7000 Hits, (and they didn't hurt)

Wow, 7000 hits at holtieshouse since April 2005. number 7000
identified himself as Big Dave, thanks Dave.

Okay, by the standards off some blog sites that would be pathetic, but to
this humble antipodean outpost it seems truly amazing, even more
amazing is the fact that the last 1000 hits have come in under 1 month.

Holtieshouse only missed out on being an April fool’s day joke by 3 days;
I started it because my son Marcus had told me of his “Blog” I didn’t
even know what a blog was back then.

As it happened I did not have a “computer project” on at that time, so
I decided to investigate blogging, and more as a technical challenge to
see if I could set up a site, (it doesn’t have to be very technical to be a
challenge to me folks.)

I had no pre-conceived ideas for the content for the site or any idea of
the potential of the concept; it was more a “wonder if I could do that”
idea.

I kicked off holtieshouse as a place where I could pass on a few jokes,
relate the odd humorous story and not much more than that, I
gradually found that I could also use it to pass on a bit of family history,
some poetry and some personal anecdotes (perhaps that should
be antidotes.)

At this time I had a readership of 2, my son Marcus and my sister
Merle, my next reader was a lass named Hope (who has since
stopped blogging) from the USA, now I’m an internationally read
author…. Wow again.

I won’t bore you with details of how holtieshouse has developed to
what it is,
(should that be what is it?) except to nominate and publicly thank
my next three loyal
readers, Bubba, Maria, and Judy, we have become firm friends
although we have
never met.

As the circle of “friends” has increased over the past few months,
(yes it has all happened that quickly) I have been amazed by the
feeling of closeness that blogging inspires, we share the joy of events
that happen to people we only met in cyberspace a very short time
ago with the same enthusiasm as we would for friends we have
known for years.

There is a “downside” if you like to this, and that is we share their
moments of despair, their illnesses, their heartache too, many a post
has brought a tear to my eye as I have read of, (and shared) a
sadness with a friend.

We all maintain our “blogroll” of folk that we stay in fairly close contact
with, these are often shared contacts, but not always, there are also
degrees of contact, with some we tend to “lurk” (which in the blog
world I don’t find at all sinister) while with others we tend to comment
almost daily.

As I have read so often, written by other bloggers, I am in awe of the
sense of friendship blogging engenders, the openness with which we
can discuss even very personal matters and the warmth in the
responses we get.

A heartfelt thank you especially to my circle of blog buddies, and to all
bloggers everywhere, you are the friends I haven’t “not” met yet.