Five years of blogging

I’ve been writing on this site for almost five years now, and my life has changed a bit during that time. First came the COVID pandemic and full-time working from home, then we moved across the country from New York to Arizona, and now I’m retired and have a lot more free time. My hiking has increased, but my blogging hasn’t. “Why is that, Larry?” I hear no one asking.

“Well, the thing is,” I reply to my imagined inquisitor, “most of my hikes are pretty similar.” I go out somewhere in Tucson and see mountains and cactus, and occasionally interesting animals. Readers from outside Tucson are unlikely to want a deep dive into the obscurer local trails, so I’ve been doing some combined posts that talk about two or three hikes at a time. When we wander outside Tucson (and we will, shortly), I’ll post a bit more then. Meanwhile, I’ll make the website as pretty as possible by adding scenic photos.

I previously talked about the structural components of blogging: post length, use of media, maintaining an overall site concept, etc. With the wisdom of five years, I realize that I’ve had two site concepts, not entirely compatible:
1. An illustrated, searchable record of places I’ve been, and hikes that I’ve done.
2. A resource for the general public to find hike information.

There are LOTS of hiking websites and blogs, and I realize now that I would have more readers had I attached myself to some other site instead of making my own.

Anyway, a quick rundown of the advantages of a PERSONAL BLOG:
* No one puts me on a schedule.
* No one argues about my content.
* I control the site organization and layout.
* I can direct friends and fellow hikers to “check out my blog”, and all the entries are mine.
* My important memories are nicely presented when I look back on them.

Compared to the advantages of writing on a SHARED SITE with multiple authors:
* A more-established hiking site would get many more hits.
* Someone might pay me to write on it!
* More people would do site promotion.
* Additional traffic could lead to other perks, like sponsors sending me gear to review.
* A bigger site would be better for the readers. No hopping all over the Internet. Considerate authors wouldn’t duplicate articles that already exist, unless we genuinely had new things to say.

I don’t know if I would do things the same way if I started again, but hey that’s life. Anyway, the promised scenic photos.