Linked Within + My Blog History....

You may have noticed that I recently have added Linked Within to this here blog. What that means is that at the foot of each post are little boxes with thumbnails that link to other posts from this blog. Supposedly it will suggest posts that are somehow related to the post that it is attached to. I haven't noticed that to be quite the case, on my blog, or on others' blogs. But it's a fun idea, & I have noticed an increase in views.

You cannot choose how it pulls & suggests links. You cannot set a parameter of dates. Linked Within is basically an unruly child. A super cool child with lots of potential. At first I was pretty bummed out that I couldn't choose a parameter of dates for which it pulls posts, I would have limited it to the last year.

The bottom of my blog posts now looks like this::

My Blogging History::
I am not sure if many of you know this... but I have been writing this blog since August of 2005. If you peek at my blog archives, you will notice that not all of those years were super active. I started this blog to talk about knitting, yarn, my cats, and my life... it started out strong and steady. I had lots of regular followers, and heaps of comments. Shortly after beginning this blog, I went back to school, worked 2 jobs, etc., and my posting eventually dwindled to every once in a blue moon.  

Looking back at those posts from so many years ago, I was horrified. I nearly scrambled double-time to yank the Linked Within widget down. Then I spent 20 minutes devising a plan to pull ALL of the posts from those early years down & save them somewhere else.

Then I stepped back and looked at the whole picture again. I looked at the story. I looked at how I have grown. The photography alone...  geez Louise those photos are of horridly bad quality! And I am just going to pretend that spell check hadn't been invented back then.

But after reading a handful of the posts... the thing that really stood out was how I have grown as Tammy. I used to be easily overwhelmed by everything. I used to whine & complain about so much... I did it in a humorous and highly entertaining manner of course. But in general my attitude was that "life is hard and then you die".

A few years back I made some massive changes in my life. The positivity, the happiness, the ability to be grateful for every single thing/person that comes into my life... I believe that those things are who I really am, and who I always have been. I am eternally grateful that I have grown out of "life is hard and then you die". That phrase doesn't even register on my radar any longer.

I am still a little bit embarrassed about some of that prehistoric Tammy blogging. But the pride that I feel about my growth as a blogger, an amateur photographer, an artist/crafter, and most of all as a being.... well, that self pride outweighs any crumbs of embarrassment.

Sometimes the linked within thumbnails may look more like this: 

crazy embarrassing ancient history links. 

Thank you for reading my blog... then and now.
What types of growth (blog/artistic/personal) are you most proud of?

❤
-t