I can't believe it was an entire year ago today that I hit publish and sent this little sucker out into the internets.
Blogging has come to mean so many things to me, and in taking a long stroll through my 167 posts, I realize that the past year has been captured with more clarity and awareness than any other time in my life.
It has become a way to chronicle the mundane and the momentous. Even when those in my actual life get sick of it.
It's given me the opportunity to meet new friends and reconnect with old ones, which has been completely wonderful.
It's provided an outlet for my words, the ones that would come bursting out one way or another (Kyle, who is baffled by my ability to talk incessantly, is especially grateful for this).
Most of all, it's made me more mindful.
All of my experiences now -- good and bad, beautiful and ugly -- I think about the ways I will explain them, how I can convey the feelings and sensations, what to make public and what to keep private. It's a delicate dance, trying to share my life and my thoughts without make it some kind of rose-colored caricature or a tell-all memoir.
But it's a dance I love, so I'm learning, albeit slowly.
Thank you, thank you, thank you to anyone who stops by and reads this blog. I've said it before and I'll say it again -- this writing for the big, anonymous internet is scary business. You never know who will dislike your words, and by extension, you.
Sometimes I feel ridiculous, writing about my tiny life. Nothing much happens, and I don't do anything noteworthy, and I mostly ramble on about the weather and my dogs and how great married life is (always good to note that you shouldn't think we don't have our squabbles -- Nat the Fat Rat said it best when she wrote" my husband is sometimes my foe but always my best friend.")
Keep Calm and Carrie On is still quite small, but boy has it been fun to tend to it, water it, and watch it grow.
I can't wait to see where we are at this point next year, little blog. I think you and I together might just do some pretty neat things.
