Now we are seven

Seven years ago today I began blogging about everything and nothing. Seven years after that slightly impulsive idea, I've amassed nearly 1000 posts about the things I like: food, recipes, music, books, events, places I've been, a few tales and some random thoughts.

It's a quiet blog birthday this year but a milestone none-the-less. At the start of this year, Café Chick transformed into a slightly more demure Caffeinated Weka. While my online persona has evolved a bit, I'm pretty much the same character underneath, albeit a little more sedate these days.

My job involves a lot of writing lately. A LOT. Although I have a reasonably good capacity to write, I've wondered aloud that I seem to have a word writing limit each week and sometimes I reach it by Thursday afternoon. Sometimes, even before then. That doesn't bode well for the 17 posts I have sitting in my draft folder. (It will be 16 once I eventually post this.) The reality is, though, that after a full day of words, there aren't as many left for blogging during evenings and weekends.

I have come to enjoy writing more and more over the years and have explored writing in various styles for different purposes. This blog is unashamedly self-indulgent but elements of how I write professionally have inevitably shaped my personal writing style. I realised I must be overdoing it at work when reading a classic novel this week and mentally trying to rewrite it in plain English!

So, back to the blogging birthday rituals. I always take a screen shot of my pretty red dotted Clustr map and this year is no exception. The dots represent nearly 160,000 visitors from 193 countries during the past seven years. That's a lot of coffee and cake! The map will be archived around 3 December and all the little red dots will disappear. I look forward to seeing them pop up again in the coming months.

I wonder whether there's as much place for blogs and blogging in the world of social media world as it stands today. I've asked myself this same question before, too. Where this blog used to be my shop window, Twitter has become my dashboard, my go-to for news and information. It's also where most of my online interaction takes place. My own blogroll, which used to be teeming with posts to read, only just ticks along these days. Views are down and comments on this platform are few. I guess it's a sign of the times, even if I'm not exactly sure what it is signalling.

Thank you to everyone who has stopped by and, even better, stuck around for another year on this blog. Let's see what the next year brings. Cheers!