Self-Portrait in Feng’s Glasses, May 2010, U.S.A

Almost four years of blog­ging later, today I’m pub­lish­ing my 500^th arti­cle. Wow. I guess I’d bet­ter backup my data­base tonight!

It all started in Octo­ber 2006. At the time, I had been a per­ma­nent res­i­dent in Canada for exactly a year (and I had been in Canada for already two years) but I was still get­ting com­fort­able with my new coun­try. I had no idea what I would do with a blog nor did I have any idea how all that (all that being me in Canada, work­ing as a teacher at the time) was going to turn out.

Four years later, I’m happy to say the jig­saw pieces more or less fell together and “all that” turned out pretty good. Sure, I had to adjust along the way — I gave up eat­ing cheese (too expen­sive and not rot­ten enough due to Canada’s health reg­u­la­tions), I now invent French words when I for­get my mother tongue (I have recently been told that “les végéta­bles” is not a word in French) and I haven’t par­tic­i­pated in a protest in quite a while (despite work­ing on Par­lia­ment Hill). Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t always easy and I had ups and downs. But I never regret­ted my choice of com­ing here and I’m very happy with being both Cana­dian and French.

Blog-wise, I learned a lot in the past four years. First, I started writ­ing on Blog­ger and even­tu­ally switched to self-hosted Word­Press a year later. As I wanted to improve my blog, I became a mini-geek with basic knowl­edge of cod­ing and web design. Pho­tog­ra­phy is an art I came to appre­ci­ate a lot these last three years and I have tons of projects in mind. I learned the ropes with a sim­ple point-and-shoot cam­era and I’m now hav­ing a lot of fun with a proper DSLR and a few lenses. Yes, I’m that weirdo who walk around Ottawa with a cam­era — say hi if you see me, and smile for the picture!

Above all, I dis­cov­ered I truly loved writ­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy. I’ve always been in writer but in French, but since I was now liv­ing in an Eng­lish envi­ron­ment, I wanted to see if I could express myself as well in that lan­guage. Again, it wasn’t easy but I’m quite happy to say I’m as com­fort­able writ­ing in Eng­lish as I am in French (don’t mind the occa­sional gram­mar slip!).

This blog means a lot to me:

• It is a moti­va­tion to take bet­ter pic­tures, to write about life in Canada, and it’s hope­fully use­ful to a lot of prospec­tive immi­grants.
  
• It opened my eyes on the world, thanks to all the great arti­cles from you guys I read everyday.
• It helps pay­ing some bills, thanks to the (hope­fully not too annoy­ing) ads.
• It’s a great way to sell my pho­tog­ra­phy and it is start­ing to work!
• It gave me the oppor­tu­nity to meet great peo­ple, such as Gail (who came to Ottawa twice), Bar­bara (in France) and Priyank (in Toronto).

I wanted to thank all of you, those who stop by every day and those who read a cou­ple of arti­cles here and there, those who leave insight­ful and funny com­ments, those who share their expe­ri­ences, those who encour­age me and sup­port this blog, those who take the time to say say “hi” once in a while and all the other who stay in the shadow. I’ve been pleas­antly sur­prised by all the great peo­ple I got to know through this blog, and even more sur­prised to see how many read it every day.

Writ­ing and blog­ging is like trav­el­ing: I’m not sure where I’m going, I’m not sure I’m even going some­where, but I’m going any­way and I’ll fig­ure it out later. It all worked itself out just fine so far!

Related posts:

1. The “Win An Adspot” Contest
2. “Your Best Blog­ging Advice” Contest!
3. The Com­mu­nist Girl
4. Four Years, Already…
5. Immi­grat­ing to Canada: 6 Years Later, What Changed?