This is my 1000th blog post and that’s crazy

Might as well face it, I’m addicted to love blogging if 1000 posts is anything to go by.

1000 posts over 7 and a bit years looks like a few million visits, 22,050 comments, two kids, two cats, two chickens, five house moves, three “real life” jobs, countless “let’s see if I can make some money with a blog” experiments, a billion hours reading other blogs, the invention of Instagram, almost 10,000 folks signed up on my Facebook page, and me still trying to make Twitter at thing.

It’s been fun, it’s been terrifying, it’s been a millstone around my neck and it’s been so unimaginably liberating. It’s been interesting and unexpected and it changes so much it keeps me thinking I’ll stick around if only to see what happens next.

Someone told me last week I should have my own radio show, and that I should get a YouTube channel and and and and and all these other things that they’ve just realised the internet affords. They can make you money, they said. You’re well-known, you could make it work! they said. I smiled a weary smile and told them patiently that after 7 years giving those things a go, they’re just not my bag.

I started my blog thinking it would help me get a job writing. Then part of my job became writing on this blog, Wayne’s World quotes and all. Then brands wanted more, they wanted visuals, they wanted video, they wanted 56k followers on Instagram, they wanted the next big thing.

I dabbled, I mean – why not? A new frontier, let’s see what I can make of it. But the further “influencing” got away from writing, the more I realised I was too, and that wasn’t making me happy. I am no photographer, I can’t style a shot, I can’t edit video and as much as I could spend time learning those things, it’s currently about as appealing as doing a week-long maths exam. I want to write. I want to write my book. I want to write lots of books.

This blog is a testament to those experiments, but it’s also a whole bunch more. It’s a fun reminder of shit I’ve done, places I’ve been and food I’ve eaten. It’s (I’ve lost count), well over 200 recipes. There’s jokes I forgot I made and hundreds of sleepless nights and 6000 photos and Black Books references and bad hair and and at the end of it all, the whole seems more than the sum of its parts.

Ask anyone why they blog and they’ll likely all have different answers, but we also do it just because. 1000 posts and none of which are totally quite explainable. Why do I do this? Why does anyone do this? What is bark made out of on trees?

Thank you, for any one of the 1000 posts you’ve read. Thanks for your comments that make this more of a collaboration than a dictatorial monologue. Thanks for pointing out mistakes in recipes, still reading actual words when life is so busy a scroll through our IG feed is about all we can manage, thanks for telling me your stories. Thanks for sharing a soup recipe with your mates, chatting about me in playgrounds, sending me your great emails about how you read my posts on no sleeping at 2am with an overtired 9 month old if only to feel like you’re not alone, for tagging me in memes that I die laughing at, and the times where you’ve done nothing more than spent a few pleasant minutes reading about the life of what is kind of a complete stranger but also completely not at the same time.

Thanks to the folk who read and never say a word, you’re so appreciated. Thanks to the readers who comment on every. single. post. ever, you are as comforting as a really pretty blanket with a great sense of humour. Thanks to everyone in between because you are rad af. This blog feels simple and real in a world where everything is loud and shiny and very, very white. Like, blindingly white. I cannot take a photo that white. So I write, and I’m here, and here’s to the next 1000 posts of everything but also nothing at all. It’s been a trip.