As I was preparing to Zentangle yesterday, I thought about a message posted to my notices by WordPress. 

According to WordPress, I first registered my blog six years ago yesterday. That doesn’t sound like very long. In fact, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t blogging on WordPress. 

Back then, I had no idea what I was doing with a blog. Not that I have a better idea now, but I have learned a great deal from other bloggers and Bloggers U. And that has been mostly during the past two or three years. 

For ages, the only followers I had were close friends and relatives. Today, I have well over 300 followers. That may not sound like many to you, but it is both a surprise and a humbling experience to me. As recently as a year ago, the number of followers was well below 100, after 5 years of posts and a lot of blogging classes.

So what has changed? I have been following the advice of fellow bloggers, especially those who have followings of a thousand or more. And what is their advice? Visit other bloggers and, most importantly, share those posts that are relevant to your own goals. 

Another thing that has changed is that I stared using my iPad and my Surface for blogging when I am away from my computer. Carrying my laptop around, despite its “near weightlessness,” is not an option, especially when one lives on a tiny speck of land in the Caribbean Sea. Salt air is everywhere, and tiny sand fragments are always on the breezes. So my mobile devices travel with me, resulting in the laptop getting less and less use. Whether I have an internet connection or not, I can always write. And that’s what I do at the market checkout, in the car waiting for the bridge to close again so traffic can move, in the clinic waiting room, etc. If I can read there, I can write there. 

Of these, the most important is following the advice of fellow bloggers and writers. They provide the best ideas for improving a site, limiting one’s topics, responding to readers and their preferences, and so on. Writers are very generous with their knowledge and findings about things as trivial-sounding as grammar errors, to important things like plot and character development and publication possibilities. And, of course, writers share their stories and poems for the rest of us to enjoy, contemplate, and mimic. 

Although I am grateful to WordPress for reminding me of how long I have been blogging, it is you–the reader–whom I want to thank most for finding something in my posts that appeals to you enough to follow me. 

So to all who read this far, thank you!