Day: May 10, 2021

Four Years

Fandango38 Comments

WordPress sent me a notification this morning that I registered this blog on WordPress.com four years ago today. It took me four days to publish my first post.

Since I was just returning from a two-year blogging hiatus after I abruptly ended my previous blog, I wasn’t sure how frequently I would post to my new blog or even how long I would keep it going. Well, I know now that I’ve kept it going four four years!

And over that four years (if you can trust the stats that WordPress compiles), my blog has had:

  • 6,257 posts published
  • 1,446.8 words in those posts
  • 544k views
  • 153k visitors
  • 4,481 followers
  • 101.6k comments
  • 164.5k likes

Not too shabby, huh?

So thanks to all of your who have visited my blog, who have chosen to follow my blog, who have liked my posts and commented on them, and for reading my nearly one-and-a-half million words. You have made my four years of blogging here worthwhile.

Sunday Writing Prompt — A Beautiful Mistake

Fandango23 Comments

We had decided to wait. We’d been dating for two years, living together for a year, and had finally gotten married. But neither of us wanted to rush into parenthood. We were both working, establishing ourselves in our respective careers, and we were still getting used to the idea of being a married couple.

Then, just a month after the wedding, she told me she was late. By a week. Then two weeks. She got the pee-on pregnancy test thing and, sure enough, she was pregnant.

We were always careful. She wasn’t on the pill for health reasons, and I was not big on condoms, so I made sure to pull out right before. Well, except for that one night. I made a mistake. And that was all it took.

We debated a course of action, but in the end, we decided to face the consequences of my mistake. Nearly eight months later, our daughter was born. And she was beautiful.

This post about what was an accidental pregnancy that turned out to be a wonderfully happy accident, was written for yesterday’s Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Sunday Writing Prompt. And yes, I know that today is Monday, but yesterday was Mother’s Day and we were celebrating that day with our daughter, our beautiful mistake.

Share Your World — Going Deep

Fandango27 Comments

It’s Monday and that means that Melanie has given us another Share Your World prompt. This week Melanie is going deep with her questions. So let’s get to it.

What do you believe but cannot prove?

Well, I suppose my answer is my belief that God does not exist. I cannot prove that God does not exist, but nor can anyone prove that God does exist. So I guess we’re at a standoff.

Do animals have morals? Exclude human beings from the equation please.

I believe (but cannot prove…did you see what I did there?) that animals feel emotions ranging from happiness, sadness, love, grief, outrage, and empathy. And I also believe that animals live by prevailing standards of behavior that enable them to live cooperatively in groups. Do those reflect morals? I dunno. What do you think?

Is there inherent order in nature or is it all chaos and chance?

According to Merriam-Webster, natural order is the orderly system comprising the physical universe and functioning according to natural laws, as distinguished from human or supernatural laws. Unfortunately, humans too often disrupt the natural order of things, which tends to result in a certain amount of chaos.

Where is your least favorite place in the world?

I’ll let you know when I get there.

Blogging Insights — Fewer

Fandango14 Comments

For this week’s edition of Blogging Insights, Dr. Tanya simply wants to know about blogging in the year of the pandemic. She asks…

How do you think this pandemic year has been for blogging in general and your blog in particular?

I’m not going to answer the part of the question that asks about blogging in general because I’m not qualified to answer that. But I can give you a one-word answer as to the effect of the pandemic on my blog in particular. That word is “fewer.”

In 2020, as compared to 2019, I wrote fewer posts, received fewer views, got fewer total likes and average likes per post, and fewer total comments and average comments per post. I also wrote fewer total words in 2020 than in 2019 and had fewer words per post.

That said, I honestly don’t know if I can blame the pandemic for all those “fewers.” It could just be that my blog peaked in 2019 and now, irrespective of the pandemic, it’s trending downward. And, so far in 2021, my average likes and comments per post are about the same as they were in 2020.

So I don’t really have a good answer to Tanya’s question about the relationship between my blog stats and the pandemic. But I can tell you that, despite the mandated launch of the block editor last year and the still unfixed bug in the WordPress app for iOS, I enjoyed blogging and interacting with my fellow bloggers since the pandemic began as much as I did before it started and as I still do today.

Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge #117

Fandango15 Comments

Welcome to “Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge.” Each week I will be posting a photo I grab off the internet and challenging bloggers to write a flash fiction piece or a poem inspired by the photo. There are no style or word limits.

The image below is from MilosCreativeArt at DeviantArt.For the visually challenged writer, the image shows a man riding a bicycle on a bridge and there are tall buildings that are partially or mostly obscured by thick clouds reaching down to the ground.

If this week’s image inspires you and you wish to participate, please write your post, use the tag #FFFC, and link back to this post. I hope it will generate some great posts.

Thanks to all of you who have participated in these challenges. Your posts have been very creative. Please take a few minutes to read the other responses to this photo challenge.

Please create a pingback to this post or manually add your link in the comments.