One More Year

Yesterday was June 15th. “Ah yes”, my English friends remember. “The day the Magna Charta was signed."
« The day the US-Canada border was finally settled, » exclaim my history-loving American and Canadian friends.
« Eh, oui . The day Georges Pompidou was elected President! » my politically-minded French friends pronounce.
All true but I have a personal reason for remembering this date. It was on June 15th 2009 that I became a blogger.
Like most projects, this one has evolved a good deal since my first slightly naïve image of what I wanted to do and who my readers would be.
I gradually came to understand, without totally accepting, that most of my friends would not be regular or even occasional readers. My disappointment was hugely diminished by the realization that a number of people I had never met would be. Some stumbled across my blog by accident; others came looking for specific information that one of my posts provided. Some made only one brief appearance on my reader statistics. Others became regulars. The fun I was having and the slightly but definitely increasing readership was all the incentive I needed to continue for one more year – especially as I knew that I would soon have a trip to Sri Lanka to share.
As some of you know -- and others can discover by reading my posts from September to December 2010 -- share it I did. Though I was only in the country for two weeks, it took me three months of almost constant posting to reach the end of what I wanted to describe. Exhausted from my thirty-five Sri Lankan posts and a little lost as to what should come next, I was just a step away from writing a final farewell post when a journalist friend of mine, who is a regular reader, startled me by remarking that I had become a travel writer. She was about to start an adventure of her own, teaching writing on the University of Virginia’s Semester at Sea summer program,
and asked if she could use some of my posts as reference material for her students. Of course, I said yes! The flattery of this and the fact that my readership continued to increase even though I was no longer writing, made me decide that it was too soon to say goodbye. Since January 1st of this year, readers from 74 countries have consulted my blog at least once – most of them (including a number of Sri Lankans) interested in the Sri Lankan posts but also reading others.

This is a map of where my readers in May and June connected from. Always a thrill to see.



I’m finding this a heady experience. And I do still have things to tell you. I was recently in Florence. I have only scratched the surface of Paris. I have plans for a fall trip which should be fun. So I’m launching myself into another year of bloggery. I hope you’ll come along.
(If you want still more travel, why don’t you join me as I read my friend Jeanne’s blog of her summer adventure. I know she’d love to see you, too.)