From Blogger To WordPress

In the next couple of days things are going to look a little different around here. After two years of procrastination I’ve decided to make the switch from Blogger to WordPress. I’m about to gather all of my passwords for social media and send them over to the lovely Kelly at Swish Design. Tomorrow when I hop on the plane to go to Australia, 575 posts and nearly 8000 comments will make their way from here, to my new there.

I’m not sure if it’s just the time of year, but I feel quite nostalgic about it all. I began blogging by accident. After deciding I couldn’t inflict another group email on my friends, I considered a family website. Somewhere where people could come and check in on what we were up to. I wasn’t entirely sure of what a blog was but I’d seen a couple and figured I could make one. I picked a template, chose the font, and was then prompted to fill in a name. G was sitting next to me.

“What do I call it?”

We came up with some fairly uninspiring choices.

Aussies in Doha. Kirsty and G’s family adventures. I think at one stage we considered throwing everyone’s names into the mix to make a word. I didn’t think it was that important. I mean who was going to read it? It was just for family and friends to keep up with our news.

We’d arrived in Doha earlier that evening. And in those short few hours we’d managed to transform our hotel suite to look like it had been raided and searched by the police. Clothes had been spread from one end of the room to the other, multiple suitcases were opened while searching for pajamas. The little travellers had pushed their beds together and were lined up in a row. Suitcases were squeezed into crevices and stacked on top of each other, I counted them.

4 kids, 20 suitcases….I was missing something.

I thought about the beagle, how she’d barked nonstop at the airport before being taken to the kennel.

4 kids, 20 suitcases and a beagle.

In the first year I wrote 10 posts. After my tenth I remember telling G that 71 people had viewed the page. I though that seemed like a lot. In the second year I wrote nearly once a week with 47 posts, the tone changed, it wasn’t a family blog, it had become my own little spot to tell stories. In the third year it doubled to 94 posts, but it was last year that I got serious. In 2012 I blogged Monday to Friday, I slowed down over the school holidays and missed the occasional day here and there, but writing had gotten under my skin. As much as the self doubt and the embarrassment of reading back through past posts had caused me, I knew I wanted to try and get better at it.

The other day when I wrote a post about G and his letter writing a friend stopped me at school as I wandered back to the car with the little travellers.

“OMG, I was crying at my keyboard at work!” she said laughing. “It was just so beautiful, thank you.”

As she headed off in a different direction towards her car the second little traveller asked why I’d made her cry? What did she mean?

“I wrote a post today about your Dad and how much I enjoy his letters”

“Dad doesn’t write letters?!” she said as only an eleven year old can when she’s telling you something you don’t know.

Both of those comments are exactly why I keep coming here every day. It’s really lovely when people say they enjoyed something. It’s like serving a great meal and watching it be devoured, or the feeling you get after a great haircut, or wearing a new outfit for the first time. It’s that inner smile that stays with you as you walk back to the car, or through the supermarket aisle.

I hadn’t realized that the little travellers didn’t know about G’s letters. It hadn’t crossed my mind that I’ve never mentioned the poem that was read at our wedding or the letters that he’s written over the years. I want them to know that stuff. I want them to come back here and read about my observations of their lives as they grew up. I want their memories to be jolted, for them to feel close enough that they can almost smell my perfume or see G throwing them the baseball.

Blogging has provided me with a new career. I now work as a freelance writer, I speak at functions and teach people about social media. This space, right here, made all of that happen.

Now, on your end, you don’t have to change a thing, if all goes well I’ll still be here when you come to click on me tomorrow. But you may want to either sign up via email which is up on the top right hand side of the page. Or “Like” me on Facebook here. Just to make sure we don’t lose each other.

In the meantime I’m going to start packing my bags for Australia. I can’t wait to see you on my fancy new WordPress page in the next couple of days. It’s highly possible they’ll be another blog post in between but we’ll see how we go with the packing. Now, lets get those suitcases out.