In the latter part of 2003 my life felt insane. I decided that the best thing I could do with all of my nervous energy and spinning thoughts was to record them. I began my first blog around then and it ended as quickly as it began, with a posted apologie to a friend and a hasty all-out deletion.
The enjoyment I gleaned from publishing my thoughts for everyone, or no one, to see was clear and, though I failed with my first attempt, I immediately tried again. My friend Jamie once told me that I am nothing if not persistent and I would tend to agree with him. From late 2003 until sometime around the end of 2006 I tried between 7-10 different attempts at blogging. If you think it’s hard to read all the crap I write about, try writing it :) Seriously, it’s no easy feat to figure out a way to make something interesting and personal and relevant without being totally self-indulgent, insensitive of people’s privacy or a liar.
Some of those attempts focused on the technological aspect and had little or nothing to do with content. I learned html, php and some other misclellaneous coding but it didn’t really stick and nobody, including me, gave a shit about what I was saying. Other attempts were ‘themed’ where I thought I would provide some kind of service…like pooling craft info or cool design sites. As it turns out, my interests were either too self-absorbed or too varied to stick with that model and though the ancient 2craft site still lives and breathes on blogspot, it is dusty and old.
Finally, in late 2006 I realized that this forum, this medium, is not about providing a service or divulging my deepest, darkest secrets but it is a spot to record my careful days in a way that makes it fun for me to reflect. Whether or not anybody would be interested was not taken into consideration. It was a natural progression to find a way to include my photography and artistic endeavors and to design a “skin” that could stretch and grow with my changing perspective and aesthetic. I am the kind of person who could rearrange her apartment every Quarter and have fun doing it so easy-change was a requirement.
The end result of this experience is BeanaBernPhotography.com. A quilt, if you will, of a My-Expression photoblog that I use as my portfolio, a pro Flickr account that serves as both my digital backup and photo community, my storefront on Imagekind and, this page you are reading now, my WordPress blog. It has been 5 years in the making with countless detours, reruns and do-overs in between but it is built and, today marks the one year anniversary. Happy Birthday, 2beanornot2bean!
Just as a little trivia, I’ll tell you some fun stats about this here blog:
- On the busiest day, I saw over 150 hits. This happened because I posted a photo of Elijah Wood that I shot at a Heloise & the Savoire Faire show and some freaky fan site found it. In fact, they will probably find this post too and I’ll get lots of traffic from weird Frodo fans(no offense, Frodo fans)
- On average, I have 25 readers a day, 250 a week and about 800 per month. A small percentage of those (about 25%) actually click the links to my photo albums or my links. About half of those visitors are “regulars” though none of them have signed my guestbook.
- In general, people who visit my blog stay here anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes. Not bad in the scheme of internet ADD, I think.
- There are no advertisements or sponsored links anywhere in any of my websites. All the links you see to the right were put there by me…go ahead, click on one or two of them and perhaps you find something interesting. I visit all of the sites linked there regularly.
- Photography, space invader and travel have been the 3 biggest criteria that have channeled people from google to me. Occasionally there are really weird ’search terms’ that land people here….here are just a few from today
- “i love butter”
- “poster junkie”
- “japanese touriste”
- “fritzens sex fashingsumzug”
- “futzed”
- “bansky tramp l’oiel”
- “dr seuss secret art”
This may be about as interesting to you as, well, something that isn’t interesting but I figured that I would commemorate a year of consistent blogging since, for me, it is a small, but significant achievement. While I’m on the subject, I want to give kudos to all those people, whom I know and whom I don’t, who put themselves out there and share their perspective. It isn’t easy and sometimes it isn’t all that rewarding but it is good and I appreciate it, so thank you. Keep on bloggin’ on….
p.s. speaking of anniversaries, this week i also began my 8th year with Swarovski… wow.
