To my readers...

I am brand new to this whole blogging thing. It took me a couple of weeks to get the whole thing put together, and I keep learning new things and changing the layout and content a bit. While it didn’t take me long to get in a routine of writing (and I never struggle coming up with topics!), I’m not sure that I’ve developed my voice yet, either. I struggle with how formal or informal my writing should be. I go back and forth between using digits and writing out numbers, I drive myself crazy when I use words like “things” and “like”, and I use parentheses far more than any other normal person! But I really enjoy this outlet, and even though I’m a little embarrassed that I’m a “blogger” (especially when someone is reading my blog when I’m in the room…come on guys!), I’m glad that I have a way to express my thoughts, concerns, and triumphs to a group of readers that must be interested…or they wouldn’t be reading it, right?

It has been hard to get used to the lack of immediate feedback, though. I am not a long-time Facebook user, nor do I routinely post on FB, but when I do, I enjoy the immediate comments and “likes”. The interesting thing about this blog is that I do not get any feedback, so sometimes I feel like no one is reading what I’m writing (even though I know I have a few loyal readers!) and that allows me to be very candid and “put myself out there”. I did add the “reactions” feature, so that if you so choose, you can anonymously give me an idea that you’ve read a post and had a reaction to it. (They won’t let me choose more than four reaction types, though! Sorry!) I can also track the statistics on the site including how many views it gets each day, week, month, what keyword searches are used, and what countries my readers are in (the US of course, Argentina, Malaysia, South Korea, Germany and India in order of readership). I don’t know how you found it, or why you keep reading it, but I’m glad you do! Feel free to comment sometime and let me know what you’re thinking! It’s very liberating!