Paula Radcliffe can do it in half an hour
Sometime in the next twenty four hours, a bomb will go off in Los Angeles and a young girl will be kidnapped 386 times. Meanwhile, the President will...
Oops, wrong script.
Sometime in the next twenty-four hours, this blog is going to get it's 10,000th visitor since I installed the Extreme Tracking counter at the end of February. In truth, that means I'm actually way past 10,000 as I got several thousand visitors in my first week thanks to a mention on Bartcop.
But, it seems as good a time as any to sit back and take stock of what I've achieved since starting What You Can Get Away at the end of January. To begin with, creating this blog was a bit of an afterthought. I originally got my own domain just to have somewhere to put all my various pictures so my family, friends and anyone else could see them without me having to go the expense of getting prints made of them all. But, having got the domain, I thought I should do something with it and, seeing that a couple of my friends (most notably the Dustbinman) had blogs, I thought 'hey, I could do that!' and decided that it would be quite fun to have one myself.
From the start, I've never had any sort of editorial philosophy. I've just written about whatever happens to interest me at any given time, as well as posting links to whatever I find on the web that I think is interesting - the classic description of blogging, really. I didn't set out to be a specifically political blogger, it's just that politics is one of my main interests so it happens to be one of the subjects I write about with great frequency. But, there are many other things that fill up my life besides politics, so I write about them as well. The only editorial voice I listen to is my own - if I find something boring, I don't write about it, but if you guys find something boring then tough. My blog, my rules and all that sort of tough-sounding language. Actually, it is interesting to see who finds some things interesting as well - the mini-discussion about the F1 Rejects website with people comparing their favourite obscure drivers was quite interesting, to give a recent example.
To be honest, I've been quite surprised by the number of people who've visited here and especially by the number of of people who judge me so interesting that they've given me a permanent link. I wish I'd kept some notes to remember who gave me my first link so I could give them special thanks, but I didn't - it was probably one of Barney, Dan, Ryan, Iain, or Green Fairy - so thanks to you all. I've never gone out begging for links - I've just linked to blogs I've found interesting and reciprocated pretty much everyone who's linked to me, should they choose to do so.
All in all, it's been a pretty interesting time. I've made new friends, learned some things, maybe even taught some people something, been given a couple of free books (thanks again Sam!), had a few arguments, left far too many sarcastic comments on other people's blogs and now I get to go to a seminar at the House of Commons! In short, it's been a lot of fun and long may it continue.
If I had to boil down what I've learned to one piece of advice for bloggers, though, it'd be this: Don't take yourselves too seriously. No matter how many readers you get, no matter how many comments they leave, even if you're one of the Supreme Masters of Blogdom it's just a tiny tiny fraction of the six billion people in the world (though at times it does seem like there are six billion blogs out there) and the vast majority of what we all write is going to be forgotten the minute it disappears off the screen. Have fun and enjoy it, because in the words of the late great Mr Hicks, this is all just a ride...
Oops, wrong script.
Sometime in the next twenty-four hours, this blog is going to get it's 10,000th visitor since I installed the Extreme Tracking counter at the end of February. In truth, that means I'm actually way past 10,000 as I got several thousand visitors in my first week thanks to a mention on Bartcop.
But, it seems as good a time as any to sit back and take stock of what I've achieved since starting What You Can Get Away at the end of January. To begin with, creating this blog was a bit of an afterthought. I originally got my own domain just to have somewhere to put all my various pictures so my family, friends and anyone else could see them without me having to go the expense of getting prints made of them all. But, having got the domain, I thought I should do something with it and, seeing that a couple of my friends (most notably the Dustbinman) had blogs, I thought 'hey, I could do that!' and decided that it would be quite fun to have one myself.
From the start, I've never had any sort of editorial philosophy. I've just written about whatever happens to interest me at any given time, as well as posting links to whatever I find on the web that I think is interesting - the classic description of blogging, really. I didn't set out to be a specifically political blogger, it's just that politics is one of my main interests so it happens to be one of the subjects I write about with great frequency. But, there are many other things that fill up my life besides politics, so I write about them as well. The only editorial voice I listen to is my own - if I find something boring, I don't write about it, but if you guys find something boring then tough. My blog, my rules and all that sort of tough-sounding language. Actually, it is interesting to see who finds some things interesting as well - the mini-discussion about the F1 Rejects website with people comparing their favourite obscure drivers was quite interesting, to give a recent example.
To be honest, I've been quite surprised by the number of people who've visited here and especially by the number of of people who judge me so interesting that they've given me a permanent link. I wish I'd kept some notes to remember who gave me my first link so I could give them special thanks, but I didn't - it was probably one of Barney, Dan, Ryan, Iain, or Green Fairy - so thanks to you all. I've never gone out begging for links - I've just linked to blogs I've found interesting and reciprocated pretty much everyone who's linked to me, should they choose to do so.
All in all, it's been a pretty interesting time. I've made new friends, learned some things, maybe even taught some people something, been given a couple of free books (thanks again Sam!), had a few arguments, left far too many sarcastic comments on other people's blogs and now I get to go to a seminar at the House of Commons! In short, it's been a lot of fun and long may it continue.
If I had to boil down what I've learned to one piece of advice for bloggers, though, it'd be this: Don't take yourselves too seriously. No matter how many readers you get, no matter how many comments they leave, even if you're one of the Supreme Masters of Blogdom it's just a tiny tiny fraction of the six billion people in the world (though at times it does seem like there are six billion blogs out there) and the vast majority of what we all write is going to be forgotten the minute it disappears off the screen. Have fun and enjoy it, because in the words of the late great Mr Hicks, this is all just a ride...
Nick got away with this at 9:06 PM
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