Are you ready for 2014? This past year seemed to have left us in a blur. There are many amazing moments this year and now looking back I realize how fleeting and precious each each moment was. This year was special to me we got to celebrate our daughter's first birthday, we moved to Kaneohe HI and my husband was appointed to a church, starting a new ministry, and a new life... and in 2013 I started Daechoong Mama.
It was something I always wanted to do but always thought things like "Who the heck would read it?" and "What would I write about?" and "There are a million other stellar blogs out there." and "Blogging is soo 2003..." but one day while I was washing dishes I remembered about how my mom taught me how to wash dishes. You see my mom had no patience for not doing things the fastest (albeit not so thorough) way. One day when I was in elementary school I was washing the dishes after dinner and my mom observed me washing each dish thoroughly with soap... because I thought that was how you get them clean, and my mom scolded me for being inefficient. She told me just wash the dish on top thoroughly with soap and then let all the soap that spilled over to the remaining dishes wash the rest. So all the soap spills over to the other dishes, merely rinse them and that's that. These memories rose up like the steam from the hot water I was using as I washed my own dishes and I thought "That was so unsanitary and daechoong and .... hilarious." It was unsanitary but I've certainly been influenced because of it. When I wash dishes with each dish I make sure the soap spills over to the next dish so I don't waste the soap and I thought "I'm going to write about how daechoong my mom was and how daechoong I am. I am going to start a blog." So I started not knowing if anyone would read it or care but people did! And I fell in love again with writing again. With each post your comments, advice, and encouragement continued to inspire me to be a better writer and a better mother. Thank you all for reading!
As a type of year in review here is a list of the Top Ten most popular posts of 2013. I basically scanned through all my previous posts and made a list of the top ten posts with the most views and ordered them from least views to most. Starting from 10 to 1:
This post was twittered by MomCom, an Austin based mom/blogging conference. I loved writing this post and thinking about it. Motherhood requires many talents and births many rewards.
For our five year anniversary I posts about Marriage. It was quite daunting since I know there is much more I needed to learn. However it seemed that people enjoyed reading it. I say its good advice for people getting married since it is based on my experience being married for 5 years. For those married longer I would say it was probably read more for amusement than anything else. I know I still have a lot to learn.
This post was about going over the line in raising kids... and how my son loves butt paste and driving me crazy!
The people that I worked with on the It Can Wait Campaign set up the interview for me. I was really lucky and it was an awesome experience.
6. Interview with Ask A Korean
After everyone was writing about the Asiana plane crash and The Korean from Ask A Korean! blogged about it, and agreed to do an interview. So glad he was willing to oblige considering that I'm a huge fan of AAK!
Now this is a post that got a lot of views b/c people apparently go on Google and search things like "Korean mother spanking toddler" and "Tiger mother discipline" and "Korean mother spanking". I don't know who these people are but every month people search for this, and end up on Daechoong Mama and I don't know how I feel about that...
Same as above this post gets a lot of views because people go on Google and search almost word for word "1 child vs. 2" and they end up on this post. Glad it's relevant! This post is about how differently you raise you 2nd child vs your first.
This was a pretty funny post about all the horrible things I did to my brother growing up. It was actually a way to cope with my Older Sibling Guilt (OSG).
2. Doves Real Beauty Campaign: Questions
This post also gets a lot of views because people still search for the ad on Google and often come to my page and some of linked the post to their thoughts about the ad on forums etc.
Ready for number 1?? Drum roll........
1) 20 Ways You Know You Are A Korean American Growing Up in the 80's/90's
So this post surprisingly went semi viral (or what's considered viral for my little blog). Over 1000 views in two days because a few people shared it etc. I loved writing this post and looking up all the things that coined that time period for me.
So that's that. I can't wait for more making more deachoong memories for 2014 and blogging about it=)
