The Blonde Mule is 10!

A couple of big things happened recently. *Janie Crawford turned 29, and my blog - this blog - turned 10! I wrote my first blog post on December 4, 2007. A whopping 82 people read it and it received 1 comment from my very good friend bitch, Natalie, aka Shawtime. I've written 1310 blog posts, roughly 131 posts a year (11 posts a month) for TEN YEARS!

*The Paperless Post I sent for my blog party didn't autofill correctly, and instead invited everyone to Janie Crawford's 29th birthday at Herb's Jazz Club.

Let me paint a picture of 2007. MySpace had just died (RIP Top 8), Facebook and Twitter were a year old, not widely used, and Instagram didn't exist. What a time to be alive! All these really cool women had really cool blogs, and you could leave comments and they'd respond. Blogging enabled a lot of women to have a voice on the internet - and go on to write books, start companies, etc. What you now put on Facebook, in 2007, you put into a 4-paragraph blog post. Instagram? Please. No one knew how to take pictures in 2007. There weren't smart phones! There were no filters or ways to edit the brightness. What, was I going to buy editing software and learn how to edit my pictures? Hell no. Those dark ass pictures went straight to my blog.

In 2007, I was 31 years old, working as a staffer in the state senate, dating John, living in a garage, getting my cardio from a step aerobics class at the Green Hills Y (shout-out, Marcus!), and preaching the gospel of Weight Watchers. It was a simpler time. So what was I blogging about? Who knows! I'm too embarrassed to go back and read my old posts. J/K. I've read them and they are hilariously awful. On brand, but awful.

Here are my most viewed posts of all time!

8018 views - Warby Parker Glasses
4337 views - The Day I Met Dan Auerbach
3909 views - Knee Pain - Ouch!
3144 views - An Interview with EBTH Sales Specialist Brittney Forrister
2096 views - Smitten Kitchen Love
2068 views - An Interview with Goodwill Marketing Manager Niketa Hailey-Hill
1981 views - Training For A Triathlon - OMG, SO MUCH GEAR!!! $$$
1363 views - An Interview with Attorney and Fashion Blogger Betsey Appleton
1328 views - Easy Lasagna
1312 views - An Interview with b.fab.fitness Instructor Katherine Tisha Wilson

So what are my plans for the future? Glad you asked! A couple of things. One, I'm switching platforms, because lol Blogger. I actually tried to move to Wordpress about 4 years ago, but ultimately didn't because I would have lost all my pageviews and stats. Now you can move and keep your shizz, so I'm moving. TBD Wordpress or Squarespace.

My other plan for the future is to post more. Over the last couple of years I've quit writing personal posts. It's just not where I'm at anymore, but I'd like more variety on my blog. Right now, it's almost exclusively These My Bitches. In 2018, I may aim for 4 posts a month: 2 These My Bitches, 1 biz/social media post, and 1 personal-ish post. We'll see. I've got to figure out how to redistribute my creativity. Right now, all of it is going into my job and what little is left is going into Instagram Stories of my dog talking to me through thought bubbles.

Thank you to everyone who reads these posts, likes and comments on Facebook. I didn't set out to became "a brand", but somewhere along the way, I did. And that brand enabled me to start a social media business in 2014 that is doing quite well, thank you very much.

At Porter Flea over the weekend, I was overwhelmed by how many vendors (and shoppers) are Bitches. It's the first time I've really come face to face with how many Nashville women have been featured on my blog - all because I had this bizarre idea a few years ago to start writing about my friends' jobs.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I'd say here's to 10 more years, but I'm not convinced we'll still have free internet in 2027. To quote sheroes, Aminatou and Ann, "See you on the internet, boo!"