20,000!

When I first began my blog, I had a few “hits” a day.  Never very many, but sometimes if I tagged it correctly I’d jump up a few!!  I was excited after realizing that there were some people out there who were checking it out.  I wrote about kindness and things that I found inspiring that I thought others would enjoy reading about.  I started a facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/AProjectForKindness in the hopes of getting even more readers.  Still, it moved slowly, but I had vowed to write everyday and I wanted to stick to it!!

After joining the journaling /life coaching class that began in February, I started to expand my horizons and branch out a little more in my writing.  I tried to become more personal and that was very hard for me.  I am a very private person and I very rarely share intimate parts of my life – especially with complete strangers.  In January and February I averaged about 1000 hits per month.

But then, in March, my mom died.  The week before she died, I began blogging about her and how our family was coping with it.  Hundreds of people began to read my blog.  My post on March 14th about Grandmas,  https://aprojectforkindness.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/grandmas/ was one of my biggest posts up until that date.  The following day, the day we took her off life support, I got even more.  I have had people write to me, stop me on the street, send messages just telling me how much my blog helped them get through this time.  They did not even realize how much it helped me to write it.  The hits on my blog remained pretty steady for another week or so and then, slowly dropped off, but I was still averaging close to 100 a day which amazed me.

Then, Francine died.  In the days that followed her death, I had record numbers of people reading.  One day there were 990 hits!  Again, so many people just needed to understand what was going on.  they needed to feel like they could make sense of a situation that was incomprehensible.  I am just grateful that my blog was once again able to help them.

Since that day, (although I have not had anywhere close to that many hits), people are still coming to read what I have to say.  I have become much more vulnerable and opening up – writing a lot more than I ever expected to share, and in doing so, I have found people who are interested in reading what I have to say.   I still get people, (some complete strangers), commenting and talking to me about it, or telling me when a particular blog reaches out to them in a way that I never expected.

This week, I reached 20,000 hits on my blog!  I don’t know if that is a lot or not when compared to other bloggers.  Truthfully, I am not sure I even care about comparisons.  All that I know, is that this is far beyond anything I had ever imagined.  There was no way that I could have known when I began in January that I would actually have “followers”!  So, thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone who reads and comes to visit to see what I have to say.

I have learned a lot about myself and laughed, cried, got angry and empathetic but I have enjoyed it so much more than I ever imagined I would.  Something inside me has changed, and I think it is for the better.  I am still looking to find things to write about.  Hopefully more people will become interested, and want to come and visit and read what I have to say.  I can only hope that I can continue to inspire…not just others, but myself.

Tagged: 000 hits, 20, blogging, grandmas, inspiration, lessons learned in life, mom, school project, writing