Today is the final day of my first year of blogging at Thinking Play! My first post was published on Oct 17th, 2013, though I was working on the site for a couple of days before making everything public.
I’ve had previous attempts at blogging about various subjects, but I don’t think I’ve ever kept going for a whole year before. The difference this time around is undoubtedly due to the excellent advice and wonderful community provided by the Newbie Blogger Initiative.
Thanks NBI!
The NBI of course is actually people… so most especially thanks to Roger Edwards of Contains Moderate Peril and Doone Woodtac of XP Chronicles who ran the NBI 2013.
Thanks also to everyone who’s taken the time to follow the blog, comment on posts, tweet or share them, or just hit the “Like” button from time to time. Without that bit of encouragement and feedback, quite likely I wouldn’t have persisted in my blogging efforts.
It’s knowing that there are people finding the posts interesting and enjoyable, and wanting to have conversations about the topics, that makes the whole thing worthwhile.
A Year in Numbers
As of drafting this post on Thursday October 16th, there are 25 posts, with 151 comments, 52 likes and 47 blog followers on WordPress.com. There have been just over 6,000 pageviews recorded by WordPress. I wish I knew about the amount of reading that happens via RSS feeds, but if there’s a way to discover that, I haven’t stumbled on it yet.
There also 6 draft posts that were started but not finished yet, including this one.
Page Views by Month
Top Pages for the Year
Followers
Planet Pasduil
One thing worth mentioning is that I’ve also started a second blog, Planet Pasduil. The jury is out on whether it’s actually a good idea to have two blogs rather than putting everything in one! Planet Pasduil covers everything I feel like writing about that doesn’t belong here. So far the topics most covered are books, reading and technology, but in theory any topic is fair game. The posts there tend to be more frequent and shorter than here. If you like what you read here do pop over and see if Planet Pasduil appeals to you as well. If you share any of my non-game interests I’d enjoy having your company in both places.
The Future
One year over, the blogging journey continues. And it continues among the fellowship of bloggers, which is what makes the journey possible, enjoyable and worthwhile.
Thinking Play 
Yaaay! Congrats to you, too!
Thanks! š
Grats on your blogiversary! (never sure if I spell that correctly)
I’ve been giving serious thought to moving my gaming blog to my other blog because I don’t like having them as two when, to me, blogging feels like “one”, if that makes sense. Still undecided. Lot to think about.
Looking forward to many more posts and I’ll check out your other blog as well. š
Thanks!
I didn’t even know you had another blog, so that is obviously a disadvantage of having two blogs! I will now attempt to find it. š
Right now it’s mostly a ‘let me butcher my way through the tv shows I’m watching’ on my other blog. The chemo med I’m on (for my eye disease) has done a serious number on my system … exhausted a lot and that clouds my thinking.
It’s here, http://mybrainonvent.com.
Congrats on the I year of Blogging goodness š
I find that it easier to maintain separate blogs for wholly different subject matter, the difficulty arises when the material crosses over into the others. And being focused on one blog generally leaves the others suffering…
tsuhelm: LOTRO (and diverse MMO and gaming in general)
DoT: (Defenders of Texel, casual gaming, android game…)
MrThursday:(art, writings, photography, fashion!)
Thanks! š
Same as with Ranni I didn’t even know you had other blogs! Will see if I can locate them.
I can see arguments for and against multiple blogs… just because I like to hear someone’s thoughts on LOTRO it doesn’t mean I want to hear their thoughts on things far removed from MMOs. I shudder to think of your writings on fashion. š
But there aren’t neat divisions either as subjects flow into each other. If you like LOTRO, you almost certainly like Tolkien, and most probably fantasy literature in general. If you like fantasy, you might well like science fiction too, and if you like SF, you’re probably interested in science and technology and their social impacts. That could get me into talking about all kinds of books I’m reading, TV shows I’m watching, software I’m evaluating, tech industry trends that bother me, and on and on. That might make sense for a lot of the readers who have a similar set of interests to me. But where does that all end? Prob in the kind of mish-mash of a blog that I don’t much like to read myself.
So at the moment it seems like a reasonable compromise to have one focused blog and one very general one.
I agree that the mish-mash approach is a huge put off for me…I have seen it done well but a lot of time has been applied to editing general sorting within the page so that it is still readable.
I’m lazy, and like to throw my stuff out very haphazardly, even my LOTRO blog is frankly a mess… and that is where I spend 99% of my blogging…