Musings On My 250th Post

WordPress keeps excellent statistics for bloggers, and so I realized recently that today’s post would be my 250^th post. This milestone seemed worthy of comment.

I’ve been blogging for about two-and-a-half years, for most of that time twice per week. I’ve written before about lessons I’ve learned blogging, and I wrote recently about the value of blogging. I won’t repeat what I said in those posts.

I will say, however, that blogging regularly for so long has taught me the difficulty of writing well consistently. I am very proud of some of my posts, but others feel like they were dashed off to fill the space. (And some were.)

Unlike with novels—which take months and years—or short stories—which take days or weeks—my blog posts get no more than a couple of quick rewrites after the initial draft. I need to have a theme for the post and tell the story almost right the first time.

Blogging has taught me to write quickly and to a deadline. I’d learned these lessons at other times in my life, such as when writing briefs as an attorney with a heavy caseload, or when editing employee communications with a fast turn-around time. But on this blog there is no one else to cover for me, to fill in when too many priorities compete for my time.

What I am most proud of is that I have kept to my blogging schedule despite deaths, illnesses, injuries, holidays, and the general frenzy of life.

I set out when I retired from the corporate world to become a writer.

Writers write.

I am writing, therefore I am a writer.

I have kept the commitment to myself to write.

And I appreciate you, as readers, coming back to greet me post after post.

It amazes me how readers find this blog. Some of you are friends, but some of you happened upon the blog after typing some odd query into a search engine.

WordPress provides me with a list of queries that people have used to find my blog. Among the top queries WordPress reports—other than the to-be-expected query “theresa hupp blog”—are “little bunny foo foo origin,” “family pictures”, “banana cream pie history,” and “accidents on the oregon trail.”

Funny what people search for on the Internet, but all of these topics have been the subject of posts I have written. (Well, maybe not the history of banana cream pie, but I have written about making such a pie.)

Here are a few of the oddest queries that have recently led readers to me:

• “name a tall tree family feud”
• “tomboy with broken leg”
• “leg xray copy indian”
• “can i leave my husband when he is studying for the bar exam”

I can guess which posts these queries picked up, but I don’t really want to be known as a source of wisdom for women wanting to leave their husbands during the bar review process. After all, I stuck by mine . . . and he stuck by me.

Still, writers are grateful for readers, wherever they come from.

What led you to find my blog? Whatever it was, thank you . . . and please come back!