Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of my blog. I can’t believe a full year has gone by that quickly and that I have now been doing this for a year! I didn’t know if I would even do more than one and yet here we are a year and many posts later. I had always wanted to write ever since I was in junior high school and started writing the “great american novel.”

I learned so much about blogging, writing and myself during this past year and all of it is a little overwhelming at times. I have written one post every single week since day one. I had made that my goal when I started and I accomplished that goal. I think there may have been one week I did it late and it ran into the next week, but I did it! That in itself is a big accomplishment for me. I sometimes have a tendency to go “all in” for something only to give it up a month later..like the piano keyboard I bought.

There has never been a week in this past year where I didn’t have anything to write or even had a hard time thinking of something to say. Sometimes I had started on one subject and then changed to another when I sat down to write. I keep a little notebook at all times and jot down things that happen or that I see and think, “wow that would make a great blog post.” And also anyone that knows me also knows I have an opinion on just about everything so this is just another way of expressing myself.

I amazed myself with setting the whole thing up from the very first. I researched and researched every little thing about writing a blog, I started out on Tumblr and used that for about a month and quickly switched to a self hosted WordPress site. Which is no small task, especially for someone that put a disc in the wrong place when I first started using a computer. I decided on The Helpful Hellion as the name of my blog due to the fact my dad used to call me a little hellion and I wanted to in some way help people with my blog. I hope I have done that even in a small way at least, maybe by making you think of some good memories of your past or that you learned a helpful health tip.

I knew this blogging thing wouldn’t be easy.. however I foolishly thought all I had to do was write it and post it. I didn’t know I had to learn all about SEO, analytics, security, backups, PHP code and on and on and on…I want people to see it, not just friends and family. I want to get it out there in cyberspace so I had to learn about all of these things that seemed so foreign to me to the point I felt like I was reading and learning a different language. And in fact I was. Oh, and an important thing to note, you can’t just put a picture on your site you took off the internet somewhere or you may wind up paying a pretty penny for that indiscretion.

Being on a schedule and making myself stick to it was the hardest part. I have never really been good with this… and having recently retired the last thing I wanted was to be on a schedule. But for some reason I stuck to it. Maybe it’s due to the fact that I am doing something I truly love doing. I may not ever publish that “great american novel” but I’m writing and people are actually reading and enjoying it and that gives me so much joy! I know I should care how many people are reading it and how many page views I’m getting. I know that..but what I’m getting is so much better than any of that, I am getting to do what I’ve always wanted to do and I don’t have anyone telling me how to do it or what to do differently.

There are so many people blogging now it is almost as if everyone has one. So the chance of me getting noticed or becoming the next big thing is slim. But I’m doing what I love to do and I’m just going to keep doing it. I’m writing about what I’ve lived and what I’ve loved. I write what I know and enjoy talking about. One of my goals is to help people live a better life through alternative health solutions. I write about things I use myself and have helped me to stay healthy and enjoy life. I love passing those stories on to others.

This is just a little of what I’ve learned this year. I hope you have enjoyed reading my blog and will continue to do so and share it with others. I love reading your comments and the stories you have shared with me. Some of your favorites have been about my memories from days gone by. I love writing about this as it helps to fill up the holes in my heart of the things and people I love and miss. And there is a lot more where those came from.

I just want to say thank you for reading and that I am thrilled to have all of you on this journey with me.

“You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald