One Year

One year ago today, I published my first posts to this blog, Introducing Me, and How I Came to Blogging

When I did it I had no idea of where it would take me or what kind of a blog it would turn out to be. Actually, 507 posts later, I still don't know what kind of a blog it is. It turns out that I am not the only one who can't quite classify it, as the brilliant Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast stated while talking about how so many of the political bloggers are so young in her post, Digby Unleashed

As a middle-aged blogger, I often feel like the creepy old person playing in the kids' sandbox. Maya's Granny might disagree, but she occupies a niche all her own, . . .

How delightful. A niche all my own. You could hardly say anything that would please me more.

And yet, and yet . . . Where has this blob, as Olive Riley, the 108 year old Australian blogger of Life of Riley calls it, taken me? Originally Julie set everything up for me, even adding the pictures that I wanted (which explains why so many of my earlier posts were picture free). I learned how to do that stuff and stopped being dependent on Julie to do technical things for me or even to tell me how to do it. Since she has gone to a new system and I've gone to the New Blogger that she has no experience with, I am more on my own and more confident that I can figure it out. If I can't, I can look at other bloggers who do it and e-mail them for help. That works. And, it is important that I allow people to help me, a thing that I have trouble with.

Mostly I've done exactly what I was in the mood to share with the world that day. Sometimes it's memories, sometimes it's family stories that I was told, sometimes it's stuff about the Hooligan cats I live with, sometimes it poetry, sometimes it's stuff about Alaska, sometimes it's political opinion, sometimes it's ideas that I've been thinking or have been reminded of, sometimes it's stories I wrote for Maya a few years ago, and sometimes, particularly on weekends when I get lighter traffic than during the week (showing me that I am not the only person who reads blogs from my desk during the lunch hour), YouTube.

Between stories about my childhood and the In A Nutshell series, I have written enough about Daddy to bring me perspective on him, to shift him in my thoughts and speaking, from "my step-father" to "Daddy."

I've made a lot of bloggy friends, people all over the world who I read and who read me. I've been surprised to go to a blog for the first time and have Maya's Granny jump out at me from the blogroll.

I was found by a dear friend when his name was googled, having turned up in one of my posts. That has been a wonderful gift.

I've had the opportunity to write about anything I want to write about and a focus to get myself writing on a daily basis. I've learned some things about myself and about the world.

I had no idea it would be this much fun and excitement. I'm really glad that when Tabor read my comments on Robert Brady's blog Pureland Mountain and asked why I didn't have a blog, I decided to do it.

Where am I going in the future? Who knows? I don't.