“The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Visitors came from 141 countries in all!
Most visitors came from Australia. The United States & The United Kingdom were not far behind.”

Click here to see the complete report.

Hello all

Daily Prompt: Progress

When you look back at your blog on January 2, 2015, what would you like to see? Photographers, artists, poets: show us PROGRESS.

I’ll get to stats and Daily Prompts shortly dear friends, but firstly let me tell you that the wind is blowing a gale as I come to write on the Tenth Day of Christmas! The day began with incredible heat but by lunchtime, the wind took over and now I have had to anchor down place mats and any other thing that the wind can use and sent soaring in the sky.

10 lordsOnly two more day until the Twelfth Day of Christmas … the end of the Christmas Season. Where did the days go since Christmas Day? They passed by in a blur of eating left-overs and chocolate peanuts, shortbread and Christmas Cake. All that remains is the left-over ham! And true to my word, today I went to Mrs. W’s 101 uses for left-over ham blog to see what else I could make with left-over ham. It has finally come to that dear friends.

I think I’ve decided on: rice, ham and chick pea salad served in crisp green lettuce cups with plenty of nice dressing poured over the top. Sounds good doesn’t it?

However, another menu of a different kind is now being formulated on paper as I have invited my children and their families to a lunch on Sunday to celebrate the New Year. A bit belated I know but it is the only day that suits us all. Besides, my son-in-law will be returning to work in Timor with the Army on Monday and we need to farewell him. Any excuse for a get together.

But, enough about food already!  The thing I most want to talk about today is: MY BLOG. WordPress sent me a 2013 Review, something they do at the beginning of every year and I was amazed to see that 14,000 viewed my blog during 2013. If you click on the link to WordPress you will see the fireworks going off on the days I wrote. The higher the firework, the more people read my blog that day. There are other interesting facts on the site as well.

Which leads me to the Daily Prompt for Jan 2nd on PROGRESS. So, what would I like to see on January 2nd 2015 … a year from now? But first, I need to ask myself a question: will I be able to sustain writing for ANOTHER year?

blogI have to admit faltering a little in the middle of 2013. There … I’ve admitted it! What was left to write about? Did I want to continue? Did anyone really care? Just when I was contemplating giving up, a couple of interesting things occurred.

Firstly, I discovered the Daily Prompt from WordPress Daily Posts! I could hardly believe all the help that was offered there with a Weekly Photo Challenge and a Daily (and Weekly) Writing Challenge plus other aids.

A whole new world opened up for me dear friends! I was writing things like: taking the voice of one of the parrots in my Parrot Tree and having fun (tessross.wordpress.com-through-the-eyes-of-a-parrot/). Next, I was becoming emotional by taking the voice of my Grandmother Aseen as she faced her family leaving her behind in Lebanon (tessross.wordpress.com/my-grandmother-a-stranger-in-a-strange-land/) and lots of other writings that challenged me.

The next thing that happened was when I went to a work friend’s funeral and saw all my ‘old’ work mates, some of whom commented that they were reading my blog! I’d not heard one peep from them during the year, but there they were telling me how much they loved reading my blog. Oh … it WAS sweet.

It was not at all  sweet losing my work friend and indeed I was very sad as she was a good mate to me, but it just shows that even a funeral has shades of dark and light.

Also, in taking part in the Daily Prompts I made friends with some wonderful bloggers and began to make comments and get to know new people. I was inspired by the bloggers coming through WordPress. How could I possible give up after this?

thumbnailCAH5DHSXSo, with a fresh flourish, by September I was once again enjoying my writing and continuing on. I had got over writer’s block for the first time. I’d never had writer’s block before!

What now for the future folks? What progress would I like to see?

I would like to have a ‘stand-alone’ address and pay for a website with WordPress. At present I get it for free but like everything, you get what you pay for (or don’t pay for). 

Dare I be so cheeky and say I would like to have triple the number of followers I have now? More perhaps? And earn some money?

I would like to be able to touch people’s lives with my writing.

I would like to make them laugh sometimes and forget their woes.

And I would like to make them cry occasionally …

I would like to engage with my readers and have a lot more comments (on my blog as well as Facebook).

I would like to share secrets and dreams and hear other people’s secrets and dreams.

I would like to pry open people’s hearts and have them discover long lost desires hidden there that they had forgotten about.

And then I would like their lives to change because of what they discovered.

But most of all, I would like to be: “Living … Loving … Sharing Life” as the by-line on my Life with Tess title says so succinctly.

And that, dear friends, will be enough …

 

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/daily-prompt-progress/


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