Happy 4th Birthday, My Treasure!

Four years ago, after a year of being addicted to bloggers like Natasha, Roba, Lina and Nas and hogging their bandwidth with random rambling comments, The Hub let me get my own blog. Only because a friend of his convinced him I had good things to say and that I would not neglect my family in so doing. Oops. Really only because I had prayed and God probably got tired of me whining – I wouldn’t whine at my husband about it, but God has infinite patience with whiners, where husbands to get irritated. Well, it did tie up the landline, as we were still doing dial-up then (“Honey, so do you know HOW LONG you have been doing that blogging thing today?”).

Then he started an on-line masters program, which was essentially blogging! Then he understood the draw of it .

Fa, sick to death of my own generation’s fixations with handbags, manicures and botox, I had discovered a new generation of Jordanians who had things to say. Had issues to tackle, had energy to act on those issues. Who cared that they were all old enough to be my own kids, gosh, I think a few of them were still teenagers. My Jordan experience was ‘born-again’ as a result of those interactions. And now I am happily re-connected to my generation of JO ladies, being published seems to have made up for my rebellion against the cultural value of elegance. So now when they say “Shu nas-haaani!” (oh, how fat you have become!) or “Shu, wijik mish helweh” (oh, your face is not nice) I say “Mumkin biddik nathara jadeedeh?” (Maybe you need to get your eyes examined!”. No, not really and just love them anyway.

So, I have picked up a very fun audience along the way. From 3 to 30 now . I very much like being a small niche blogger, and all the pleasant peeps who pop up in the comment section. Some have become treasured friends off-line, some I have worked with in real-time. Approximately 325,000 views (those 30 x 10K), 12,000 comments (my WordPress mahram protected me from 96,000 pieces of spam) and 1,500 posts later, I haven’t run out of stuff to say and it seems you folks generally stick around.What a book this will be for my kids: Little Apartment in the Desert City.

Thanks to my number one post, ‘Dumb Blonde Jokes from Breaking Dawn’ and other Twilight stuff, my demographics were totally messed up, making American teen girls my second biggest reader base after affluent, religious, well-educated middle-aged mothers of teens from the UAE, UK and US. Those Twilight teens edged our my usual suspect secondary readership: well-educated, religious, affluent young ‘Asian’ men from the MENA region. Shabaab, yani.

I even have a strong reader base in Dulles, Virginia and Washington, DC. Bitkhaylu!

I still never have gotten a blog roll going, but now get to add a badge from GO! Overseas Top Jordan blog with my favorite aggregators Qwaider Planet, Jordan Blogs, Girly Gator and itoot  (excuse me for lazily not linking, I think most of you know how to find these). I did get nominated for Best Non-Muslim Blog for the 2010 Brass Crescent Awards, but didn’t make the final nomination list. It was fun anyway

It is quite an honor for an Opinionated, Post-Middle-Aged, Evangelical, Right-Winging, Mouth-Breathing Hetero Mom to be welcomed by such a decidedly diverse readership. MWA! I know I make some people crazy at times and I thank you for coming back when things blow over.

God has been good to me through this blogging season, patient, firm and consistent. Sometimes when I get lost in links instead of mopping floors, He gently turns off the internet, or the electricity to get me focused. So far, I haven’t ever forgotten to pick up the kids from school, either. Blogging, of all things, has taught me much about His mercy and justice, I hope my readers have seen that too.

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