Happy Blogiversary To Me

No, I did not expect this to last a year.

I'd toyed with the idea of having a blog for a long time, I'd even set up my account months before I started. Then, for no particular reason, one year ago today I got straight out of bed, logged on and voila my first post. Auspicious beginnings I think you'll agree, can't think why I didn't get more comments.

This was supposed to be a project to help me with my writing. I was halfway through writing a book when I started. I'm still halfway through writing that book. Blogging I've found, can be rather addictive and far more rewarding than slogging away at a novel that is starting to thin a little in the middle and where all the characters sound rather too much like me. Blogging also takes up far, far more time than I have. Which is why I'm doing NaBloPoMo - because I'm a whack-job, certifiable.

What inspired me to start blogging, or rather who, is definitely Fussy. Living next door to a blogging icon for nearly a decade will help motivate, if you can get past the intimidation factor of someone who can whip up a post like a literary souffle. I still think about 'popcorns' and 'WTF little man'. She also wrote last year about those people not doing NaBloPoMo maybe making a resolution to comment on a blog at least once a day. That certainly hit home after many months of writing this, literally sending posts out in to the void. I'd been a 'lurker' for years myself, laughing and crying, reading posts and never saying a word. I think about it now, and can't believe I just let some posts go unacknowledged, like my favourite blog entry of all time. I honestly think about that paella post at least once a week and crack up. Genius.

So, another year? Who knows? I had intended to use this both as a tool to help my writing and also to memorialize some of the parenting stuff that otherwise gets forgotten, but I'd genuinely no idea how much time I would spend writing about how it feels to be a stranger in a foreign culture. Clearly I have *some issues*, and this blog is proving strangely cathartic, so for now you're stuck with me.