now, I've averaged around 10 per month. Okay, this past year, it's been closer to 6 or 8, but that's not nearly the difference I anticipated. There were days back when I was, ahem, working, that I would post a couple times a day on the days I really needed some distraction.

I've never had a huge following, and that's okay because I never envisioned this becoming a money-making venture. I think we can all agree I am not cut out to be the next dooce, although if I could magically begin making a living from my blog so all Nathaniel had to do was the techy stuff in the background and we could support our family and I could take up a handful of humanitarian causes to support with my extra income and free time, wouldn't that be amazing?! Back to reality.

I average anywhere from 1000 to 2000 pageviews a month. I figure half of those are me reading my own old pages. But still, I like that number. Given that we have reader-programs now to tell us when new posts come up, those aren't all just people checking for new posts like they used to be, so that's a decent handful of friends and family keeping an eye on things around here.

This does renew the perennial question, who is reading this stuff?! A blogger's constant source of amusement. I write what's in my head, and I try to keep the tone my own, so those of you who know me can hear my voice. I figure that's what my friends and family most enjoy about it. I do it mostly for the sake of family I don't see often enough, so they can keep up on our goings on, and for my own record, since I've never been a scrapbooker. I also do it because I  have always journaled, and writing long, rambling posts comes easily to me and gives me joy. When I don't write for long stretches, it's because it wouldn't bring me joy to do so just then, so I'm at peace with that. I do feel a sense of obligation to keep my blog updated, which is a strange feeling that can be a source of stress. I don't love that, but it is what it is.

I've had hits from all sorts of unexpected countries, which makes me curious. Mali was easy enough to explain, what with the peace corp brother- and sister-in-law, but Latvia? China? Russia? Maybe it has something to do with where internet connections travel before they get here? I have no idea. I mostly credit friends of Kris (aka web-goddess), the ND friend who inspired me to start my blog and taught me how. She has a much more exotic readership than I do, and I get more referral hits from her site than any other, historically. Still, who are those people? Interesting to think about.

A lot has happened in the last 1000 posts, the last seven-plus years of my life. Huge life upheavals that we could never forget, and tiny memories that I recorded because otherwise we were bound to. Temporary bonus kids, and several additional permanent ones. There've been times I couldn't write, because the goings-on were too personal to share on the web, and times I totally over-shared anyway.

I'm grateful to my friends and family, near and far, who read. I know the dearest, closest people to me in the world read, as do some extended family I don't know well, but am happy to be in touch with in this small way. There are friends I seldom hear from, but every once in a great while I'll get a message from them letting me know they keep up on my blog, and it makes me smile. The only downside is, and has always been, that this conversation is so often one-sided. Facebook allows me to keep up a little more with my non-blogging, distant friends, but there are many of you I miss hearing from. Drop me an email anytime, just to catch me up on what you're doing, since you know so much about me!

Happy reading, folks. Here's to another 1000 posts, however many years it might take.