Top 10 ‘most read’ posts from my previous blog

‘Every thing must have a beginning … and that beginning must be linked to something that went before‘ Mary Shelley

My first blog site

I’ve been blogging, in a somewhat sporadic manner, since 2012 when I set up my very first, previous blog site.

I started for many of the same reasons outlined my recent post on Starting a new writing project. There were things I felt I just had to get out there, irrespective of an audience. But it was a chaotic, ill-defined project.

In fact it was a chaotic, ill-defined period in my life. My mum had recently died quite suddenly, I had quit my 10-year corporate career and was on the cusp of moving to a new city. I had some fuzzy aims about living a more creative life but no actual plan, job or place to live sorted out.

Since the inception of that first blog I’ve turned down a place at Bristol Old Vic theatre school, gained a first class Masters in Journalism, developed a freelance writing and marketing business, worked in academic publishing, written and had three short plays performed, fallen in love, bought a house, adopted a cat, got married and had one child with a second on its way. Let’s just say I’ve not been idle!

Journey

My old blog reflects that journey. I hadn’t fully realised this until my very good friend and expert money blogger Mrs Mummypenny recommended I pull together a ‘Top 10’ from the old blog.

Looking at the stats I was pretty surprised at some of the posts that have had most views. I had also totally forgotten about a lot of the posts I’d written.

It’s fascinating for me to have that record and to be able to look back and see the traps I often fall into when writing. Long sentences. Meandering, poorly edited posts which take forever to arrive at their point. Great titles, that don’t actually bear an enormous amount of relevance to what I’ve ultimately written. Lots of learning points then.

But also, shoving the inner critic to one side for a moment, there are a lot of posts I’m damn proud of – ones about motherhood, about social justice and about my personal experience of grief. Not all of those posts fall into the ‘top 10 most read’ list but what’s interesting to me is that these are all topics I’ve identified as ones I want to keep researching and writing about on this new site.

So without further ado…