Landmarks in my blogging history

This week’s Food For Thought Friday is about Landmarks. It is also a landmark occasion because this is the last theme that the wonderful Kilted Wookie will host, because he is handing the baton to May and Floss. I have participated in F4TF 22 times, plus another twice during it’s previous incarnation. Then, it was one of the first memes I ever took part in. I have enjoyed participating and will continue to do so.

So, onto my landmarks.

My first blog

I started my first blog on wordpress.com about 15 years ago (at a guess). Later I switched it to blogger (I’m not entirely sure why). It was about my work and home life and through it I met other nurses and people involved in healthcare across the world. It led to me moderating a forum and then when the platform was sold to me receiving a rather nice gift. An early iPod. I could have had an iPhone, but they weren’t yet available in the UK.

When I decided to start a sex / relationship blog, I deleted it. I was fearful of the two being linked. It really is one of my biggest regrets as I was proud of much of the content. If I ever started this blogging lark again, I would make sure I kept the content.

My first post on World of Joolz

In April 2012 I had just embarked on my BDSM journey. I decided to start a blog about it. Because I was beginning a long distance relationship, I soon discovered that content came in fits and starts. So I began to look for memes. This started with things like 30 days of me, 30 days of submission etc. These have proved to be an interesting way of expressing my thoughts and understanding of topics. They are also good to go back to and revisit. Now that my journey is 7 years long, there is plenty of material to do that with. This is a link to my Questions and answers posts, and includes the current one – 30 days of D/s.

Joining the sex blogging community

My experience of my nursing blog told me that visiting other people’s blogs was a great way of getting them to come and visit you. But if you don’t tell them you have been and enjoyed their content, then they only see a number of their stats. when I started World of Joolz I had little knowledge of BDSM and D/s lifestyles, but by visiting blogs I discovered a whole world of experience. My visitor numbers were always modest, but at least people came and left their own mark. In the main supportive and encouraging rather than mean and judgmental, something I had encountered previously.

But it was probably by joining Twitter in January 2016 that I found a community of people I could really get to know. Partly because more of that group are based here in the UK and some of them live pretty close by. But also that encouraged me to participate in other memes and ultimately to attend Eroticon.

Statistics

Over the past 18 months or so I have noticed a large increase in my blog statistics. Something I put down to participation in the Smut Marathon and attendance at Eroticon. I moved to self hosting in 2017 though had actually bought the site two years before hand. All of the original posts from 2012 onwards are also on the site and some of them still attract a reasonable number of page views. The average views per day have increased in that time from 60-70 to around 200. This might be small numbers to many blogging colleagues but it feels significant to me. It makes it difficult to stick to my original purpose of writing for myself.

In 2015 I wrote more words than in any other year, 105,000 in 286 posts. However I may well beat that number this year, as I am currently up to 51,000 in 130 posts. That shows I still have something to say, since I rarely if ever write for the sake of it.

Landmarks for the future

This is the longest I have written consistently in any format. I love writing my blog and for Master and I it is an important part of our communication processes. This is a place where I can write anything, though I know I do censor the things I write. I guess that everyone does. Perhaps this is an area I need to consider.

I will continue to write for as long as I have something to say and right now I have no plans to stop. I would like to write more fiction, but my head hasn’t been in the right space for that recently. I would also like to explore writing opinion pieces that require research.

There have been a number of landmarks for my blog, and hopefully there will be lots more to come.