Thank You for Reading!

Can not believe it’s a year ago today that I started this blog! As I mentioned previously, it wasn’t one of those spare of the moment things – I though long and hard about blogging and it took me almost three years to finally pluck enough courage to have a go at it – and, I’m very glad that I did.

A few things held me back and became my “excuse” as why not to blog, my tendency of making obvious grammatical mistakes was one, an another was the time factor and the commitment required not to mention the notation that blogging might damage my chances of getting selected for a seat to fight – were all strong obstacles – phantom or real they still managed to hold me back for years.

Then I saw many, including some professional journalist, make obvious and even silly mistakes. Iain (Dale) who is my blogging mentor and a top UK media guru once told me – post at least once a day and it doesn’t have to be an essay – that took care of the time issue. Besides, last year at around this time it became clear the possibility of my standing in the 2010 General Election was very slim. So with my main excuses out of the window I forged forward and posted for the first time on December 1, 2009.

And it has been fun, empowering while at the same time liberating.

Although, I like sums and enjoy numbers, for some reason I’m not a big fan of stats. However, here is my version of statistical analysis. I posted (not including this one) 600 blog-posts in the past year and in 365 days I didn’t post only two days, once when I was travelling, and the second time was when I had a serious case of writers’ block but still managed a couple of line saying that I had nothing to say!!

So technically I missed posting one day in a year – good, bad, mad or sad you decide!

My longest post was 823 words and my shortest was only 7 words (not including the title) – I blogged about any and everything but mostly politics – had a lot of comments posted on the blog itself but most the discussions were posted and generates on my Facebook page. The blog was linked to by many other UK bloggers and it features regularly on Booker Rising, a News site for Moderate and Black Conservatives in the US, it made the Daley Dozen 23 times, 8 of which were on a Monday but never once on a Tuesday!

Standing in a very long queue at a bloggers’ event, a nice looking guy (who I didn’t know) started to wave at me – I assumed he knew me and thought maybe he read the blog, and waved back. He came over and it turned out he didn’t know me from Adam but wanted to cut in the queue. I was a little embarrassed as you do, but we became friends.

In closing, I would like to take this opportunity and thank all my readers, specially those who take the time to leave me a comment, and those who stop me at events and conferences to say good job. A very particular thank you goes to all the non Tory readers who don’t agree with me but still have a kind word to say when I see them – to the many new friends I made because of the blog. Thank you for the comments, the chats, the drinks, and for keeping it lively and clean – because without you I won’t have come this far, you encouraged, sustained and grounded me and for that from the bottom of my heart I thank you!