Hobbies

The other day one of my friends and I were talking and she asked me what kind of hobbies I have...well, I guess that blogging is my hobby right now.  I think about things to write about, take photos to go with my blog posts and this is what I do while my daughter is napping.  One reason is that it is a quiet hobby.  I can't really make much noise on the boat while she is napping.  Another reason is that I can do it from my iPhone.  And as some of you may know, I love my iPhone almost as much as I love my husband and daughter.  And then there is the rain.  There are things I could do outside while she naps, like walking her in the stroller, or projects on the dock, but it keeps raining.  The weather has begun to turn, but today it is raining a lot!  Sure I have other hobbies: sewing, knitting, reading, sailing, and hiking.  But they just don't really happen during nap time right now.  Maybe one day...until then above is a photo I took with my iPhone of me blogging and below one I took using photo booth.

Also, I have been using Google analytics to track my blog readers.  I can see all sorts of cool data about how many visitors I have each day, where they are from, how long they stay, how they got to my blog and so on.  Sometimes this is really cool.  Like for example I have had 102 unique visitor to my blog over the last month.  But really I think I have about 10 readers. Also, I have had readers from 9 countries in the past month.  And only 11 visits from Canada, which means Ari's friends and family really need to pick up the slack.  It is a little creepy to me actually how much data I can get on my blog readers for free.  I'm sure that it can be much more detailed, but they just don't give all of it away for free.  For example, I can see that I have had five visits from a particular city, but I can't tell if they are all the same visitor, but I'm sure that Google can tell.  And, because I know who most of my 10 regular readers are, I can tell that my father, or Ari's mom has checked my blog recently, or not, and then I wonder why they are not reading the blog.  Now that you know you are being tracked, I hope you don't stop coming to my blog!

All the data also sometimes makes me think that I should promote (or tell people about) my blog more.  Some blogs are full of comments and have lots of regular readers, and that seems really fun to me.  My friends often say things like "You have a blog?"  I don't post my blog updates on Facebook all the time because I don't want to be "one of those people."  But then recently my friend Jackie started a blog, and I was so glad that she posted it on Facebook because I almost never hear from her and now I know about a new business she wants to start.  I think that maybe I feel a little strange about having a blog, and putting a part of me out in the world for everyone to see.  I've never really been someone who wants to be the center of attention all the time.  I prefer to keep things quiet and private, so blogging requires me to put myself out there a little bit more.  And as my friends and family have spread themselves around the world it lets me reach out to all of them and say hi.