True Blog Confessions

I don’t know what I’m doing.

Literally. When Scott set up this blog for me almost 7 years ago, he wanted me to delve in because he knew blogging was the wave of the future. After all, he works in IT. He believed me when I said 8 years ago that I sensed God calling me to write. He also believed me when I said God gave me no guarantees about being published, just that I’m supposed to write. So he said, “Blog!”

I said, “No, I’m going to write a book or two or three.” You see where that got me. . .

I couldn’t fathom blogging—I’m the type of writer who likes to edit until I think something sounds good before sending it into the world. Overwhelmed by kids, work, friends, laundry, grocery shopping, and my latest identity crisis, I couldn’t see putting any content up regularly, and so I didn’t.

But I’ve finally taken his advice, my New Years resolution was to blog at least once a week, and several nights ago I finally figured out how to find stats on my blog (click on “stats”—took me 7 years to figure that one out). And to my joy, I find that at this moment in time there are 3611 pageviews of my blog to date. Of course, Ling pointed out that between her clicking on my blog, and me clicking on my blog, we probably make up at least half of those pageviews.

Now I realize to most bloggers out there, 3611 would be a pitiful number—a sign that they’re a complete failure and should stop blogging right now. But wow! I just feel grateful that somebody’s actually reading my stuff—because to a writer, there’s nothing more gratifying!

Not only that, but I also have learned that when you click on “audience” I can see the countries where folks have read Plumbing Demons including the Netherlands, Australia (I know who you are!), Russia, India, China, Brazil and Kazakhstan!

But here are the things I’m still clueless about:

· Comments: I love them! Send them! But if I write back, do you get them? Is it like Facebook where everyone gets your comments? Do people check back? I haven’t responded to comments just because I don’t know how it works.

· Photos: How do you get an online photo to fit the blog? Obviously haven’t gotten it right with the Audrey II below. No idea. Is it possible on blogspot to imbed the photo? Can you put up more than one photo? No idea. I’m adding photos because a blog on how to write a blog said you need pictures—but if the photo doesn’t fit, isn’t that worse?

· Gender: For all 7 of you guys out there who’ve told me you read my blog, thank you, thank you, thank you! Does the fact that I changed the look to a girly pink/red/orange scheme mean your manhood will be assaulted by reading this blog now? Am I supposed to think about the male audience? No idea.

· Cooking: Stats also shows me that my recipes are not the most popular reads—there goes my future as a Cooking Channel chef! (Kai constantly asks if that’s my biggest aspiration) Do I dump the food? But then how will anyone get my world famous granola recipe that may someday go up?

· Links: I notice others put in hotlinks to websites. Don’t know how to do that either.

So Scott, you were right—you had foresight and wisdom and I’m sorry for not listening to you.

If anyone else has any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, please send them this way. It’s nice to know I’m not just sending posts out into the abyss of the blogosphere where they turn and twist alone in cyberspace wind.

Maybe I’ll even comment back.