Wow – I just realized it’s been four years to the day since I started this blog. I suppose it’s not so “little” now that it has over 132 posts. I started this blog after returning from a one-month trip to New Zealand, where I found so much joy sharing my adventures and having so many people back home “along for the ride”. I realized that there were so many folks who enjoyed learning about my experiences and that having such a variety of interests enabled me to foster connections with a lot of people.
While the viewership has been by no means massive, asides from my one post about Canadian speedskating that blew up in the Netherlands (Hallo!), I have received so many messages from friends and readers who have told me that this blog has helped them find a new musician they love or movie they enjoyed. While these messages were sporadic, it did make me appreciate that you don’t always know your impact, and that people are enjoying and maybe even benefitting from your work even if you don’t always immediately realize it. Here, the joy is mostly in the process of creating and not necessarily from achieving any specific outcomes.
I have similarly benefitted not only from getting an opportunity to flex my creative writing muscles once in a while, but also from the countless messages I have received from readers sharing space news, music events, and travel content that they think I might enjoy.
Much like me over the last four years, this blog has also weathered a few storms, including losing site access multiples and wondering if all my posts had been eaten by the Internet. Thankfully, it was not and Lazarus-ed each time, mostly thanks to one exceptional friend with IT expertise. What didn’t kill it, made it stronger, and I now have a site that is more safe and stable than ever before (…but please don’t come for me hacker bots – I assure you there’s nothing but jpegs and text strings here!)
I’ve also learned that the things that resonated most were sharing my personal experiences or talking about how something me made feel versus sharing the thing itself. Indeed, 7 Tips for Working from Home Successfully and What I Learned from First Time Solo Travel were among my most-read blogs. People are more interested in the “Kathryn” part than the “Curates” part.
It has been such a joy to share my interests with you over the past four years, and I look forward to continuing to do so in the years ahead. If you’re interested in staying up-to-date when a new post goes live, you can always sign up for my mailing list here. Thanks for reading!
