The Journey from Teddy's Tale to Finding Neverland Blog

It all started during 2012 in boredom more than anything.

Though my father always encouraged me to read and write and that I used to buy almost 10 magazines every month and that I had (still have) a library of my own with so many books. I was more a person who used to spend half his day playing cricket in the streets and the other half watching cricket matches.

Yes, It all started on one boring and hot day during my summer vacations with no cricket or any other activity, suddenly there was this idea that I should start writing a diary.

That diary is still with me, it included my daily routine from how many runs I scored in the cricket matches, what did I eat, what did I read, where did I go, things like how many times mama and papa scolded me and what were my wishes in life.

Or maybe it started the next year when I moved to a new city. It was the first time in my life that I knew I will be away from home for years to come. I didn't bring my diary with me, I was still to make new friends so there wasn't anyone proper to talk and I wanted to write down my experiences, or let's just say I wanted to talk to myself.

I signed up on blogger and made a blog named Teddy's Tale.

How odd was the name, jbtw. When I think about it now it really looks odd, but then I was getting used to blogging. It wasn't as if my nickname was Teddy, it was just that while searching for different blogging sites I came across this blog which was written by anonymous, sharing things about his life with the blog name Teddy's Life. So yeah that was the beginning.

I had a blog now, all I did was to visit other blogs, find different gadgets and widgets to add on my blog, fill it with pretty looking things. There was no post in the first month, but then finally, there was my first post. That feeling of writing something for the first time I won't be able to forget, I felt like a professional and famous writer, wanted everyone to read what I had written.

Finally I did what Papa wanted me to, finally I did what he always said I can do. Oh I still keep that 500 rupee note he gave me.

Time passed, I kept writing my daily routine. One day my professor was discussing a cricket match with me, and called me a wise boy. Oh wait ... What did he say? A Wise Boy? Next day I changed the name of my blog to A Wise Boy's Diary.

There is no doubt about the fact that I was the only person who read my blog those days, there were these gaps of weeks, even a month when I never wrote anything, whenever I did there was this happiness inside me, I didn't know why. So whenever I was sad or happy I used to write.

Time passed.

I started writing about cricket, sometimes even just the name of the players who were included in the team. I wanted to write about cricket. Changed the name of my blog to the The Cricket Couch.
 

One day I was writing a blog post in my room. My friend came over, saw what I was doing and he laughed at me so hard. You are writing a blog? Do you even know only famous people blog? People who have readers to read? How many views does your blog have? Oh it says 312 views? Hahaha. I can say for sure no one will ever read your blog, no matter what you do. Let's make a bet. If your blog crosses 1000 views in one month I will give you a treat.

Deal it was. Now I had some motivation.

Changed the name of my blog to Hanging between the Clouds. Told myself that's too boring and after 3 days changed it to Life, Lemon and Lollipop.

Here I was writing, asking people to read my blog so I cross 1000 views in one month. Then another friend one day asked me to write something funny, not serious. So I did, wrote something 'funny' (I would like to call it funny) for the first time. Thanks to that post (won't name it and up till now It has been one of the most read post of my blog) within a week my blog had 1000 views.

By one month I had written 15 more posts, and my blog really got the traffic going. After three months the blog had 10,000+ views.

My blog now had Alexa rank and Google Page Rank. (Most of the people won't get what it is, but in simple words it means that my blog was visible and recognized over the internet and search engines).

One month later I got an email that my blog was nominated for the competition of World Top Blogs by young upcoming bloggers. They asked for my details, identity, documents by parents and stuff. The results were announced and it was declared the #55th Top blog in the World.

I really didn't believe it was true, thought it was just a random website, but then they emailed me again telling me that my blog actually was the one of the most visited, well arranged and has really good ranks among all the blogs present on the internet, even generally. Happiness again!

There was this rush, I was even interviewed on the TV. A couple of interviews from different websites and I was actually embarrassed because in my opinion my blog wasn't that good.

There was this plan to make my blog active. Choose a better name. What should it be? Then I remembered watching this movie Finding Neverland, few weeks back which was about happiness.

Yes that was it, thirteen month after starting proper blogging my blog was now 'Finding Neverland Blog'.

There was no looking back after that, thanks to Almighty everything has been perfect. More than casual writing it has become a responsibility now. To spread happiness, to promote a good message, to portray a good image of Pakistan.

It has made me read, search and know about so many new things, help me meet many amazing people, Interact with so many talented individuals but more importantly made me a better human being and allowed me to see things from a different angle.

Updated: To-date more than 100 writers from 32 countries around the world have written more than 800 blog posts for Finding Neverland Blog.

Been two years now since that day I accepted the challenge. Today after almost three years Finding Neverland Blog has reached 3,000,000 Blog views. Yes, THREE MILLION blog views from 209 countries around the world. I don't really know if there is a 210th country.

Today my dream has come true, a dream I thought will always stay a dream. Today my belief has become stronger that any dream can come true if we try. Thank you everyone who has supported me throughout but more importantly thanks Allah for everything.