2014 in review…what a surprise!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog…and I might as well share it. I decided to stay away from my stats as much as possible. I didn’t start blogging for the numbers. To be honest I didn’t expect any numbers. Here I am, the social media dinosaur, refusing to use Facebook, twitter or other funny stuff…writing a blog about how I quit smoking. My dream was to pay it forward…but to whom? I expected one or two guests…if even. How would people find me? I ignored all the logical questions and started blogging anyway. I wrote my first post in May 2014 and became a blogger…against the odds :-).

Slowly people started to read my blog and I was overjoyed. I met people in Australia like M-R, the author of “And then like in my dreams”  and many more from all over the word.

The biggest success are not the numbers, but are the people I met and became friends with. Every morning I grab a cup of coffee, sit down and read other peoples blogs and I have so much fun doing this. I learned so much. It’s like a big international conference call in my living room…and they don’t mind, that I sit there still in my rope. Daily musings, one of my blogging friends lives in New Jersey and the next time I will have a project in New York, we will meet for lunch. Blogging friends become real…isn’t it amazing? It brings so much joy into my life. No wonder I started a second blog, my cooking blog. I am having way too much fun :-).

I added the link to my blog to my email address and forgot all about it. I started to wonder why I had so many people emailing me from Ohio. I had forgotten all about the link. Some smokers here in my city quit smoking, are following and reading my blog and we have never met. We decided to change this as well and will have a cookout in our house in spring.

I got more and more emails from smokers all over the world, commenting on my little blog. That was a nice surprise as well. Nobody quit smoking because of my blog, but people quit smoking and used my little blog as a tool. I guess knowing you are not the only crazy one helps :-).

I am looking at the stats, the emails and the friendships and call the blogging year 2014 a success. My numbers might not look impressive compared to the big blogs…but they are very impressive to me. Who would have thought?

We all will continue in 2015 and I am looking forward to many more readers, followers, bloggers and friends. I am looking forward to all of your posts as well, knowing you will keep me entertained, knowing you will make me cry and laugh. May we all have an interesting New Year 🙂

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,700 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.