Minipost 14 – Happy Birthday!

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Well, despite wordpress getting confused and being convinced this evening is now tomorrow, as far as I’m concerned today is still Wednesday 2^nd May 2012 and as such this is a very important post for me. Today is a birthday.

Not mine. No, that joy is still a couple of weeks off (and I’m not looking forward to it other than it will also be the first full day back with my wife and kids and that will be very special).

No, today (what’s left of it) marks the first birthday of kenthinksaloud. This time last year I wrote my first post and aimed to get one post out each week. By December I realised I had more to say and want to write some things for those of you who had already signed up for the blog and were following faithfully.

So I added these miniposts – designed to be 500 words or less and so easier to read – for you who seem to like this blog. Thanks for caring .

Kenthinksaloud was written to give opportunity to talk about this wonderful country called Bangladesh where I work and the issues that I think need bringing up. It also gave opportunity to friends and supporters who help us financially to learn more than they can get from our monthly newsletter (about to finish its own fourth year). I hoped many people would read the blog but it was initially for the few hundred who already knew us to get to know my family and I better and see the benefits of the support they give.

The blog has done this and much more. From January onwards, the ‘hits’ – the number of people visiting the blog – has shot up. I’ve gone from just a few hundred visiting each month to around 3,000 and the figure is growing month on month. This is still tiny in comparison to most of you bloggers I know reading this (some of you get this many in a day – and yes, I AM jealous!) but it is still a proud achievement for me considering most people in the world can’t even find Bangladesh on a map – let alone care to read anything about the place. I set out to change that and, little by little, it’s happening.

So, with 70+ posts receiving more than 10,000 visits from nearly 80 countries later, we start the 2^nd year of this blog. Who knows where it will go this year? Personally I hope to see many more followers and others finding something in these pages worth sharing on their social sites or re-blogging on their blogs and I hope to get the book I am midway through writing finished and published.  Of course, if there are any publishers/film directors taking an interest, welcome…

If you’ve been following this blog – thank you. I hope you’ll stay with me for another year. You’ve been great company so far.