Blog Birthday – My Favourite Things

… later, I complete a decade of writing this blog. A DECADE ! There is a sense of disbelief mixed with pride as I type this out — the annual blog anniversary post where I record the blogging year that was, sum up the highlights, rant a bit, rave a bit, reflect a bit, with hopes and share plans for the year to come…

For those who came in late, let me summarise this blogging journey in brief. “My Favourite Things” began on this day 10 years ago when I hit the publish button on a post about Mumbai’s Bandra Fort. It was supposed to be a travel blog, at least that was the plan. But my blog had a mind of its own and soon I was blogging about movie and book reviews, social issues, and also writing on a lot of miscellaneous topics. Basically, it was a lot of that and this, which kind of worked as my blog URL for a long time was That And This In Mumbai.

I experimented with topics and genres to discover what worked for me — travel, books, art, museums, music — and what didn’t — food and restaurant reviews, product reviews, movie reviews, among others. The external blogging world also impacted my choices for the blog’s content: I flirted briefly with writing sponsored posts and collaborations, but found out that they made me very uncomfortable, and dropped them with great relief. In other words, my blogging journey was also about persevering in what I liked and letting go of what I didn’t like.

The 10 years of blogging have been challenging, particularly in the last few years. I have been publishing lesser number of posts with every passing year. I published only 10 posts in Year 10, but there was a big difference this time around.

Continue reading “10 years, 558 posts, 5,18,284 words…” →

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… later, I sit down to write my annual blog birthday / anniversary post. There’s a touch of disbelief (and a quiet sense of pride too) that I’m still blogging considering how much the blogging scene in general and travel blogging in particular has changed in the 9 years since I began this blog on June 2, 2010.

From a small group of bloggers led by their love for travel and writing to the marketing and social media driven influencer type of travel blogging today, there has been a paradigm shift. The initial dismay at the changing atmosphere gave way to angst and then despair, followed by resignation and finally the inevitable acceptance.

This annual blog birthday/anniversary post is an opportunity to look back at the blogging year that was. An opportunity to reflect and share the highs & the lows, the fun times and the not-so-fun times, the learnings and the unlearnings as well. And as the title suggests, some numbers and the statistics as well — from the number of posts and words written to page views and spam comments !

But the statistics don’t really reveal the full picture.

Continue reading “9 years, 548 posts, 5,10,893 words…” →