My 2022 – Ten years of blogging

I had it all planned out. For my 10th year anniversary (tomorrow January 1, 2023) the blog would have a new outfit. A bit more polished. A bit more updated. A bit better working on mobile devices. But one things has stayed true within the last ten years – and I am rather proud to have stuck to it – this is my playground. This is not work. And I just didn’t feel like relaunching this blog during my vacation. It will happen… Some day. So for my 2022 – ten years of blogging you will enjoy the old blog design.

Blogging through 2022

In 2022 I have showed up on this blog with 63 blog posts. That is less than last year (72) but still at least one blog post a week. Well, that is obviously not correct when blogging throughout the month of November. In April I didn’t blog at all. But it was my moving month topped with a surgery.

My personal Top 5 list:

I was able to share some meaningful and fun posts this year.

• Celebrating 2022 – my most favorite post to write in every year is the one being published January 1. I announce my word and share my goals. It’s been the first ever post on this blog (if you want to check out 2013) and has become a tradition over the past decade.
• Mourning myself – it was the toughest to write, it took me lots of tears and time. But I am proud I hit publish and appreciate all the kind comments
• A new home – I shared the joy of the new home and the worry that followed.
• Goodbye, things – this post was not at all planned and written on a whim. Ah the old blogging days..
• Foods of the year – I mean it is just so pleasing to the eye to see it all accumulated.

Overall though I realized looking back that this year was dominated by recaps and reviews (monthly celebrations, book reviews and currently’s or travels). Crafts and thoughts were a. bit rare. Let’s hope I will find my time and energy to share more of those things in 2023.

And here is the top 5 list of my readers:

• How to prepare for the 100 day project – I often get the question how I pull such a challenge off and so I wrote it down. It was the most viewed post in 2022 by you.
• 101 things in 1000 days – my first bucket list was again frequently looked at. In August I started my second attempt on this concept.
• Sorbian Easter Egg tutorial – this is a favorite throughout the years.
• Closely followed by the all time favorite vegan bath bombs
• For some reason a post from 2015 made it to the top five with my white wreath inspiration

Social Media

In 2022 you can not blog without social media. It is a bit of a love-hate-relationship I have with social media. I love to read, scroll and comment. I not so much like “promoting” my own blog on social. I do understand though that a lot of people however only realize there is a new post up when it is shared. I am no good in it. I start and half way through it gets boring. So I stop. Then I am disappointed. Know stats are not everything but for continuity reason let’s have a quick look here.

Instagram.
By far my favorite platform. Currently 435 people follow me here. I did go on a weeding spree and deleted a ton of accounts and fakes. Above you see the top nine posts. I love that it includes almost all things dear to my heart (people, places, events, freelancing, celebrations) . Only books are missing. Every image is a story and a
Pinterest.
This is a platform I really don’t facilitate enough. Currently I have 581 people following me here. Are you following people on Pinterest? Maybe 2023 is the time to share more of my crafts there.
Twitter.
Twitter is declining for the second year in the row. And with everything going on now I really am wondering if I need this platform. I never really shared much. I had it for blog conferences and twitter parties. Does anyone remember those. I don’t see a comeback so maybe I just bite the dust and cancel it.
Feed Readers.
I am only tracking two readers and just to see what people use. On Bloglovin I have 238 follower (same as 2021) and at Feedly it’s been 25 so far. I am wondering a) do you use a feed reader (and if not how to you keep track of loved blogs) and b) what reader do you use?

10 years of blogging

When I started my blog in 2013 I was feeling creatively dried up. I had so many ideas. I sometimes finished projects but it felt like I kept forgetting what I have all created. This is when I decided I needed some sort of diary to share an d document my makes. I also like to bake a lot back then. Which explains my blog name.

When I started my blog in January 2013 it was actually looking like this.

Pink and grey were my colors of choice. And while I still love the color combo immensely I felt it was too girly and didn’t quite fit me.

In 2014 I switched to the appearance you see today. It was all through a blog project Katja (?) organized and luckily I was matched with San since my blog was in English. Well the rest is history. Ever since we’ve been blog friends. I miss our long email conversations though San. They were fun and I still have them all.

Blogging is not always fun though. I have a few pictures that get stolen almost every year. Ranking on top is this one about my Christmas Tree a. couple other craft images too. Closely followed by this image mainly used by online stores… I have tried using a service to have them take the images down or at least link to my blog but no such luck. Also can you guess how many spam comments I have deleted? It’s been over 50,582 comments + a few who made it through my spam filter. That is around 14 spam comments a day. And this is just a tiny blog I don’t want to know the numbers on bigger blogs…

One thing I am rather proud of is that only a handful images here are not made by me. I have some posts from guest bloggers. Obviously those belong to the guest blogger. And then I have like three, four posts with images from a pool. I always set out to shoot every image myself. Often enough those pool images have been place holders until I was able to shoot an image myself. Like this on in this post. I plan on doing on. After ten years it is about time this series gets it’s own cover.

What do I miss from the early blogging days?

I think that taking time to comment was something we all did. There was less consuming and more interacting. To be honest though back then almost all readers were also bloggers, right? Now it is like everyone just wants so get something when going to a blog like be inspired, get that recipe, snatching a freebie… I know my readers here are mostly different. Or at least the ones I know reading my blog. I feel we are a wonderful small community and I would not trade one of you for a 1000 people just consuming. So thank you for everyone being here.

We also did a lot of blog link-ups didn’t we? I know I have at times been taking part of so many that I actually complied every one in a special calendar because I needed to keep track of when, what topic and what blog. I still have that calendar but the blogs often times don’t exist anymore.

Reoccurring posts

When I started out so many years ago I had great ambition to post a soup recipe every Sunday – hence a series called Soup Sunday. I miss that one and always think about re-introducing it. I pride myself in being rather good in tipping up a soup. And I love soup. I could eat it 5 days week.

Another tradition I have kept is posting a Finnish recipe every year around my wedding anniversary. Why you may ask? Well spending our honeymoon in Finland has given me the idea and I love to remember it by cooking something Finnish every year.

Anotgher post that pops up most every year is my “everyday life on a random day”. It is so fun to see how that changes over the years. If you are interested here are 2022, 2021, 2017, 2016 and 2015.

What I have learned in the last decade.

When I started blogging I had no freaking idea what I was doing. I was so overwhelmed with the technical stuff that it took me over 3 years to actually start. And of course I knew nothing about search engine optimization, online marketing, WordPress or even photography.

My old images are a testament to that. Here are some rather awful ones: look at this beauty where I was strong in the filter game, to this one, and what about these photos… I would definitely see an improvement here. And by now I am earning my money with the things I learned running a blog for so long. I have photo jobs for stationary clients and big company where I create content. And in general the whole online things is something I was able to test in small at my blog.

I ahne also immensely broadened my writing skills. And. of course my English – or at least I hope. But creating content in a foreign language has definitely helped to grow. And again I can use that knowledge in my day job where I often times only create in English.

Alright my friends. I am not sure if this post was interesting to you at all. I had fun going down memory lane. But even more so I look forward to continue the blogging journey. When I did start publish on that very first blogpost back in 2013 I would have never ever thought I will continue this hobby for a decade. I have blogged all through my thirties. Will I continue through my forties? No one knows. But if you follow along I am already grateful. If you have any requests on what I should write about or what you would like to see more off let me know.

Until then I say bye bye 2022. It’s been fun. But tomorrow will be even better. Make sure to stop by.

Love

Tobia