This is the 100th post on my blog. Quite a milestone, I think, in a little over three years. It means an average of one post every 11 or 12 days. It takes me anything from 2-5 hours to write a post, not counting the time to sort, select, edit and upload the photos that I use.
I guess it is time to thank my readers for their loyal support. Unfortunately, except for a few who diligently leave comments to show that they read my posts, most readers wish to stay anonymous and therefore I do not know who out there reads what I write.
Actually, I know more than what the comments tell. I have had three serious spam attacks, where I have had to block all comments to discourage those who left dozen or more ‘commercial’ comments on my blog. I have had two or three unsolicitedcomments that I would not consider SPAM but those too were inappropriate. I have had a lot of e-mail messages and oral comments about people who read specific posts, generally, people I travelled with who read the story of that trip.
So why do I do this if there is only a dozen people who might read any one post? Many reasons: (1) There are maybe 12 or more people who read what I write and that is not bad – the number could be higher; (2) it forces me to organise the 100’s of photos (sometimes 1000’s) that I have when I get back from a trip; (3) I enjoy going back over what I wrote 2 or 3 years ago – it keeps the memory alive of what I did then; (4) if I can inspire one person just once to go where I have been because of what he read in my blog, then it is all worth it; (5) it is a hobby and I enjoy finding the right comments for the pictures, building a story around them and researching historical, artistic or other facts that I include in the posts.
So what next? I have ambitious travel plans for the next few months and you will see what I mean later. Anything I want to do different about the blog? Not sure – I think it will remain a personal biography, or a build-as-you-go auto-biography. I will probably try to interject more older adventures, but I can usually just keep up with what I do on a day-to-day basis, so no time to look at the past.
If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know.
(928 Page Views)
Pierre, in my opinion, a blog is a new form of historical record, from the perspective of an engaged person who might never otherwise write a book about his or her life. It not only helps contemporaries keep in touch, but could serve in the future as a record of a person’s life.
I had taken my son to Pittsburgh, and saw the Andy Warhol Archives that include everything down to receipts and dinner invitations. It’s hard to know today what might be interesting in the future.
There’s an interesting question as to what will happen to a web site when a person passes. I have sons who know that I appreciate my web archives, so I hope that they’ll keep a version of them around (unless <a href="http://archive.org"The Internet Archive comes around to back everything up.
Sobering thought. I wonder how much will remain after life, not in “afterlife”. I also wonder how much interest there will be for those left. As was said, there may be lot’s of anonymous interest out there we are just not aware of.
100th already? Wow! What a milestone. Well, keep writing mon ami. It’s been great keeping up with your adventures, at times amusing (who doesn’t enjoy a laugh at Pierre’s expense?), often informative and always encouraging. I’m looking forward to the next 100… :o)