1st Blogiversary! Woot!

One of Timethief’s post titles came to mind as I start to type these first words to this post. The title is – Celebrate your blogging journey.  She opened with a good quote about success being built out of small successes along the way and then pointed out that first thing first, we need to be able to define what success is to us.

Another article I read recently illustrates this idea pretty well. The writer talked about an Olympic winner and how his success was not defined by that instant he won a gold at the Olympics, but by all the times he turned up every single day for practice. That discipline and endeavour was critical for setting him on the road to winning his medal.

This story repeats itself many times. Tina Rice (Ashcroft54) shared a Ted video – your elusive, creative genius – in which writer Elizabeth Gilbert talks about turning up everyday for “her part of the job” even when she had writer’s block and her genius seemed to be evading her.

Now this blog isn’t award-winning. We never won medals for anything. Last I heard, we weren’t a famous writer. And if you check our Facebook page, we’re not very well-liked either :P

But guess what?

Within a year, this blog published 375 posts, more than 1 post a day. I’ll take that as a small success to celebrate. Every post contributed to the over 4000 comments and 7000 likes that the blog received. Thank everyone of you who viewed, commented and liked the posts! ; )

Some of the other little milestones to celebrate:

• More than a handful of blogger generated awards from these lovely people.

• Jun 2013 | Featured on the Versatile Blogger Award blog
  The VBA award creator said of our post Mugshots are ugly as “One of the best I got a Versatile Blogger Award announcements I’ve read!“

• July 2013 | Guest blogged a Haiku for HaikubyKuruk

• Aug 2013 – Feb 2014 | I ran my first photo challenge. I got 10 participants. (^____^)y
  You could say 10 participants is not a lot. But when I first started, I didn’t even know if I would get any participants at all! The fact that this blog is more a dog blog than a photo blog meant I had the odds stacked against me. I put it out there, 10 wonderful people responded. I think it’s awesome. Check out the work of the 10 people here.
  My second photo challenge is on-going and more awesome than the first, check it out!

• Sep 2013 | We were runner up in the Don’t Parsley Me by Pigture Contest
  It was a great activity by Hutch a Good Life to give visibility to adopted animals and promote awareness of animal adoption.
• Sep 2013 | Our tutorial link was shared on the Spanish site srperro.com
  In a post on the popularity of dog selfies, SrPerro included a link to our tutorial – How to take a good dog selfie.

• Oct 2013 | Gentle Paws shared our link on their Facebook
  Very cool!

• Nov 2013 | We were mentioned in the wordpress newsletter, Daily Post Digest
  Miss Harper Lee and I play 20 Facts was mentioned in the Nov 2013 newsletter.

• Dec 2013 | Moved from weliveinaflat.wordpress.com to weliveinaflat.com

• Feb 2014 | Wrote a parody of NomadRuss’s post, sent it to him and he said it made him laugh! Awesome!
  Photographing Dogs: NomadRuss Ten Tips Reinvented! hit a record (for us) 31 shares on Facebook.

• Mar 2014 | We survived!! Blog is one year old. 

If you are counting, that’s 3 Awesomes in 7 bullet points. Yes! Everything is awesome! :D

But that’s enough of tooting my own little horn, let’s talk about you.

Top 10 countries reading weliveinaflat.com

• You are a lover of dogs/pets or photography, probably both.
• You have no breed prejudice. You think Donna the local mongrel is just as cute as a known breed dog and that, I think, is Awesome! :)
• You support dog rescue and adoption causes. And if you are in Singapore, you probably know Donna in real life from Gentle Paws.
• You own a photographic device and/or a wonderful dog(s) of you own. You enjoy looking at photos and being the true photography enthusiast or dog lover, you take a lot of photos as well!
• That said, you don’t have a rigid concept of what makes a good photo. You are open to experimentation or reading blogs like mine where most photos are edited to a greater or lesser degree.
• You enjoy sharing knowledge and stories about your own dogs/photographs.
• You know quite a fair bit about dog training and positive training, or you have an interest in getting started.
• You have active social circles where it comes to dogs and photography. You may run a photo/dog blog/social media account of your own.
• You have a sense of humour. Funny posts and stories entertain you more than the others.

Now that’s 10 things I think I know about you based on all your comments, which has some influence over what I write and how I present the story using words and photos.

But I also remember the me one year ago. The newly-minted dog idiot with a dog.

The dog didn’t come with a Dummies guide or instruction manual. I researched, tried to understand the available information and made logical conclusions from there. Then I started creating this page – The Dummies Guide for Dog Idiots – with the aim of making it easier for new dog idiots like myself. But sad to say that is not one of the things I can celebrate. It’s not very well done or helpful at all.

Coming back to the theme of celebrating small wins, I’m just going to write helpful articles one at a time. My first one is done and published – Target train your dog to touch nose to hand.

I tried to make it a lively, easy and fun read so that the me one year ago would have found it interesting and useful to try it out with the new dog at the start. But if you already know these stuff, I do hope you enjoy them for the photos and the attempts at humour.

I thank you for the thoughtful comments and also any other suggestions that could make the posts better. And if you do find a value in these articles, I thank you for sharing them with new dog adopters, people considering to adopt, etc, etc. ; )

Are you curious about what else 2014 will bring for this blog? You’ll find the goals here.

And so, my friends. Tis time to end yet another long and naggy post from yours truly.

What small successes about your blog or your life do you celebrate?