Its two-year anniversary shows that this blog has a past - but does it have a future..?

The 10^th August came and went and I didn’t even notice; I didn’t do much that day – I was working from home during the day and then, in the evening, I travelled to London as I was working the next day.  Personally, not much happened to me that day, and it was all fairly ordinary, although it was the fourth day of civil disturbances in the UK.

In the past, 10^th August has seen some important events.  It was the day on which, in 1945, the Japanese announced their willingness to surrender, after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In 1974, it was the day on which Gerald Ford accepted Richard Nixon’s resignation.  In 2003, the UK recorded its first ever temperature of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  And, in 2009, it was the day on which I started this blog.

Obviously, I Googled the first three events and the fourth had totally slipped my mind until I noticed it almost by accident this week.  I was trying to find inspiration for this week’s blog and was skimming through previous entries, wondering whether to repost one, when I realised that I’d passed my two-year anniversary and I wondered what I might do to celebrate.  The second anniversary gift in the UK, traditionally, is paper, which is ironic, given that this blog exists solely on computer screens; I suppose that I could buy myself a new Moleskine notebook – like many trainers/facilitators, I have a bit of a stationery fetish.  But as well as celebrating the past, noticing that I’d been doing this for two years also started me wondering about the future.

When I started the blog (over two years ago – did I mention that?), the commitment I made to myself was that I would post at least one entry a week.  I’ve stuck to that pretty well and I think the only times that a post (always around 500 words or so) has failed to appear is when I’ve been on holiday and I’m sure you wouldn’t begrudge me a week off once in a while.  But, if I’m honest with you, after having posted 115 articles (somewhere in the region of 60,000 words) I’m wondering whether to continue.

I have a readership of around about 400 to 500 people or so, spread across a couple of websites, which is fantastic – I’m flattered that so many people read what I write.  But if I’m honest, the one thing that I really wanted to do is provoke a debate and in that, I feel, I have failed.  The number of comments posted on the blogs has been comparatively small and my attempts to directly engage with the readers of this blog, by asking specific questions and inviting responses, have been largely unsuccessful.  The comments I’ve had have been great, and I’ve greatly appreciated them all, but as I look back at the history of this blog, I’m wondering whether it has a future.