Here it is folks, your last post for 2018! Gosh what year it’s been. I’m so happy that I am writing this post because I have so many exciting things to share with you. But first, I thought I would reflect on my first official year of blogging.

2018 started off with the same excitement and optimism that I start every year. I pumped out posts consistently for the first two months (every Wednesday). As to be expected, that’s when things began to drop off a little. I missed posts in March, May and June (8 posts to be exact). However, after that rocky period I went through, I was back on track the rest of the year. In September, the Sunshine College Deserves Better campaign started to take flight and I began posting on Sundays. I made up for the 8 posts I missed earlier this year, plus an extra 5 more. All up, I published 57 posts in 2018.

The reason I’m telling you this is because I think one of my goals was to complete a full year of blogging with consistent content. I’d say I did pretty good in that area.

The best one I did this year was the very first “Sunshine College Deserves Better” post, which racked up over 2.6k views in September. Well, that was until only this month when I released “Perhaps the world has poor taste” which got 1,832 views on the first day and has brought my December total to over 3.6k views (so far).

In my first year of blogging I have managed to obtain 58 followers all up (so far) and I would just like to say a huge, HUGE, thank you to every single one of you who are currently showing your support. It can be really slow going when it comes to blogging and watching the stats. But I’m really grateful for the handful of you and I hope that I can keep producing content that won’t make you regret subscribing because you all are one of the most important aspects of this blog to me.

My goal in the future is to make this more of a community and get people talking in the comments section so we can share ideas and become friends.

The biggest lesson I’ve learnt this year is patience and trust in the journey. Like I said, this blogging thing is really slow going. I’m not going to achieve everything in my first year and I certainly have a lot more to learn. This should be obvious but when you’re starting out like me, it can be really exciting all at once and you expect others to get excited straight away with you. I understand now that it takes time to build an audience and to get the hang of all the technical sides of blogging. I’m a writer, after all, not a computer whiz or a famous person who already has a huge following. These things take time, practice, experience, dedication and hard-work. But I will get there.

I already made some progress with changing the blog layout and establishing a logo. I even have my own business card! There’s still a long way to go, but I’m doing pretty good for a beginner. What’s most important is that I write about what is important to me and not just for the sake of it. I can confidentially tell you that there is not one post I wrote this year which I regret.

So, that’s it, that’s 2018. You know what that means, right? 2019 is just around the corner!

I have been planning 2019 since before I finished school. Like, since September. For the past few months I have been collating so many ideas that I have for where I want to take this blog. So, without further or do, here’s the plan.

I will be officially making my blogging days: Sundays and Wednesdays. I’m telling you this so that my followers can hold me to it. we are going to make sure this happens, and we stay on track this year. I’m hoping I can refine the strategy of doing posts a month in advance and having spare posts in the bank for emergencies. We’ll see if I can do it.

Every month next year, the plan is to have a theme. A topic that I can base all my posts around for that month which will make all the posts flow easily and keep me able to focus on one area of discussion. It’s a template which I found very instrumental in helping me plan out an entire year’s worth of content. I obviously won’t follow it too strictly to the point where I can’t write about anything else and also, I will always leave room for potential changes and new events or ideas that come up. This is just a rough plan, an experiment, if you will.

I’ve also decided that I want to start doing more blog series posts – posts of the same topic or nature – which will be helpful in keeping me consistent and also be easy to write because they hold a certain template. I will reveal two of those series for you now:

The first is a monthly update called: Tea Chats. Basically, it will just be a general, short life update where I fill you in on what I’ve been up to, what my plans are this month, and the theme for this month. Obviously, I will be writing with a cuppa tea beside me because I want it to feel like I’m just catching up with you guys. I’ll make a point of not making it too long and boring, but I feel like this is a good idea to help set my head straight for every month and give you all an introduction to what’s to come.

The second blog series will be a little more challenging but that’s what I want to do; challenge myself. It’s going to be called: #Bookshelf, and it will basically be some kind of book-related post at the end of every month; e.g. a book review or a reading list. I want to force myself to read more. I’ve made this a goal of mine towards the end of this year and its going well so far. But I want to keep that up and I think that if I make myself do a book related post every month it will actually force me to read. Plus, who doesn’t love reading? You can all join in the challenge with me.

Now I have been warned that I should never reveal all my secrets at once, so this is where I leave you. I hope that all my current followers come back next year for another great year of blog content. I hope you enjoy what I come up with and you tell your friends about it.

And don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE!

Thank you again to everyone for your support. Here’s to 2019!