5 years, 413 posts, 3,33,785 words…

Posted on by sudhagee
5th birthday
Click on the picture for the source

… later, it is time for that annual blog anniversary post. The fifth to be precise, and about a blogging year that has been quite different from the previous years.

If the first year of blogging was an exciting time of finding my feet in the blogging world, then the second year was a heady and wonderful year of peer recognition. The third year of blogging was the year of reality check in the form of severe writer’s block and coming face to face with negativity and bullying in the blogging world. Year four was all about facing extreme blogging fatigue, wondering what to do, and slowly reclaiming the pleasure of blogging.

As for the fifth year of blogging, it has probably been the most relaxed year of blogging ever — barring a couple of mini rants here and there. I blogged when I wanted to, what I wanted to, how I wanted to, and even where I wanted to. Basically, I did what I wanted to. Blog-wise, that is. 🙂

But before I go into a little bit of details of that, I must share with you an incident that turned out to be the highlight of Year 5 of blogging. It’s not about the blog directly and yet it is. It  happened on the morning of 19th October 2014.

It was a Sunday and I was woken up by the doorbell at around 7.30 am. Though I like to sleep in a little on Sundays, that rarely happens. Our housing society’s garbage collector, Suraj, has a rather perverse streak — on weekdays he collects the garbage around 9.30 am; on weekends he’s there before 8.00 am.

I stumbled out of bed, grumbling under my breath, picked up the garbage bag and opened the door to hand it to Suraj. But it wasn’t Suraj who was standing on the other side of the door. It was someone else.

Now, I have myopic vision and since I wasn’t wearing my glasses, I couldn’t make out who was at the door. It looked like one of my neighbours, but I couldn’t be sure. As I was trying to figure out who it was, the person spoke: “Sudha, you’re in the newspaper.”

I motioned to the person to enter, and went in to get my spectacles. Once that was on, I realised that it was Hema, one of my neighbours. She handed me a copy of The Times of India (ToI) pointing to an article on Page 6. It was about an abandoned water fountain in Mumbai’s Reay Road area — the same water fountain I had written a fictionalised account in a blog post in February 2012. According to the ToI article, my fictionalised account was 95% correct and they had mentioned me and this blog in the article.

When I handed the paper back to Hema after reading the article, she remarked, “So, you write a blog.” And as simply as that she, and soon my other neighbours, got to know of this blog. To this day, I can’t get over that morning discussion with Hema about my blog — in our jammies, bed hair and unbrushed teeth — in my living room. It was so bizarre and funny at the same time. 🙂

Other highlights of the year include an unexpected connection made with my father’s cousin and aunt, with whom we had lost contact through a post I wrote about my family history; a very sweet mail from a schoolgirl in Tripura who said that she got ideas from my Ajanta and Ellora posts for her school assignment and how she got top marks; meeting a woman priest at Daulatabad Fort;  comments and mails by readers on their having visited a monument or picked up a book after having read about it here; and so on. I also got included in a couple of listicles on top travel blogs and wasn’t included in many more. 😛

Yes, it was a great year.

I turned down FAM invitations and offers to host/write sponsored posts and listicles in magazines.

I accepted offers to review a tablet and then a phone and had a lot of fun doing so.

I started doing restaurant reviews as part of the Navi Mumbai Foodies initiative and met some fascinating and interesting people in the process.

I travelled to North Gujarat and then to Shekhawati (posts to come!), read lots of books, but reviewed just two (I know, shameful!); and so much more.

Yes, it was a great year and I had a lot of fun.

Looking forward to Year 6 now ! Before I end this post, do let me share with you 5 posts that I think you should read — one for each year of blogging. They are not necessarily my best posts, but ones that I think you should read, if you haven’t already.

So that was 5 years, 413 posts, 3,33,785 words, 43 videos, 1 audio, 2,436 images, 3,02,928 page views, 10,301 comments, and 80,925 spam comments.

In these 5 years I have shared with you all “My Favourite Things” and will continue to do so. Right now, I want YOU to share with me your favourite things here. Tell me about your favourite travel destinations, favourite books, favourite works of music or art, your special memories …

Go on, I’m waiting to hear from you. 🙂

The Blogging Journey… Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Year 4 | Year 5 | Year 6 | Year 7 | Year 8 | Year 9 | Year 10 |

I would love to have you join me as I explore that and this on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Published by sudhagee

I write about this, that, here, there and everywhere... Come, explore my world.

30 thoughts on “5 years, 413 posts, 3,33,785 words…”

  2. Though it is very hard to predict the future of technology and how people will use it, I hope this blog will be going strong even at 50! As Winston Churchill said… well, never mind. Just keep writing!

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. I think it’s difficult to predict what will happen even one hour from now. 🙂

      Thanks for your wishes. I do intend to keep writing for as long as I feel like.

      Like

      Reply

  4. Congratulations on the first 5; and to many more multiples of 5/10/50/100. Wishing you many more wonderful experiences which will in turn give us, your readers, wonderful reading 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  5. …..and 40,013 posts……later it is that time of the year again. I hope I will be around to cheer you and your blog then 🙂 Congrats and keep writing. Am I glad 2014 brought you back into active blogging, and now to canter and then gallop on!

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. 40,013 posts? That will be an unbelievable and mind-boggling number of years. 😛 Thanks, Zephyr. It was tough getting back on track, but one I did, it was fun. I don’t think I enjoyed blogging as much as I did this year. I hope it continues 🙂

      Like

      Reply

  7. Congrats on completing 5 years! Let me tell you what are my favorites in your blog. It’s the offbeat places you have traveled to and made them alive like the Bohra village, the stepwells, Lonar crater, Looking forward to many more..

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Thank you Lata for your wishes and for sharing your favourites in my blog. Just to let you know, one more stepwell will soon be featured in this blog and it is one that I have not seen anywhere else. Hope you’ll like it. 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  8. Congratulations lady!!! I have always enjoyed reading your posts and am looking forward to reading the ones on Shekhawati. And I know you have it in you to keep going at it…writing and writing…

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  11. Congratulations Sudha! I love coming to your blog and reading about your travels. My interest in ancient sculptures, architecture and history is tantalizingly prodded every time I read about the places you’ve been too.

    Wish you and your blog all the very best. Cheers! 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  13. Wow! Five years is a long time even if one year in between had been a little slack. I have read some of your favourite posts listed here and will read the others too. I just love coming to your blog and soaking up the posts and you know, I love ALL of them, be they on travel, books, photography and the ‘now songs’…..Your plans for this year sound exciting, especially the book reviews. Wish you many more anniversaries, Sudha!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thank you so much, Alarmelvalli, for your wishes, your appreciation and your encouragement. I can’t tell you how much it means to me. Hugs and much love 🙂

      Like

      Reply

  14. My favorite things and there are so many of them – aavakai, hapoos mangoes, pani puri, books, tequila, but at the top of the list are Sudha and ThatandThisinMumbai. I am so glad we met through the blogging world and so grateful that we are friends in the real one. Congratulations, my friend, you simply are tops and you so deserve to be. Muah!!!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. MM, you are the first blogger I connected with and there were times when I would wonder if we had really not met !

      Thank you, thank you and then again thank you many times more for such love wishes and thoughts. Hugs and lots of love. 🙂

      Like

      Reply
  15. Pingback: 6 years, 458 posts, 3,87,765 words… | My Favourite Things
  16. Pingback: 7 years, 512 posts, 4,61,996 words… – My Favourite Things

I'd love to hear from you.

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.