Annual State of the Blog Address

In keeping with recent past practices, I am proud to offer my annual State of the Blog address, as an alternative to the State of The Union Address, I suspect this one will be much more upbeat than the other.   

With slightly over 1,580 postings in slightly over 11 1/2 years, and with now two years without missing a day of posting, I declare that the State of the Blog is Good!  Viewership continues to grow, with several thousand page views each month, the blog is rapidly approaching 175,000 views.  This is tiny when compared to some other blogs, but my loyal readers are the greatest readers, simply the best audience a blog could have. You can't imagine a better following - we have made the blog great again (oops sorry, I am starting to sound like the great orange leader.)  

I really do appreciate people reading what I have to say, and I hope you enjoy the photographs.  I check several times a day to see if I have any comments.  3 or 4 comments is normal, days when you leave 8 or 10 comments I know I have the greatest blog posting every (sorry - the great orange one keeps seeping in - kind of like sewage out of a cracked pipe.) 

For me every posting starts with a photograph.  I have a small backlog of draft posts - that are photographs I want to post - eventually I figure out something to say to go with the picture - but the picture always comes first.  With over 35,000 digital photographs in my files, I have a lot to choose from.  I changed computers this past year, and in moving the image files to the new computer, I lost the filing order.  The images are now organized by name or image number, meaning that they are somewhat random. This unplanned change has brought long forgotten images back to my attention.  I also blog photos from my phone - random daily stuff, that being in DC, can be kind of interesting at times.   

I consciously limit political postings.  Being political is not my goal with travel penguin.  It has been difficult this past year.  And yes I did get rude once, sorry.  It was a moment of weakness, I will try to be better. 

I didn't bring back Travel's sister blog this year, "New Neighbors" that was created 8 years ago when a new family moved in around the corner from my office.  It was sad to see them move - but the time had come - their lease was up and couldn't be renewed. I miss them, the Great Old Days before the Orange One moved in, wandering the halls late at night, apparently not in a bathrobe, ranting and tweeting. 
  
I did create a new sister blog this year, The Adventure Continues, to show a large number of photographs from the adventure in Italy. I will add other collections of photographs as time progresses.  I recently linked that blog on the right side of Travel.  I will likely create another sister blog to catalog my collection of hotel Do Not Disturb Signs this year.  I have the best collection of do not disturb signs you have ever see, no one has a better collection, it is truly the greatest . . . oh my he is back again.  

So onward to another fun year of blogging. Please keep stopping by to read, leave a comment, and keep blogging so I have plenty of fun stuff to read.  

What is the state of your blog?