This morning I received a WordPress notification that my blog was first registered one year ago today.
415 posts, over 6500 page views (only half of them from my mother), and about 200 non-Facebook followers is pretty shocking for a person that did not embrace having an online public persona, and still struggles with it from time to time.
Last September I knew I wanted to start a blog, and was encouraged to do so, but didn’t know what its focus would be. How to start? I didn’t want it to be a parenting blog and was wary of opening myself up too much to strangers.
Eventually, I wrote a couple of weird little pieces and wondered if anyone would ever see them. When it looked like nobody would I wrote a couple more, mostly about living in our decrepit old New England house.
At some point I decided to try a diet and that gave me weeks of writing topics and a surprising number of followers – diet consultants, foodies, trainwreck rubberneckers and that sort. The diet failed, however, and I had to admit it publicly. Removing it from the Recurring Posts sidebar was positively shaming, the emotional consequence that I thought would keep me successful.
Without a successful diet to talk about I tried to focus on regular pieces like photography, videos I thought were interesting, and other weird little online crumbs. Occasionally I would write an essay or two about my dog or my kids, the latter always making me uncomfortable.
Starting the blog also had an unexpected benefit: It got me a job as a writer for the local paper. With a couple of posts I now had writing samples and they opened the door with me charging in behind. A few magazine features followed, as did business cards with the title, Freelance Writer – none of which I’ve actually given out.
The side effect of all of this, in terms of how it affects the blog, is having less time to write posts. More often than not I will simply upload photos or videos because it takes less time and focus, but I am acutely aware that I need more writing.
I’m still trying to figure out what PurelyPixel is, but my hope is that over the next year I will start to find my personal writing groove and get back to blog basics.
Thanks for stopping by.
~ Karina
Karina Coombs 