The title says it all – my blog is turning four!
Four years of my life creating something that could easily disappear due to internetty reasons beyond my control.
Four years honing my writing skills and training my visual eye. Both skills that you need a lifetime to perfect – four years is a good start though.
Four years making new friends, virtual as you might be, but our conversations are real. It makes it all worthwhile. Thank you!
I have my own little blogoversary tradition of creating a photo gallery with 12 photos, posted each month of the past year, and I’m not going to break the tradition. So here you go:
The past blogging year saw me do some things quite differently: I started writing more, and I got more personal. And, cherry on the cake, last month I started co-hosting a photo challenge, a new step for me.
The travel theme became less and less important on my blog – I even became a tad disenchanted with travel in general (how about we leave something for future generations to explore?!) – and I only traveled to Krakow last year.
Another tradition of mine has been to highlight some of my own favorite posts from the past year, in case you missed them. I liked that I was able to get into a creative mood a few times, despite my life being quite hectic at the moment.
My top 7 picks, in a random order:
- Visiting Porvoo and A Trip Down Memory Lane – because of the colorful photos I stuffed into the post
- The Invisible Beauty of Pigeons – pondering about daily things
- Modern Fairytale – a story I enjoyed posting
- T-Shirt Poem – getting creative (?)
- A Treasure Impossible Sweet – felt like rhyming!
- The Time I Wasn’t Glamorous Enough – sudden inspiration to write
- The Art of Hello – very much enjoyed writing this
Another change I’ve noticed in my blogging self, possibly due to my real life self’s current busyness, is that I’ve lowered my own standards a bit.
For example, I can full well see that the squares in my gallery in this post are unsharp. But there is nothing wrong with the images, and you can check by clicking them open. I tried changing their size but it didn’t help.
Normally, this type of thing would bother the heck out of me and I would google for answers until I solved the problem.
But now… now I’m just going to publish the post as it is, assuming it’s a WordPress glitch in the square gallery that I can’t fix anyway. I could choose a different gallery layout but I only have a couple of options to choose from and I know that the layout will be completely different if I use them – and I want squares this time!
Now I don’t know if lowering standards is good for the blog (probably not!) but I think it’ll be good for my stress levels! I’m going to cruise along at a relaxed pace and enjoy the scenery. I’ll leave the problem-solving to other people. (For now.)
I wish all of you smooth sailing in your blogs and let’s keep chatting!
Thanks for reading – now, and all those other times!
146 replies on “4 Years of Blogging!”
Happy blogging anniversary! I’m very happy to be part of your virtual world!
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Thanks Lexi, it wouldn’t be the same without you!
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Congrats on four years. I like your tradition of sharing 12 photos from the past year. Might have to borrow that. I also like that you aren’t worrying too much about your blogging standards, which I think are still very good. One thing I found out regarding my writing and photography, was that I was hopeless when I tried to turn out something I thought others would like. Instead, I try to focus on what I like, and if others enjoy that, then that’s a bonus. I’m glad to have found your blog and I look forward to the next wonderful year.
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Thanks Graham! I agree with you about blogging about what you want to, doing things in a genuine way, not trying to write clickbait posts. It’s more personal that way, and more importantly, it’s more enjoyable for the yourself. If there’s no joy in blogging, why do it? 😊 (I’m excluding commercial blogs here, ie advertorials, a whole other story of course). I’m glad to have found your blog too, I enjoy it very much!
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Congrats lovely, Happy 4th Blogversary. Xx
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Thanks Lorelle!! 🌷
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Happy fourth anniversary, Snow! You should be proud ❤ You're on my favorite bloggers!
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Thanks Pooja dear!! Same here, you are one my my very favorites! 😊
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I have to tell you something interesting! I saw you in my dream last night 🙂 It wasn’t clear if we were in Nepal or Poland, but you visited and you were quite shy and blond! Like a true Finn (sorry for the stereotype) hehe. You didn’t really say much but we were by the lake (my family and I and you) enjoying summer hehe.
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Hahah!!! That’s funny!!! 😊 But it doesn’t sound too bad, sitting by a lake and chatting, in summertime! Except if I was kind of boring 🤭 (I used to be blond but now my hair is quite colorless! Light brownish-greyish-yellowish… not that nice! Waiting for summer to get it bleached by the sun again!) 🤣
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Yes exactly! Maybe it was in my subconscious that we recently had a chat about not being able to go to a nice beach in months/years hehe. And the most fascinating part of the dream was the lake was full of sea cows and hundreds of dolphins that you could swim alongside with!! Really an interesting dream. I doubt you are boring in real life! 😀 Dreams are always so random 🙂
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What a lovely lake that was 💕 Maybe we’ll meet up one day, somewhere by the water… 😁
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Happy 4 years of blogging 🙂
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Thanks so much!!
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Congrats for staying with it for four years. Thanks for hosting the challenge too. It has been fun participating. 😊
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Thanks very much! Happy you’ve enjoyed the challenge! ☺️4 years have gone by so quickly…!
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Congrats and I love your anniversary tradition here-
The photos all seeemdd clear to me – but FYI – in the reader I was only able to see the two rows and the far right sautés were cut off – and I do not want to leave the reader so I am going to soak up what I can see (love the lights that make the triangle –
And like you – I have relaxed a lot and have typos I have not had the chance to fix. Ahhhh – not sure if I will go back in- but I feel like my blog is informal and I want it solid but also chill and relaxed –
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I go back and edit typos in the text because it’s quick and easy to do but that’s about it. I also have a policy of no emojis in my text, I want it to be professional. But I allow myself to use emojis in comments 😊😊😊😊 As for galleries in the Reader, they are always presented in such a horrible and ugly way, I don’t know why WP doesn’t fix this. In any case I do hope most readers hop over from the feed to my site because I’ve spent time desiging it to look pretty and it shows my personality, which the Reader doesn’t. Also, readers that land on my actual site can navigate to other posts of mine. So in a way it’s good that the Reader presents gallieries in an awful manner, because it might spur some people to actually visit my blog!!! 😉
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Well I still get your wonderful personality from the reader – believe me – your voice and your essence comes through – but you have reminded me of the value of going to actual sites and so later this spring I will do that (I am trying to scale back my social media time this year and so I am trying different strategies and one thing that works right now is staying in the reader – and it is better than pulling the plug completely – for me that is…)
Oh and not all galleries are awful (in my opinsiin at least) and I love the collages and the slideshows – so far at least – I’ll keep you posted if it changes and thanks for the reply (💜❄️☀️)
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Interesting strategy! Hope it works! Mine is that I delete all apps so it’ll be harder to browse feeds. But then I change my mind and reload them again… 😁 It was a pleasure chatting! Enjoy your weekend!
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Yeah – finding what works is so key – and we have different seasons -eh? Last September I was missing blogging so much I spent a lot of the month immersing – but it would not be a wise use of my time to do it every month- it it can be so fulfilling.
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Well done for 4 years.. pretty much new so haven’t followed you for that long.. 😉
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Well I’m happy you’re here now! 😁 Happy blogging and good luck! Hope you enjoy it as much as I have
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Congratulations! It’s an interesting journey isn’t it! I hope for all our sakes that things don’t disappear for internetty reasons (I worry about this sometimes too).
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Yes it’s quite a thought… and quite possible! Thanks for commenting!
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Congratulations Lumi. And as the English say: Many happy returns of the day. 🙂
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Thanks Brieuc! 😊 Enjoy those Mexican flowers! Over here it’s still cold and icy but we can see the sky – a rare treat – and that makes it feel springlike!
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The sky is a good sign. 🙂
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Super-fantastic Blogniversary 😍😜
Big hugs 🤗
Sid
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Super big thanks dear Sid! xxx
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😎😋
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sounds like Rajinder up there is a bit of a scammer?:=) tee hee
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Hmm, what do you mean? Do you think it’s a bot? I’m so bad at spotting those! Maybe bots are good at personalisation these days. It could’ve been a real blogger too because many aim for commercialization of their blogs…. hmm
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oh i thought you were replying to him in a (gently) sarcastic/humourous/ironic way …. I just felt that he wasn’t a real blogger . but i could be wrong. i get such a lot of them on my blog. I delete them all with glee:)
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I delete the obvious ones and I don’t reply to them. But this one I’m not sure. But I guess they can learn to personalize their spam? Also what’s the point, what’s the gain – where does the bot want people to click since there isn’t even a site? I don’t get it
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i don’t get it either:) i don’t know why they bother. where does it get them? yes i have been getting personalised spam, where they pretend to be real people. what a weird world it is….
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Hmm well in that case I’ll delete that thread!
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Happy Blogversary! I have been away from several months, abandoning my blog and stopping to read the blogs on my feed * sigh *, so I will definitely check the posts you listed and the photo challenge 🙂
Ciao, Sara
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Ciao Sara! I hope you were doing something fun? 😊 Happy to see you’re back!! 🤗
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I moved temporarely to South Tyrol and I had no time to write or read! The free-time that I had was employed to trek and discover that wonderful area! ❤
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Ah, sounds lovely!!! Time well spent then.
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I’m feel like I’m having a ‘moment’ I feel like I have already commented on this post but perhaps it’s the ‘private’ conversation we had on this subject so forgive me if I’m repeating myself. Congrats on 4 years and many more! 🙂
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Oh and amen to that perfectionist thing and learning to press submit anyway. There should be a Perfectionist Anon group set up for us wee poor souls.
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Hahah! Yep!!
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🙂
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Thanks for reading this and some of the linked oldies – not many do, as you probably know! So it’s that much more appreciated 😊🌷
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It was hard! I kept seeing more and more interesting titles…could you be a bit more boring, it would help with my schedule… 🙂
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😀
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Congrats on the 4 years! 🙂
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Thanks Julie! 😊
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Congrats on four years of blogging. It is quite a while to be blogging. Interesting to hear it has been less about travel and more personal. As our lives evolve, blogging also evolves. I guess that can make our blogging content interesting, and there’s always something new for you to blog about 🙂
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True, blogging evolves as life does, and I’ve also notice my blogging style evolve because I’m better at it now – I’m not as shy to share stories from my life and I’ve gotten to know so many other bloggers 🙂 Thanks Mabel for dropping by, do come again! 😉
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Yay!! Congrats on 4 years of blogging!! The evolution of a blog is always an interesting journey. 🙂
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Thanks! It is 😊
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Well done – lovely blog. Hope Im still around in four years….
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Thanks! Hope so too, blogging is quite addictive once you get going! 😊
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Happy blogiversary! 😄
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Thanks! 🙂
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Congratulations on your anniversary!!!
Blogging is one of the best choices I have made. I’ve been at it for over a year and I’ve the finest people in the world. It is such a huge part of my life.
You have taken some beautiful pictures. They look wonderful.
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Thanks! Same here, blogging has changed so many things for me and given so much! It was a spontaneous decision on my part, such a stroke of luck really! 😊 Happy blogging to you!
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Congrats!!!
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Thanks! 🙂
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Nice. Congratulations. I’m back from a hiatus. Hope to post more often now. Kudos to you for keeping your blog alive after kiddos. 👌🏻
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I hopped over to look at yours some time ago – glad to hear you’re back!! 🙂 Keeping it alive after kids at first kept me sane – it was an easy hobby while they were napping – but now that they are toddler-aged (and never sleep), life is pretty hectic and I’m not as motivated about blogging as I was. But… all the bloggers I’ve met here keep me going because the sense of community is so great!
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Hahaha…I think our kids might be around the same age now. My toddler son has FOMO already and just doesn’t want to sleep even if can hardly keep his eyes open. 😄
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Hahah! I was looking at pajamas at a store a while ago and saw one that said “We never sleep” – to this day I still regret not buying it! I might’ve used it as daywear just to let the world know 😉 heheh
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😂
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great blog! congrats on 4 yrs!
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Thank you so much! 😆
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