{"id":8392,"date":"2015-03-01T01:59:40","date_gmt":"2015-03-01T01:59:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8392"},"modified":"2015-03-01T01:59:40","modified_gmt":"2015-03-01T01:59:40","slug":"blog-starting-to-get-traction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8392","title":{"rendered":"Blog starting to get traction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Blogging has become something of an addiction for me.<\/p>\n<p>No, I don&#8217;t need an intervention. It is a way for me to continue doing what I have loved doing for nearly 40 years, which is to string words into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into essays.<\/p>\n<p>I do this because it makes me happy.<\/p>\n<p>My daily journalism career ended in August 2012, but I&#8217;ve continued writing.<\/p>\n<p>High Plains Blogger has been my release of sorts. I am happy to report some good news regarding this blog.<\/p>\n<p>I have just set my sixth consecutive monthly record for page views and unique visitors. The previous record, incidentally, came in January &#8212; which has 31 days; February, of course, has just 28 days, but another record fell this month anyway. I feel like sharing that with those of you who follow the blog, are kind enough to read it and some of whom are kind enough &#8212; or <em>angry<\/em> enough &#8212; to provide responses to the opinions expressed on this blog.<\/p>\n<p>Are my numbers great? I don&#8217;t consider them great. Some of my friends also have longstanding blogs and they report the number of daily &#8220;hits&#8221; that far exceed my relatively meager totals.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the bad news. The good news? Well, my blog&#8217;s monthly totals have grown more than 200 percent since I moved the blog onto this Word Press server in July 2013. The way I figure it, if it grows <em>another<\/em> 200 percent of so in the next 18 months, then we&#8217;ll be talking about some serious numbers.<\/p>\n<p>Several aspects about the blog&#8217;s growth intrigue me. The blog hits are coming from all around the globe. Readers from virtually all of Latin America have looked at the blog. Asia &#8212; from the Middle East to the Orient &#8212; is filled in with hits, along with Europe. And just recently, viewers in Africa have been looking at the blog.<\/p>\n<p>Those who read the blog know that it&#8217;s mostly political, looking at issues from a center-left perspective. I seek to veer from the humdrum of politics on occasion to talk about family matters and to look ahead to the day my wife and I retire fully and we hit the road in our recreational vehicle.<\/p>\n<p>The blog has given me joy in writing it. I don&#8217;t expect it to be a joyful experience for everyone who reads it, given that not everyone agrees with my world view. That&#8217;s all right, as long as folks remain engaged.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you for reading High Plains Blogger. It&#8217;s been a hoot.<\/p>\n<p>Much more is on its way.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blogging has become something of an addiction for me. No, I don&#8217;t need an intervention. It is a way for me to continue doing what I have loved doing for nearly 40 years, which is to string words into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into essays. I do this because it makes me &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8392\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Blog starting to get traction<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[670,2122,2130,2293,3655,3920],"class_list":["post-8392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-blogging","tag-high-plains-blogger","tag-highplainsblogger-com","tag-internet","tag-politics","tag-retirement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}