It's My Blog-iversary!

One year ago today, I published my first post on this blog!

I started this blog because it just seemed to me that there were things that needed to be said, although I didn’t know if anyone would read any of what I wrote. Still, I knew that if no one ever read my blog, I would benefit just by forcing myself to think through the various issues and express my thoughts in writing. My goal was to post something new every day. I figured God would take care of getting my writing in front of those who could benefit from it. I was hoping there’d be at least one!

And here I am, a year later, having published over 400 posts – so I have met my goal of publishing (on average) one post per day.

Thank you to all who have read any of my posts; thanks to those of you who have left comments or emailed me; and thanks especially to all those who have offered words of encouragement. Those words mean more than you know!

Despite my determination not to be concerned with numbers, the stats are kind of fun. Since its inception, according to the Blogger stats, Philothea On Phire has received over 78,000 hits. Wow! That sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?! Well…it’s not, really; for one thing, a big-time blogger like Fr. Z probably gets that many in an hour!

Not only that, but it’s a falsely-inflated figure. For instance, in the beginning, I’d be really impressed when I’d find that there were 5 new hits on a post! Yee-hah! Then I’d realize that 3 of those were me looking at the blog myself…you know…kind of admiring my handiwork, seeing if there were any comments… Ha! How embarrassing to discover I was my own greatest fan! (And the other two were usually from my husband – God bless him!)  Then I figured out how to tell the system not to count my own page views, and how to access all the info I needed from the “blogger dashboard”.

I have also discovered that many hits are just people googling for an image that I may have used on a post – they don’t come to read the post, they just come to copy the image. They are not reading every word with rapt attention. That’s kind of humbling.

And there are “spam” hits, too. I don’t know how many fall into that category, but it is amusing when they leave comments. They are so flattering (though generally ungrammatical). They say things like:

Great blog! There are other saying things like these but your saying is so good it is truly the best I have saw. You definitely know a lot about this subject. You might want to check out my website insurancescamplus.com.

Of course, there are real people who read my blog, too; sometimes they leave comments, and sometimes they email me. I have discovered that my blog is actually read (for real) around the world…at least now and then. And I am just positive that those couple of hits from Vatican City were the Holy Father himself, seeing what I had to say.

I try not to let the complimentary comments and emails go to my head (thanks again, all you who have provided them!), and I’m helped to control my prideful tendencies by the commenters who tell me in no uncertain terms that they don’t like what I say. I’ve been called a dissenter, a hypocrite, a “JPII hater”, and an “NFP hater”, among other things. But my all-time favorite has to be “nit-picking nattering nabob”.  Yeah!

So…it’s been an interesting year! I learned a lot by digging a little deeper for information on topics I addressed here. I made several “virtual” friends (though I think I have lost one or two of them along the way). I learned something about self-discipline by devoting time to writing each day.

Mostly, though, I found out that I’m not alone. Thanks again, readers!