Six Years!

Yesterday marked six years that I have been blogging with my first post having been published on February 9^th2013!  It is hard for me to believe that I have come to you for the past 312 weeks, always publishing early on a Sunday morning (click here for an explanation of why on Sunday mornings).

I hope all of my readers have enjoyed this past year traipsing through another 52 posts, possibly traveling with me on my trips, maybe also enjoying some of the interesting books I have read, or just puzzling over some of the random muses I have shared.

Looking back over this past year, I see that I wrote about travel 17 times, about books I had read 11 times, about items at home 11 times and about one of my favorite topics, entropy (randomness) 10 times.  While maybe not always of interest to you, hopefully you have found enough of intrigue with this variety to keep you coming back.

And along the way this past year, I have picked up a number of new followers to whom I say: “Thank you!” Whenever I discover a new follower, I immediately go to your blog and I am always amazed at how professional they look. I find it truly an honor that you took the time to stop by my simple blog, which is pretty basic in design.  I hope you continue to read and enjoy my future posts and I will frequent yours as well as often as I can.

But also to my truly dedicated readers and followers who have been with me from day one, it is very special to me knowing you consistently read my posts.  Thanks for your continued interactions, your thoughtful comments, and even your occasional suggestions about a topic.  Knowing that you are connecting to me through these posts continues to be an inspiration for me to continue this effort.

However, I must admit that there were times this past year when I really wondered if I could keep up this weekly pace.  Since I am retired, it wasn’t a lack of time that challenged me as in my early years of blogging but rather coming up with new topics to write on.  Inspired by my parent’s “Black Book,” my wife’s and daughter’s own blogs, I started this blog originally to explore my creativity, to share my memories, and to tell my stories to my family and friends before I lost them.   After more than five years blogging, I realized that I had already written about many of those memories and stories.  In fact with my New Year’s Eve post last December, I discovered after finishing it that I had actually written on that topic already, three years prior (sorry if it seemed familiar to some of you, although it was different).

Mid-year, I honestly did not have another 26 more topics to write on.  I’d look at my list of blog ideas (a list I have kept ever since I started, now over 225 titles long) and would only see two or three unwritten topics. But then something would come up that I thought would make for a good post.  Or an inspiration would come to me while biking or running and I’d be anxious to get home to explore and capture that thought.

As a result, I would typically write posts several weeks in advance so I wouldn’t end up on a Saturday night with “writer’s block” and no fresh ideas to create for the next day. Being an early starter, at times I have had finished posts scheduled for publishing as much as 12 weeks in advance. So without the pressure of a deadline, I am often amazed at the ideas that suddenly pop into my head allowing my creativity to run wild.

As I take these first few steps into my seventh year of blogging, I look down my idealist and see that I have fewer than ten topics to explore; hopefully another forty or more will come to me throughout the year.  My goal, as I have said, has been to explore my creativity and to share my memories.  With many of my memories already told, 2019 might be a year of more creativity.

I love cars and love to drive and have often used these rides as a metaphor for my posts.

So thanks for coming along for the ride so far.  I hope it will continue to be an enjoyable journey for you.

Here’s to another fun year. Cheers!