On June 27th 2012 I typed up my 190th blog post. It was a quick affair, just something to show off some snaps I had taken on holiday.

A couple of days after I published it, my iPhone began binging and bonging alerting me to a quick succession of messages that had been sent my way via WordPress. They were comments. Lots and lots of comments.

Now, for some of you this barrage of likes and what-not from fellow writers is nothing new but I am still only in the 40-50 hits a day range and have a small, to say the least, number of regular followers.

As I kept checking the App on my phone the number of viewings rose rapidly, it shot past 115 (my past highest daily hit rate) and then continued past 500. By the end of the day it had reached 797. It was only then, when I checked my email that I realised had been “Freshly Pressed“.

For those of you who don’t know, Freshly Pressed is a small number of blog posts selected daily by WordPress as their choice of the best posts of that day. When you think about how many people blog daily the chance of you getting picked is slim but when it does happen is it amazing. For those of you who have been “pressed” before you will know the audience that your work reaches suddenly hits dizzy heights and it can be quite a shock. Suddenly people are actually reading your stuff. And commenting. And liking it.

I admit, the pictures that I took are rather lovely and that I was very lucky (or unlucky given the time of day they were taken) to have been able to capture the images but I never expected such a recognition.

In the week that followed my pressing, the Little Muddy Boots blog received 7408 page views, 171 new comments, 277 likes and picked up over 40 new followers.

I found the level of attention quite daunting at times, the subject matter is quite controversial and provoked many comments both negative and positive. The point of the post was not an environmental, ecological or political one, it was photographic. . I didn’t want to enter any arguments particularly as I know next to nothing about turbines and didn’t want to look like an idiot. I kept re-iterating to people, as politely as possible (one commenter was kind enough to comment on not just my photographs but also my politeness!), that I had put the pictures up because I found them so beautiful rather than because I was for (or against) wind power. It seems, to some, you are unable to view something for its beauty without knowing all the facts. But that is the beauty of the freedom of speech. I would like to thank each and every person who took the time to comment and like the post, it really meant a lot to me and made the three 4am starts totally worth it.

The thing is now, how can I keep my 40 new readers (and my oldies of course) happy? How do I get pressed again and do I want to be pressed again?. I am certain that post 191 won’t do it (no one really likes a load of statistics do they?) but what about post 192? One thing I do know is that I won’t be making a habit of getting up at 4 am to hunt down suitable subject material.

So for now, here is a picture of Mr Snail that I took a few weeks ago during more sociable hours who lost out on a front page position to three, tall wind turbines. He might not have the hits of the turbines or the controversial aspect but I think he is rather lovely. Enjoy your 15 minutes my slippery friend.