CELEBRATING SIX MONTHS OF BLOGGING!

ABSTRACT DISTRACTIONS AND STRUCTURED RAMBLINGS, ARE THEY NOT ONE AND THE SAME? Post No.15/IN (A 10 minute read) 

It is my anniversary today my friends, today I reach the six month mark. It is six months today since I published my very first post in which I introduced myself and my reasons for starting my blogspot. On that day, 11th November 2022, it was a completely new idea to me and I was absolutely unprepared for the technological challenges that have been my daily bread and butter ever since!

SEO, what does that mean, I asked myself? I had to look up the term and find out what it meant. Oh! SHOOT! Looks like I should have done a whole lot more prep work before I had got so far in my posts published. Swings and roundabouts, that is how it has been, swings and roundabouts! At times, I have been frustrated to the point of despair, really not knowing what to do in order to resolve these niggles!!

My thanks must go out to all of those grand people who share their snippets of knowledge with others on their websites or via other platforms by video demonstrations. Indeed, without these incredible human beings, I would no doubt still find my overall SEO rating at the poor 36% that I had when I did my first SEO crawl!

Finding out all that was wrong with my blogspot was disheartening to say the very least. No, it was soul shattering to me. I NEEDED this blog to be kind to me, I was giving it so much dedicated time and energy that I so needed it to respond favourably towards me too. Do not forget that I am INFJ type and I need reciprocity in all of my relationships.

Ah! There, I said it, I am having a relationship with my blog! Yes, I am! Since I closed my heart definitively to my sometime Prince Charming but the rest of the time, my hissing, spitting, venomous toad, I have nowhere to give my love and affection. Isolated as I am from all sources of love and positivity, I need something to be able to love and care for. Something to cherish and nurture. 

Somewhere to channel all of my positive energy that for now, has no useful exit! I had decided to give no more positive energy to this unhappy relationship and focus on my future life. That life where I would be my own master again and I would make my own decisions for myself once more. I had already begun that process!  

MY VERY OWN CREATION, THE BOOK IN QUESTION!

I had explored my whole life lived in my first book titled ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN, which I wrote between April 2020 and July 2021. By the September of 2021, I was so lamenting the loss of purpose each day and the loss of forward motion, growth, progression, continuity, a firm plan and path to follow that I had to find another path which I could follow, I could not stay static!

The links to my first book: ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN e-book and ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN Paperback

So it was, that I plunged straight into my second book ON THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT. Yes, the opposite. I had to see things from every angle if I were to really see my future with clarity. I had no support from those I knew and my fledgling writing career. No, I would have to be prepared to go it alone and in secret.

No problem! I am always living in secret, that is INFJ life. No one ever wants to know much about you. Only what can serve their purposes, sad to say! Once again, I did not know what I would write about, I just knew that the sensation of creation was so stimulating to me. It was something that I could do completely alone, I needed no one´s help or input.

I had my own INTROVERTED thoughts that I needed to Extrovert, I needed to off load and get out into the open so many of these secrets of my life. Happenings that are only secret because no one knows about them. But that is because they have never given me the time to share with them. They have never had the interest in sharing with me all that I am about!

I so enjoyed writing this book too. I FEEL that this second book confirmed to me, that yes, I am a writer and I can write forever onwards. I just need the space and ability to get on my wavelength of choice and just let my trains of thought go rumble and ramble with no particular structure or plan wherever they will. Wherever they go, it will surely be of interest to me!

As far as reviewing my second book, I am up to chapter eleven today which is titled ABSTRACT DISTRACTIONS and I find myself with the news that I have a lump in my breast!! Hence the title of the chapter. In my attempts to not worry before I knew that I had any reason to worry, I sent my mind off in search of Abstract Distractions!

What though I can see from reading back through that chapter now, is that whilst I did manage to pass away the days in between the waits for appointments and telephone calls for results of those appointments and tests done, my mind had been firmly stuck on my own physical self and many of my physical ups and downs of the last few years.

Because yes, as women we do go through some incredible physical and psychological ups and downs over the years depending on what our hormones are doing or being allowed to do! I did though, become so distracted that I actually overlooked writing in the fact that I had received my call telling me that I had nothing to worry about! I had even forgotten about the lump business!!

So, a very personal chapter that one, NO, we will never want to hear that we have got cancer. This was not my first suspiscious lump but I will say to you all, do not worry until you know that you do have something worthy of worrying about!

Having finished this second book (July 2022), which I had already decided would have to be a lot shorter than my first baby, simply because I FEEL that maybe she is just too daunting, even though you can pick her up and put her down at will, just as people usually do with me in person as well! I had to do more by her and so I started my blogspot.

Sixth months old today and very few who I know (that is to say three) know about my blog at all. But it is to me, a line of contact with other people out in the wide world. Invisible wavelengths and tuning in. I have been so thrilled to see that I have readers from the five continents who have looked at my blog. Sadly, as yet I do not have comments coming in, I so look forward to some exchange with others.

The internet ability to cross all frontiers is my greatest wonder, it is indeed a wonderful gift to us all as human beings. Those invisible wavelengths, that as we sit fiddling with words in search bars, clicking here and clicking there, scrolling through this and that, trying to find something in particular which we either NEED or WANT to know about/of.

I am immensely overjoyed to be able to say that I have been viewed by people in fifty-three different countries which I will list here, so pleased am I, that I will mention you all excepting those who sadly for some reason enter into "OTHER" territory, thank you so very much for your attention even though I cannot know where you are in the world reading me.

As you all know, I am currently living in Spain, so I will start with the European readers who have tuned in to the Gillian Metcalfe The Female INFJ Does Not Have Taboos blogspot.

EUROPEAN READERS: Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Austria, Switzerland, Gibraltar, Poland, Serbia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Malta, Belgium, Hungary, Gran Bretaña, Romania, Russia and Lithuania. What about that? But no comments from any of you!

ASIA: Georgia, South Korea, Philippines, Timor-Leste, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Brunei! You have got to love this internet invention, you really have! The far east: the cradle of wisdom!

AFRICA: Morocco, South Africa, Kenya, Mauritius, Egypt and recently come on my map this week, Nigeria! Oh, how wonderful if FEELS to have viewers from Africa tuning into to my wavelength.

AMERICAS: USA, Canada, Bahamas, Belize, Jamaica and Puerto Rico. So many visits from the USA and Canada, many, many thanks guys and girls!

OCEANIA: Australia. G´Day to you lovely folk down under and thank you all for looking my way too!

Four thousand, one hundred and four views up to this very moment of writing. My most humble thanks to you all for having given me a look. I cannot help but FEEL that I do not have any regular viewers. It will take time if the online amateur teachers are right. Yes, they say it will take time to build up your blog content and your following.

I can now say that after much, much, racking of my untechnologically tuned brain, I have an actual SEO rating of 90%. Will that make a difference in the traffic to my blog? I do not know how visible or invisible I am which is why I am so overjoyed to know that I have been found by people now in fifty-three indentified countries and also fifty-five unidentified countries. 

In an incredible total of one hundred and eight different countries around the world, a person has decided to click on something that has led them to my blog. What can I say but thank you for giving me a moment of your time, I ask no one for anything more than that. You are FREE to choose what you read, there are no obligations with me!

Have I achieved anything as yet with my blog? Well, in the physical sense, obviously NOT! No! My aim was to make my first book ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN more visible and accessible to the wider public and I have not been able to interest anyone through this method as yet! Life cannot stand still and I have been standing still for far too long.

I am on to my second book now and in my next post I will review chapter eleven, It Is Spring Again!! At last the bitter winter is over and I come out of hibernation again! So check back for that if you like. FEEL free to comment of course!

So NO, not a particularly good physical start but what about the psychological achievements though! Oh, YES! I have had breakthroughs and waves of triumph as I saw the light shining on new knowledge at long last! I was getting there as my 90% SEO rating shows me. How odd that I can receive a technological approval rating but not a human one.

I must be grateful for the boosts that I can receive and from wherever they may come! I FEEL much of the time as though I am talking to myself. I am talking as I write, it is because I have no one to talk with, sad, so sad. INFJ existence sad to say. As such, my blog has become as my talking diary. Off loading whatever I need to get out of my system but having my books as the vertebral column to hold me in some kind of coherent order!

Maybe the SEO factor will turn out to have positive repercussions. Patience is the game, I know that there are few minds in the world that are willing to keep learning and do all of that learning outside of man-kind´s tight, restricting, comfort zones!

What I take from my six months blogging as the greatest positive factor, is that I have been read in one hundred and eight different countries. That is to go beyond man-kind´s tight, restrictive, stereotyped, prejudical, anti-everyone not the same complexion as HE! I have no taboos at all, I have no boundaries and to know that near half of the world has been able to connect to my blog, really does bring me some HOPE of finding someone, somewhere who FEELS and thinks like I do.

Just to remind you that I dedicated no less than sixty posts to my first book ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN and they can be found on my Pages One to Four of the On The Outside Looking In Posts. They run in chronological order and there is a summary of each post and a link to it. So, if you have come on board recently, maybe you might like to look back.

Having taken so much energy preparing those four Pages, I have decided with this second phase of my blogging career, to start the Pages a bit sooner. I have already listed the first twelve ON THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT Posts and they can be found on Page One of the On The Inside Looking Out Posts. Very soon Page Two will be visible and I shall now endeavour to become more organized as I go along my way!

The Pages of both book´s post´s listing can be found in the left-hand panel of the page. Until the next post, have yourselves a great day of learning!

Update 23/08/2023; my second book is now live and on sale, here are the links: ON THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT e-book and ON THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT Paperback

Other INFJ bloggers can be found on this listing: https://lifestyle.feedspot.com/infj_blogs