Thank You, Dear Readers

If you’re an occasional or regular reader of my blog, you may have noticed a dearth of posts in the first quarter of 2018. I started this blog in February 2014 and honestly, I was thinking after four years and 192 posts, it may be time to stop. I have plenty of material (my husband still says I need to travel less and write more) but I was finding it more difficult to discipline myself to write and rewrite each day to publish a post weekly. I found myself procrastinating, throwing a post together at the last minute, and I wasn’t satisfied with the product. Consequently, I published no posts in January, only one in February, and none in March.

Then a convergence of events occurred. First, late in March, I had a reader who found my blog on the internet ask me some questions about Keukenhof in the Netherlands. I was delighted to answer her questions and I felt I had provided a valuable service if my answers helped make their trip better in some small way. Then I noticed the number of views on my blog remained high during the months I wasn’t posting anything new. That was a big surprise and it told me people were finding my blog by internet searches. Finally, when I told Jim I thought I’d quit he told me when we were too old to travel he thought we’d just read all the posts I’d written and we could enjoy all those trips again.

I felt my enthusiasm return and I began to write. Friends commented on posts which encouraged me. April stats showed the second highest number of views since I began my blog which encouraged me even more. Although I originally started writing this blog just for my own travel record, it turns out readership is a big motivator. So thank you, dear readers, for getting me back on track.

Example of stats for one day by post viewed and location of the viewer