Blogging

What’s happening WordPress? I could not see uploaded photos and cannot even comment? Why?

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2021 Is Almost Gone

Here I am again posting my year-ender blog. Every end of the year, I try to summarize what happened on the months and days gone.

December 28, three days to go before the calendar changes again. Except for Obet purchasing a new Ford Territory last January, nothing much happened. Nissa and Obet spent the latter’s birthday lunch with us end of January. Middle of March, Nissa was hospitalized for a week because of Covid. Nate and Obet stayed here with us for four days. We survived on video calls with Nissa during mealtimes and evening rosary prayers. The four of us here at home including my 92-year old mom had Covid during the first week of May. For me, it was almost a month-long recovery. Thank God we got well.

Birthdays were spent quietly but I was glad Nissa and Obet surprised me with their presence during my birthday. They went on leave from work. The rest of the months, we survived on audio and video calls, messages, texts and occasional chats with Nate. Those “hi”, “hello”, “I love you Nonna” made me smile.

We were not able to see each other last Christmas day because Nate and Obet had fever. I thank God they are okay now. They are coming over on the New Year. Looking forward to it.

I really miss these two.

Would you believe, I was able to read 143 books this year? I am on my 144th book at the moment.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 🍀🍻🌝🎉🎈

May we all be blessed this coming 2022.

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662,919 Views And 3,288 Posts Later

I have clearly forgotten those lovely thoughts that I wrote years ago when I was just beginning to write posts at WordPress during my journey as a cancer patient and survivor. If I were to add all my blog posts at my four other sites, it might reach 700, 000 views and maybe 4,000 posts. That year-long journey triggered and inspired me to blog at WordPress. I was so happy reaching out to those with similar journey like I did.

Blogging has become a way of life just as reading does. I used to blog almost every day but over the years, posting one once or twice a week is now enough for me. Over the past two years during this pandemic, everything seemed to be at a stand still. I’ve only gone out five times from our subdivision. No visitors came over except Nissa’s family. Food and groceries were delivered. Even the Christmas gifts were ordered online. Hopefully, this pandemic will end soon.

Finally done with trimming the carabao grass with Josef’s help. We still need though to have the garden outside our perimeter wall cleaned. Our tree dogs sleep in the garage while Nikki, who has just given birth to three male pups is in a cage in our dirty kitchen. She is so protective of her litters.

The past few nights, I compared all the books I had on my tab with Goodreads. Good thing I have a virtual library there. I have read some of them the past few years. It’s funny, I used to write a brief review of the books I read before. I got lazy though since I started this year’s reading challenge. I am looking for more authors and books to read.

I don’t get to visit my friends’ blogs every day because I don’t visit WordPress that often. So sorry about that, will catch up soon.

By the way, it’s CHRISTMAS in nine days.

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Missing The Numbers

I did a draft of this yesterday because for two days, we didn’t have internet connection. Maintenance again.

I feel so lazy to update my account here. It’s not like before. I saw my stats lately and it has dropped tremendously. Some of my blogger friends probably lost interest in reading my blog. Maybe my content is no longer that interesting.

Anyway, this pandemic gave me an opportunity to read, read and read like crazy. Since I’ve finished my Goodreads’ Reading Challenge for 2021, I’ve chosen some light reading from my e-book collection. I’ve forgotten how good romance books are sometimes. For the first time in years, I cried over a book. Think the like of movie adaptation of The Fault in our Stars by John Green, The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks and several books by Richard Paul Evans made into films. This year, I am done with memoirs, cookbooks, thrillers and historical novels. I am presently reading a paranormal story. Trying another genre has that “kilig” factor. I am on my 108th read. So far, so good.

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13th Year

Hello guys. Good morning.

Yesterday, I received a congratulatory message from WordPress. Thirteen years ago, I opened an account here upon the recommendation of a friend from Multiply.

I tried creating one of course but all I posted was a pathetic single poem from my journal. It took me more than a year to come back and learned how to customize it. I chose a free theme and I am still using one until now. It would take maybe a year or two more to utilize it fully.

I started actually posting and transferring some posts from Friendster and Multiply back in May 2009, a few days after I learned that I had to undergo the inevitable sigmoidoscopy. Back then, the result of my colonoscopy was not good. To cut the story short, my surgical oncologist removed about nine inches of my colon. I started chemo a month after, six sessions of pain and distress for almost half a year.

I have to look for something that would occupy my empty days aside from reading. I have to give up gardening for almost a year. So I thought of visiting my account at WordPress and learn everything from there.

Do you remember how you started? I got a measly ten visits and two followers almost a month after. It was only when I braved myself to join WordPress’ Post A Day Challenge that my blog was noticed by a few. That was ten years ago and the rest is history now.

I gained new online friends, fellow bloggers who were just starting too. Some of them I still follow until now and they had followed me back. Some got lost in cyberspace, stopped blogging and even deleted their accounts.

I don’t really know why some people follow you but you can’t even hear from them. No likes, no comments, no whatsoever. Some of course expect that you follow them back. It’s not an automatic response from me.

If I have to count those active bloggers who I exchange ideas and comments with, fifty would be a lucky number. One thing though, I found true friends here, learned a lot from their posts, admired the photos they shared, admired the reviews of books they have read and I was inspired by their posts on different subjects. Travelling without leaving your corner, seeing a slice of the world we live in.

So it’s my 13th year. I congratulate myself that I reached this far.

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Blogging Woes

I am having an intermittent headache. Been taking pain reliever for two days now. It has stopped a few minutes ago.

I was trying to read some of my earlier posts back in 2011 when I joined WordPress’ Post A Day Challenge. How I was able to blog every day back then was such a big puzzle to me. The endurance of thinking of what to write about every day without fail. I wonder where my badge got to, it was lost somewhere when I tried to change my blog format. Those were the times I got so many visitors although commenting and liking was unheard of. There were words of encouragement though from WordPress, inspiring words at the end of each entry and the total number of posts you have written since you started blogging. They got lost somewhere along the way. There are so many bloggers now. There are new ones who post a few entries and then suddenly stop writing. Some maybe disappointed by the slow rise of followers and readers.

No matter how good your contents are if your tags and categories are not, you can’t expect people to follow you right away. You build your blog slowly. It always takes a number of years before you can be recognized as a seasoned blogger. There are followers who never take time to even like your posts. Some are there who are bold enough to say that we should follow their blogs too. You don ‘t need to tell me that I should follow you back because if I like what you write about, I will follow it.

I wonder why I could no longer see my dashboard since I started using my tab. It always shows that I have to log in but when I do, it reverts back to the same log in option.

As I have always said, blogging has become a way of life.

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Oh No!

My PC conked out on me after I did that short post. Trying this on my tab but even if I tried the link on the browser, it went back to the block editor.

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Of Stats And Followers

I used to call it magic. A couple of years after I started blogging, I’ve got this amazing blog stats  about my particular post on Mama Mary in one day.  Most visitors are fellow Filipinos who just loved Mama Mary. We are a Marian country, we venerate her. I  looked at the yearly summary of blog stats on Mary Mary alone from the year 2012  up to September 8, 2020. The lowest was when I didn’t blog about her birth but just mentioned it in passing last year because I blogged about my stay at the UST Hospital during Nissa’s operation. I’ve got the recap on my stats on my yearly posts about Mama Mary alone.

2011 – 1,214

2012 – 3,777

2013 – 4,131

2014 – 2,826

2015 – 5,400

2016  – 2,959

2017 – 2,481

2018 –  1,235

2019 –    805

2020 – 2,144

These figures added up to my total blog stats of 625,997 as of today. I am glad that those who are not even regular subscribers visit my blog. In an ordinary day, the stats has dwindled of course between 100 and 150.   I don’t mind much how many subscribers I have because most of them are not even liking or commenting on my posts. Some have deleted their own blog sites but are still using WordPress to access the site.

It’s funny how when someone views and likes a blog post and he or she is quite new in your eyes, their blogs don’t exist anymore.   I follow about 135 bloggers to date and I try to engage with them although some are really not active.  Posting though once in a while is okay.  Lately, I got in touch with some of them and just said hello. Some said they have stopped blogging for a while.

Sometimes I spend my time on Facebook looking and reading at the poems and shoutouts of several authors I follow. I linked their sites here on WordPress.  There are two Irish photographers that I recently followed and and their photos about Ireland are simply amazing. They remind me of my dream of a place here in our country which is Batanes.

It might interest you to know that it is the only place in  our country which is Covid-free.  It is the northernmost province in the country, and also the smallest, both in population and land area.

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On Blogging Still

Come to think of it. I read complaints about the new editor recently introduced by WordPress. Nope, I am not yet that brave enough to try it, maybe until we are all obliged to switch to  the new one. Why fix it if there is nothing wrong?

I am still using the free platform, careful enough not to post high resolution shots that uses my limit.  Anyway, I have set up a new blog called  Dreams Never End about four years ago and some of you followed it but sad to say, I haven’t updated it for quite some time. It is a different set-up from this one since every post is accompanied by a high-resolution shot, pictures I  took long ago.  Then I have Colors set in a duotone and I just love it but like the other blogs I have, it is not updated. For my new followers, you may visit them if you have time. I have a gardening blog too and Nate’s of course. You can all see them on my personal links on my blog wall.

I have yet to thank all those new followers who left some comments in my blog but some of them never came back….haha! Thanks too for the bloggers  I follow and who follow me back.  There are only some loyal  bloggers who like and make comments on my posts. Oh yeah, visits have reached almost 623,0000 now and active followers are maybe about 30 to 50 more or less, some just follow without any interaction.  I wonder if they ever read anything here. And I agree with Pete, some follow one’s blog so you could follow them back.  One important thing that we should not forget though is the blog content. It is not enough that we just write, there must be something that other people could relate to for your blog to be called a success.

I guess, blogging is here to stay unless we find it more difficult to navigate this site in the near future. Change is welcome but it must be user-friendly too, don’t you think?

 

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It’s My WordPress Anniversary

Did I tell you that it is my 12th year with WordPress today?  I posted a lone poem 12 years ago but didn’t start actual blogging here until a year later. Here’s a message from WordPress that I got this morning:

Happy Anniversary with WordPress.com!

You registered on WordPress.com 12 years ago.

Thanks for flying with us. Keep up the good blogging.

Here’ s some excerpts from a blog post I did a long time ago:

It’s been a long journey, finding your own niche in the blogging world using a popular site like WordPress. It’s been a long journey, giving a voice to what’s on your mind, tucking the fragments of time in one’s memory, stringing words to make a long post, creating poems and being amazed at the joys of taking photos, experimenting on macro photography. It’s been a long journey of faith and hope.

The pleasure one gets when you publish something, the delight in reading and answering comments, the luxury of having loyal online friends who look forward to every post and the pleasure of reading other posts and discovering new blogs and writers – priceless.

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