Well it has been over 20 months now since I started my own site and went down the route of blogging. My stats tell me that I have published 49 posts (this one being the landmark 50th) and achieved almost 6,000 views (including nearly 100 from China, hey if I can make it there I can make it anywhere). My blog is viewed most frequently on Mondays and the most common time of day for catching up on my words of wisdom is 10pm, so straight after Monday night football then! I now have a merry band of 53 followers (thanks guys and gals) who occasionally cause my phone to beep with a much appreciated “like”. My most popular post was a tribute to Drumcondra library which at one point looked like it was going viral but then lost momentum when it became apparent that it was only of real interest to the library-goers of Drumcondra! So I must admit that I’m far from the Kardashian levels of followership that I aspire to and even my brief dalliance with tik-tok dance routines hasn’t elevated me to influencer status yet! Given my lack of appearances on The Late Late Show to date, I do sometimes ask myself the question why am I putting all this out there into the online universe? Occasionally there is a little nagging voice on my shoulder (or as I like to call her, Niki) saying why are you doing this for no financial gain (or when you could be doing housework)?

In response, first and foremost I find the whole thing kind of therapeutic, something which has become particularly relevant in the era of wellness, especially during the last six months when social interactions have been reduced to a minimum. Just arranging my thoughts in a matter fit for general consumption has allowed me to put things in perspective and hopefully put a humourous slant on otherwise humdrum or potentially worrisome matters. Sure, occasionally I do get the odd tinge of doubt about whether putting my family’s lives out there for everyone to see is a good way to go. I do have strange visions of my daughter Ella approaching me in 20 years time sitting me down gently and then giving me a good slapping while demanding I delete my life’s work for GDPR reasons! This is indeed a very concerning prospect for me given that she doubles up as my youngest child and my only daughter and is therefore most likely to be the one caring for me in my old age. I only write the good stuff about you honey!

Asides from my family, there is also the understandable worry about who and what topics I can write about, furthermore recently I have received a complaint from a group of friends (who shall remain nameless) as to why I never write about them “I mean you find time to write about storage space and overfull weekly schedules but not one mention of your friends of 40 odd years!”. Don’t worry, a blog about pals who I only interact with via WhatsApp is coming soon.

Of course there are upsides to blogging – myself and Niki no longer need to provide an introduction as to what is going on in our lives when we meet friends on the street as they are already up to speed via my blog. Although I’m not sure that Niki appreciates being blind-sided on work zoom calls where participants seem to know just as much about her children’s daily lives as she does! On a more serious note, I’m very glad that these blogs will provide a record of this period of my life, particularly the interactions with the kids. I know how the wheel turns and how a manic household can turn into a quiet household and having these blogs as a journal will be something to cherish (assuming Ella hasn’t made me delete them all first). On a slight tangent, I used to send weekly group emails when I spent a year in Australia and New Zealand during my twenties and made the far-sighted decision to save all these emails for posterity. So every now and then when I need a bit of nostalgia I dip into those emails and am transported back to sunnier, more carefree and more adventurous times, in fact I’m just reading one now, what, I actually jumped out of a plane! Hope Lochlan doesn’t get his hands on these!

So what do the next 50 blog post have in store. Well hopefully I’ll have the time to write a few short stories, I have one nearly finished and boy is it much harder to write than a blog, it actually needs a structure, not my strong point! Maybe I’ll reach 100 followers and get a few more “likes” from China. Or maybe she who pays the bills will call time on dublindad.com and send me back to earn a few shekels. Only time will tell.

A special thanks to my editor-in-chief Niki who keeps these posts on the straight and narrow, and spots the odd typo along the way. She also has the odd grumble about the 100% veracity of some of my tales but as a wise man once said “never let the truth get in the way of a good story!”