Now We Are One

Well, this blog is, anyway. After 176 posts and some 7,000 visits, I have learned a few things.

• There will always be at least one blogger who publishes before you that piece of news you thought you would be the first to launch into the blogosphere.
• One sure way to significantly increase traffic on your blog is to tick off a blogger who holds significantly different views than you do.
• If you provide unique coverage of a meeting, news story, etc., the next time a similar event happens another blogger will manage to do it faster and more thoroughly, thus cutting down the number of visits to your blog.
• There is no rhyme or reason as to which of your posts people will respond to more than others.
• There are days where you simply hate your blog and come close to deleting it entirely.
• There are days when you feel you have nothing to say.
• There are days when you realize you should not post what you have written.
• It is easy to lose yourself in reading other people's blogs.

Fifteen people, more or less, read this blog regularly. Obviously, I am not making a big splash in the blogosphere--hardly even a ripple. While I sometimes long for the large readership of some of my blogging friends and acquaintances, my larger purpose of blogging was, and continues to be, making a practice of writing and publishing (so to speak) "public" pieces on a regular basis. So if no defining theme emerges, or no large following develops, so be it. I have enjoyed blogging this past year and look forward to the year ahead.

See you in the blogosphere.

Peace,
Jeffri