Happy Blogversary to Me!

One year ago I decided to start writing a blog.  When Spinster Jane began it was completely anonymous.   I chose a generic female name to write under, Jane, and a fairly general topic…me and my experiences with living alone.  My main reason for keeping things anonymous was to allow Spinster Jane the freedom to find her voice (yep…I just third personed my blog pen name).  While I knew I wanted to write about living alone and choosing to remain single, I wasn’t 100% sure how to go about doing that. 

In the beginning all I did was write and I did very little in the way of promoting the blog.  Over the next two months I shared the blog with close friends whose editorial opinions I trusted.  I also began to discover that there was a lot of information out there about single living and was pleased to find that much of it was positive.   Blogs like Bella de Paulo’s Living Single and Eleanore Wells’ The Spinsterlicious Life, were informative and inspiring to read.  After another month or so of regular writing I finally started sharing the blog far and wide, where ever I could think of posting it and I slowly started making it a little less anonymous, even posting a picture of my very own face! 

I am sure that during those first few months 90% of my readers were friends and family but over time other folks began to take notice.  I was asked by Simone Grant of Sex, Lies& Dating in the City to write a guest blog post.  I was approached in the grocery store by a woman who recognized my photograph from the blog.  Most recently this blog was nominated for Best Blog in the Portland Phoenix Best of Portland Awards (and yes, if you want to vote for me you can do so here).  As my audience grew the blog developed too with regular features such as Spinster Nesting and Spinster in the Kitchen posts about ways that one can make living alone easier and more comfortable.

And so here I am, one year, 128 posts (well 129 if you count this one) and a domain name later, still writing, mostly about single living, frequently about my cats and occasionally about post apocalypse survival strategies.  Through this blog I’ve connected with some other amazing single living women around the world and I’ve rediscovered my own love of writing. 

So thank you to everyone who offered advice and support when I began this blog a year ago, and a giant thank you to those who visit and read the blog regularly.  While I do write because I enjoy the process (struggle?) of creating, I think every writer hopes that someone will read  the words they have written.  The fact that there is an audience out there for what I write is the butter crème frosting that tops off the creative cake.

Thank you.