A year ago today I very tentatively started a blog and Lucid Gypsy was born. I had no idea where we were taking each other and if anyone would visit, just a vague plan to write travel and short fiction. It was a very slow start; I had to learn the techy stuff and kept it very simple for the first few days. Then I kind of worked out how to post photos and published Nest of Primates my first travel piece, which I still think is one of my best posts, but hasn’t had that many reads. (Interestingly, I’ve wondered for ages how to change the words on a link and have finally done it – WordPress has forced me to learn!) I posted five times last May and then disappeared for a while to Turkey, returning with a head stuffed with stories and a couple thousand photos.

I was stumbling though with no clue what to write or how to be seen. A turning point came when I discovered the Weekly Photo Challenge and was able to indulge my other passion, photography. Finding out how to tag and categorise well, made all the difference and eventually in November I had more than a thousand views. You may wonder why it took me so long; instructions are there to be read of course. Trouble is I can’t do instructions books for anything. I try to read how, but don’t get it and have to muddle my way through.

Slowly a following came and I began to meet some interesting people around the world. Does anyone remember having a pen friend as a child? Usually one foisted on you by school? Well the blogosphere is like having hundreds of pen friends, a fascinating way of learning about other cultures, and seeing photos of places taken by real people in everyday places as well as the grand tourist destinations.

Being a Gemini and a writer I have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and each time I look at someone’s blog I am transported to another person’s world, be it in the next county or a garden in the southern hemisphere. Lovely people I can’t thank you enough for your support, inspiration, laughter and tears.

At some point in the remaining four hours of today one of my five hundred plus followers will become the twenty five thousandth hit on Lucid Gypsy, how amazing that I should reach that number today!

Thank you so much.