Two Years of Blogging

Two years ago today, I started this blog on a whim.

It was a Friday and I didn't have anything to do. I was staring out the window at the dreary, misty afternoon, when words started running through my head. This was not, at that point, an unnatural occurrence. For weeks, whenever I had a free moment, I found myself scribbling essays. I had legal pads filled with stories and sentences and thoughts and words, but I didn't know what to do with them until that Friday afternoon.

I created a bare bones blog and in just a few minutes I had emptied my head of the words that had been filling it and, for the very first time, pressed publish. And it was thrilling. It didn't much matter to me that only 10 people read my first post, and that seven of those people were related to me either by blood or by marriage.

Suddenly I had a voice.

At first, this blog was a fun way to write and to be read, if only by a (very) few people. But over the past year, during my second year of blogging, it has turned into something else entirely. Writing on this blog has given me a way to process what is in my head before I am even aware that it is there. It gives me a way to say the things I want to say, when spoken words are too difficult to find or not nearly enough. It helped me through a traumatic move, the end of a friendship I thought would last forever, and other tough stuff. It has been a way to celebrate old friends and best friends, and say thank you to new friends for welcoming us in. It has been a way to mark change, both hugely significant and quietly important. It has been a way to document things I never, ever want to forget. It has been a way to celebrate family, and it has even been a way to celebrate myself, as things change, and as time marches on.

This blog has given me opportunities over the past year that I never could have dreamed of. Things I have written here have won contests and then won again. My words have been read by more people than I ever thought possible. And I had the absolute honor of having the hardest words that ever came out of my head published in a book alongside the most beautifully talented female writers I have ever had the privilege to read.

As I prepared to publish this post - my 377th one - I found myself looking back at my archives and re-reading some of my old posts. I laughed a little and cried a little and cringed a little, but realized that one thing is absolutely true. I am proud of what I have created here in this place, and this blog is a piece of myself that I would be lost without.

Thank you a million times to the incredible writing community I am lucky enough to call my own, and to you all, for coming back day after day to read the words I suddenly can't stop writing.