The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed a bit of a change to my blog this last week or two. You see, I had a ‘moment’ a couple of weeks ago when I was feeling a bit lonely, a bit unloved and unwanted.  I wasn’t getting many visitors, no comments, no activity.  Apparently not even good enough to include advertising. I felt left out.

Not the first time in my life.  I was always one of those kids.  The left out ones.  The odd-bod, the loner whether I wanted to be or not.  As I got older, I found meetings and conferences uncomfortable, feeling as if I was an imposter, not good enough to hold my own. Not clever enough to hold a conversation with all those important, intelligent folk. And that exactly sums up how I was feeling about blogging. Now, my usual response would be to give up –

‘Face it, you’re not good enough, you’ve given it a shot and failed, might as well find something else to do with your time’

But if being part of this on-line community has taught me anything, its that well, anything goes.  Your blog is your own, who really cares if anyone reads it, as long as you enjoy writing, posting, sharing.  So I decided to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and start shoving things on here pretty much for my own amusement.

My ‘ditties’ for instance (still can’t bring myself to call them poems – seems pretentious).  I’ve been posting them in the ‘poetrysoup’ community for some time, but always blushingly. Posting them on my blog seemed scary, as if I’m inviting criticism and ridicule. However, on one of my braver days I went for it, and hey, d’ya know what…they’ve got likes…lots of likes.  It’s great!

Likewise, with the photos. I’ve got a pretty good camera, and I really love taking photos and have thousands knocking around. Some of them are ropey, some of them seem quite good to me (fair enough, I’ve an untrained eye..) I’d never call myself a photographer, but, you know, we’ve travelled quite a lot and, well, why not share them I thought.  And yes, they’ve got likes too. Gosh, I’m on a roll…

I started my blog pretty much as a journal type thing, a diary documenting what I’ve found to do with my life since retirement, and up until now I felt I should stick to that formula.  But I’ve found diversifying is a real treat, and eye-opener.  I’ve found lots of other poets and poetry blogs that I hadn’t come across before, and some wonderful photography sites that I can learn from. I’m starting to write a bit about each photograph I post – blimey, you never know, maybe it’ll become a travelog!

I can post a picture or poem much quicker than I can write an article, so I’m able to keep the whole thing more active. And, through necessity, I’m learning a lot more about utilising the tools available to make my site look and behave better. Best of all, I’m getting a lot more visitors to my site (still not enough…come on you slackers..) and the number of followers is going up daily (yay! Hellooo and hugs to you all…)

I’ve got lots more ideas, and things to share, and I’m still learning, so over time, I expect the blog to morph some more. It’s all a bit of an adventure then, and thinking of something to post has stopped being a chore and has become exciting and fulfilling again.