TANTI AUGURI AL BLOG

My blog is one year old today! Prior to starting it, I knew about blogging, of course, and was reading news and political blogs in order to keep up with events in the UK. Then I read an article about blogging in Mslexia magazine, to which I subscribe [I recommend this magazine to all women who want to write] and began to think that maybe this was something I could do. I looked at all the blogs mentioned in the article and, well, you know what it's like; one blog leads you to another and before you know it, you're hooked! So I decided the only way I was going to find out if blogging was for me would be to give it a go!

I perused all the blog hosting sites I could find and concluded that blogger had the clearest instructions and the most help topics for a technical nitwit like me [and for all its faults, I still think this is so] then finally, with some trepidation, I wrote my first post. It was with even more trepidation that I uploaded my first photo; I didn't even know there was a zoom thing on the digcam! [OK, I could have read the instructions but I do like to imagine that I have a sense of adventure.] It was all trial and error at first and I didn't really expect anyone to read my blog, though of course I hoped that they would! I was terrified and thrilled at the same time when I received my first comment and it was a while before I found the confidence to comment on other blogs myself.

Later I joined blogpower and that was the injection of adrenalin that my blog [and I] needed: I've found so many "daily reads" among its members and also so much support, both technically and emotionally. I've also found blogs that have changed my mind about various issues, for blogs, like travel, have the ability to do that.

I am not a very disciplined person [except when I'm out at work or have a deadline] and blogging has disciplined me into writing something every day, or nearly every day. Because of the need to write, I feel I observe my surroudings more acutely than I would otherwise.

But the best part has definitely been finding, meeting and corresponding with so many interesting friends, all over the world.

Now I am wondering where this blog goes from here. I know I have veered off the topic of strictly Sicily once or twice lately, though I have tried to confine myself, in such posts, to writing about events that have led me here or affect me here. I have contemplated widening the scope of the blog and writing not just about Sicily but about the world as I see it from here, for when you move to another country your perceptions of your own and of the world change: it's as if an "extra layer" is added to them. [It's rather like the time I went, with friends, to a Chinese restaurant here: for them, it was a Chinese restaurant in Sicily, which was novelty enough; for me, it was a Chinese restaurant in Sicily which is different from a Chinese restaurant in Britain, so my experience of it and the judgements I was making were very different from theirs. ]

But I don't want to alienate or lose readers. I suppose it depends whether what you all come over here to read about truly is a slice of Sicilian life. My guess is that it is but I'd love to know what you think.

Meanwhile, thank you all for reading and commenting during the past year: you keep me going!