Day Thirty – My Hopes for My Blog

Well, I made it to day thirty.  It has been a challenge.  It was a lot more difficult than I imagined considering I was given topics to write about.  I love to write.  Somedays the words flow and on others, I sit and stare at a blank screen for an hour lost in my thoughts.  The difficulty of this challenge wasn’t so much writing every day, but having to complete something every day that I would publish on my website. Not counting today’s blog, in the twenty-nine previous days, I have written 31,471 words and had 519 visitors to “Down the Rabbit Hole”.  Going in with zero expectations, I am happy with those statistics.  But, what’s next?

I started “Down the Rabbit Hole” in 2014 when I moved to Paris so my family and friends could follow my day-to-day life and experiences.  When I returned to the USA from Paris, I neglected to maintain my domain and I also didn’t consider writing anything from Warren, Ohio.  Therefore, all was lost.  I didn’t start writing seriously again until I moved to Dong’e in 2017, and “Down the Rabbit Hole – My Adventures in the Middle Kingdom” was reborn.  I later changed it to “…the Middle Kingdom and Beyond” when I left China.

What started as simply a way to share my experiences with family and friends has grown into something more for me.  It is a record of my life.  Through writing about the people I have met, I hope I can show that our differences aren’t so different.  Maybe we speak a different language or practice a different religion, but I have met some of the most interesting, kind, smart, and amazing people that I want to introduce my readers to and share their lives.  When I write about the places I have been, the big cities, the remote villages, and places some people only dream of seeing, I want my readers to see the colors and imagine the sights, sounds, and smells.  When I share my experiences I hope you feel you are right there with me sharing the excitement, the chaos, the peace, the whatever.  I hope you take something away, a feeling or a thought.  I hope you learn something because my experiences have taught me so much.  I hope seeing the world through my eyes inspires someone to follow their dreams.

Throughout my travels, I have been blessed with family and friends who give me so much support.  My dear friend Lucy has made copies of seven years’ worth of my blogs and put them in binders.  She and many others know of my dream to put my blogs, my words, my thoughts, and my life into print.  This thirty-day challenge has opened my eyes to what it means to be a writer.  The dedication and time involved. What I accomplished in the last thirty days, I couldn’t keep up with…yet.  I do believe it will encourage me to write something every day even if it is just a few sentences.  I will continue writing my blog and thanks to Lucy, one day when I get back to the States, I will have the outline for my book.  Yes, my book…the ultimate hope for my blog.

For those who have followed my thirty-day challenge, thank you!  For those who have followed my blog from the get-go, thank you!  I couldn’t do it without you.  You inspire me, you give me ideas to write about, you encourage me.  As Ernest Hemingway said, “My aim is to put on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.”