Reflections on a Year of Ramblings

Today marks the one year anniversary of NC Outdoor Ramblings. To be completely honest, I'm amazed that it has been a year already since I started this blog. This first year has definitely been a learning experience for me about the world of blogging, and I wanted to take just a few minutes to reflect on the previous year.

To start with, I began the blog June 28, 2012 on a whim after having a conversation with my wife. I had been reading several outdoor blogs, and really enjoyed them and the unique perspective that each one brought to my favorite subjects - hunting and fishing. I was talking to my wife and mentioned to her that I thought being an outdoor writer would be an interesting career, never mentioning to her the fact that I had been playing with the idea of starting a blog. I always knew that a career in writing probably wasn't in the cards for me, and I never had any aspirations of making money off of my writing. I just enjoy being able to tell a story about the outdoors. My wife actually was the one who suggested that I start a blog, and that's when I admitted to her that I had been playing around with the idea for a while. Her suggestion was the final push I needed, and NC Outdoor Ramblings was off and running.

Initially, I struggled with the theme for this blog. It seems like the majority of the blogs that I read on a regular basis are fly fishing blogs, and for a while I thought about making my blog only fly fishing related. A few things kept me from doing a strictly fly fishing blog. One of the first reasons was that I knew in the winter time, I would struggle to find things to write about as I was likely to be out hunting instead of fishing. I figured that I didn't fish enough or tie enough flies through the winter months to have enough fresh content for the blog. Another reason I decided to stay away from a strictly fly fishing blog is I wanted to have the opportunity to write about my experiences with everything outdoors, not just fly fishing. I figured that if I made the blog name relate to fly fishing, people might be surprised to find lots of hunting stories or posts about the garden on here.

Finally, I decided to make this a blog about the outdoors in general, and I figured that would include fly fishing, hunting, and gardening - three of my favorite outdoor activities. This way, posts about an occasional hiking trip or neat pictures from the backyard or garden would have a home on the blog. Looking back over the posts from the past year, I can see a definite theme to them based on the seasons. In the spring through late summer, the posts were mainly about the garden and fishing trips, and along about September the focus switched to hunting until around the end of February. This pretty well sums up the way a typical year in the outdoors goes for me, although there are always the exceptions of late fall/winter gardening or fishing trips.

Starting off, I had no idea if anyone would ever be reading this blog, or if it would wind up being just an online journal of my (attempts at) writing. Over the past year, I feel fortunate to have made some connections with other bloggers in the outdoor blogging community, both through the Outdoor Blogger Network and through comments left here on the blog. The online world continues to amaze me, because I never would have thought about "meeting" other outdoors people in this way a few years ago. I've discovered some great blogs by writers who put me to shame, and I've hopefully been able to improve my own writing just a little in the process.

As I start my second year of writing this blog, I am looking forward to continuing to share my outdoor experiences. Thank you to everyone who has stopped by here to read, leave a comment, followed the blog or added this blog to a blog roll, liked the Facebook page, or followed me on Twitter. Hopefully this time next year, I will have lots of new experiences to reflect back on.

Thanks for stopping by!

- Joseph