first blogaversary

Today is my first blogaversary!

Other FIRSTS:
- blog read regularly (before I ever started my blog): The Master’s Artist
- post: about meeting author Jim Coggins at the Fraser Valley Writers Group.
- comment: from John the Stepdad (thanks John! That was such an encouragement.)
- comment from a celebrity - just a few days ago by Bob Bennett (the actual singer-songwriter) on this post. Moral of the story: Always be nice: you never know when your words will come back to bite you!
- Christian carnival entry: "gay nutials: what WOULD Jesus do?"
- trackback - from Dory at Wittenberg Gate (I wasn’t even sure, at the time, what a trackback was!) Thanks Dory!
- most popular picture (like a shrine, it gets visited several times a month – and I wonder by whom, and why...).

post FAVORITES:
- the night my daughter got engaged
- her wedding (1,2)
- our travels this summer (sidebar)

DISCOVERIES in one year of blogging...

About writing a blog:
- it’s a different kind of writing than, say, writing an article for print.
- shorter is usually better (yeah, and will I ever learn?!)
- I really appreciate comments and try to respond to them.
- it’s often still scary to me, even after writing 400+ posts.

About reading others’ blogs:
- There are a lot of really good writers out there.
- Each wonderful blog listed in my blogroll resonates with me in some way (I’d say blogging is at least 80% about voice – too many great voices out there to read them all). Reading blogs is a lot like eating food: on any particular day read what I’m ‘hungry’ for.
- I couldn’t care less if you don’t reciprocate and put me on your sidebar just because you’re on mine. (I understand: It’s not personal, it’s blogging!)
- My blogroll is usually not up-to-date.
- I don’t have time to read blogs every day.

Regrets:
- that I don’t write more about God and my faith. Some of the blogs I read do that and I find myself attracted to them. I’ve thought of giving my blog more of a devotional theme (but I'm too much of a fan of miscellany) or adding a little spiritual tack-on to each post (but though I appreciate when others do that, for me it would feel phony).

So if you haven't picked it up, I want you to know - my relationship with God is the sun around which my life revolves. It is such an integral part of me that perhaps I take it for granted (like my relationship to my husband – which I don’t often talk about but which is foundational to my life and well-being). Also, it is deeply personal and at times I sense myself cringing away from putting it on public display.

However, if there is one thing I want to be aware of in the days of blogging ahead, it is to not squander the opportunity of my blog being a part of obeying my Master’s last words on earth.