On this day, the first anniversary of my blog, I thank not only you, but myself as well for not losing faith in me.

Here we are friends, celebrating another momentous occasion together. A year ago on this date I wrote my first daily musing. It was terrifying. I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to post every single day about something that makes me go “hmmm” with travel, with the moon, my period, mercury in retrograde. You name it. How on earth was I going to keep up my end of the deal? There were days where I struggled, like a lot. Where I pulled my hair out, paced the floor because my brain refused to give up the goods. But I persevered. I stuck to my commitment. I kept my word.

So many of those days, and there were more than you’ll ever know, my family would say; “so just don’t post today. Who cares. It’s only one day.” Or they would say things like; “nobody will care if you don’t post something for EVERY SINGLE DAY it’s a goal, it’s not mandatory.”

My response to them was always the same. I CARE.

You see it goes back to me being an idealistic person, and a person who keeps her word no matter what, even if it kills me. Well, except if it kills me. You know that I’ve shared with you how, in the past, before my “Year of Yes” I was known to have panic attacks and pull the plug on attending an event the night of, because I just couldn’t bear the idea of being in a crowd. Those were the only times I’ve not kept my word, but otherwise I’m pretty much obsessed with doing what I say I’m going to do, even if it takes me months to complete said task/promise, I get it done.

I’m also a number keeper. I love tracking how many people read my daily musings. Which musings garner the most attention, and what the difference is from the most read to the second most read, etc, etc, etc.

I’m also a message deleter. I don’t like having the “unopened” or “unread” button on any of my devices, or in any of my email accounts. That drives me crazy. I have no idea how some people do this. I sat beside a girlfriend one night at a gala, she was on her phone and I saw on her home screen that she had something crazy like TWO THOUSAND emails unopened. I leaned over and said; “IS THAT FOR REAL??? IS THAT REALLY HOW MANY UNREAD EMAILS YOU HAVE???”

She laughed and responded with; “yes, and that’s only from two days.”

GULP. Damn. No thank you.

I’m also a countdown queen, counting down until this occasion or that one. I do this less often as I get older, because God knows time is moving swiftly enough I don’t need to “help” it along by ticking off the passing days to a big event. Although our youngest has taken up the gauntlet on this quirk.

I’m thankfully, for everybody who is in a relationship with me, a “recovered score keeper.” Of who did what to me when, where we were and what everybody was wearing. This wasn’t healthy for anybody, so I’ve long since let this go.

I’m also, for those of you who have been following along a HUGE anniversary celebrator. I love to acknowledge milestones in my marriage, and in my career. And it is with great pride, and a splash of bitter sweet, that I celebrate the first anniversary of my daily musings. So much has happened in one short year. I went from a made in my kitchen website, to this incredibly beautiful, well laid out, aesthetically pleasing site that you all visit now. It went from being a place where only excerpts from Black Picket Fence were posted, to having Huff Post pieces that I’ve written published posted on it. It now has radio guest appearances, and video from The Goods on it. I’ve completed and am “this close” to shopping my first non-fiction book, and I’ve gone from thousands of visitors, to tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands. I’m blown away by the support. I’m deeply grateful, and proud of what just believing and putting in the work can accomplish in a short amount of time.

But, if I’m being entirely honest with you, like I always am, there is that little voice in the back of my head that says; “you know this is all accumulative, right? You know that it’s not like hundreds of thousands every day, it’s the same thousand multiplied over the course of the year? You also know that you were supposed to have more episodes of The Goods than you did? You know that none of the other networks want you on, right?” And then I get a little bit sad that my accomplishment isn’t as “real” as I would like it to be. That the numbers aren’t as substantial as a publisher might like. That things aren’t going as great as they could be. That there are blogs and sites out there with millions of people reading them daily…and then for a minute I lose my interest, my faith, my steam.

I am human after all.

But today, I’m holding on to the fact that one year ago nobody was reading my daily blog, because nobody even knew that I was out here with all these thoughts/opinions/rants/sauce and humour bouncing around in my brain. Today I’m not going to give a fuck that there might be people out there looking at these numbers knowing that they’re accumulative. Today I’m going to simply be thankful that YOU all are here. That YOU come back every day. That YOU’VE been here since day one, and that I’ve kept my word and given you a daily musing for every single day of the year just like I said I would. That Rome wasn’t built in a day, and that “We done good kids!”

Thank you! Love, love, love from the bottom of my grateful heart,

SB

xo