Celebrating over 1000 blogs. The clue, as to the topic of this blog, is in the picture above. Specifically this picture is my Christmas advert for The Oldie magazine (except it’s coming out in November, still it’s close). I place one advert a year in this magazine or any other magazine come to that, which I have made clear to the advertising department is all I’m prepared to spend but this doesn’t stop them bothering me throughout the year. Hey ho.
I’m reluctant to spend more on advertising for the very simple reason it doesn’t seem to make any difference to my readership figures, which is the point of the exercise of course. I may be wrong but examining my readership figures after the advert does not appear to show any uptick in my readership. It is such a small advert lost among so many, how can I expect anything different?
But partly out of loyalty and partly because I said I would, I have placed this advert. Much good may it do. And to think it’s a mere nine years ago that I a) retired and b) started writing this retirement blog.
Only last time I wrote about the blog was that it was one of the three pillars of my retirement. I also wrote that I was cutting down on my commitment to writing 3 or 4 (including a podcast) blogs a week, to just one. So with all my current commitments the blog writing has suffered, so you might regard this particular blog as a compensation for this reduction in output.
Those of you who have been with me all these years will know that I have celebrated each 100 blogs with a blog all of its own. A centenary blog I have called it. Strangely, having reached 1,000, I haven’t put out such a celebratory blog. Not quite sure why, perhaps because these figures got a little scrambled by the addition of a podcast and a retro blog. Perhaps I’ve felt that I might not have reached that 1,000 figure genuinely.
But I’m pretty sure that I have reached this landmark now on new blogs alone, and so can justifiably write about it and put out the advert without breaking the Trades Description Act if such a thing still exists (if it does there will be plenty lined up before me to be prosecuted. Politicians to name just one modern-day blight).
Strange, but perhaps inevitable, to look back on these 1000 or more blogs and ask myself, well what was / is the point? Certainly I hope that they’ve given you folks out there some pleasure, comfort even. They also have enabled me to hold my head high when I consider one of my retirement ambitions – to be a writer (something I did a fair amount of as a working psychologist) and an activity I wanted to be a certain part of my retirement identity. So, yes, well done there.
Then there’s the writing as therapy bit. As I’ve written a number of times in these posts, I used to recommend to ‘clients’ that they write their troubles down, get them out of their head and on to paper where they could begin to tease them apart and so begin to tackle them. So there have been many times when I have applied, through these blogs, a dose of the same medicine to myself. Often this has been helpful. Not a miracle cure but effective enough to persist with.
Celebrating over 1000 blogs summary
So I’ve not only written them but have the bare-faced cheek to brag about having done so. But I have to say I am proud of having achieved this mile stone. After all if we judge the effort by quantity as opposed to quality (and why not) then that’s about a million words mainly about the topic of retirement. I admit these blogs have got shorter over this last few months. No longer do I aim for 1,000 words but am quite content to finish off at about 700 or so. It’s easier to write if I don’t inhibit my efforts by setting a completely arbitrary target. But even so, who’d have thought there was so much to write about. And I hope you agree that what I have written has been worthwhile. What’s that?