Well, 2016 has been a surprising (for lack of a better term) year in general. We have faced heated controversy: Trump, Clinton, Standing Rock. We said goodbye to icons: Prince,  George Michaels, Carrie Fisher…followed the next day by her mom, Debbie Reynolds! International chaos: Brexit, Russia, Aleppo. Admittedly for many topics, I only know the quick blurbs I get out of my morning Skimm. But at least I can walk into the office and not be totally unaware of the day’s buzz. (Past years, I would avoid discussions till I had time to Google whatever current event was being discussed.) When the Things We Skimm’d in 2016 came out this year, I was proud I actually knew about each one. Thank you to my other crazy, busy friends who suggested the Skimm cheat.

There was another surprising 2016 tidbit—Stormy and I end this year with our 100th blog! Stormy is probably a bit nervous right now if we will hit this goal, as I wait till the 11th hour to get this out. Next time she starts a blog, she may want to choose her blog partner more carefully. Perhaps a retiree, or at least ensure it is someone who can at least manage to find time to read the news as a prerequisite. But now that she is tied to me and we are celebrating our 100th together, I want to share my blogging reflections.

 

I am glad Stormy chose me. Corny as it sounds this blog has done a lot for me. It has served as self-help when I need it. I never journaled, though I believe in the idea of writing things you are grateful for or to self-reflect on your feelings. There just wasn’t time or motivation.This is my journal. Also, looking through these posts I realized I captured lots of moments in time and a lot of small memories that would have otherwise been fleeting.

 I do have an attention span. Four years may be the longest activity I ever took up. Usually my big ideas die after a few weeks or months. I have had a lot of stop and starts. Jewelry making. Writing a children’s book. Running. Selling toe rings. (actually a different phase than jewelry making). Hockey for me may also be trending into this pile.

I need to write as I am feeling it. My biggest struggle is having the time to write when a topic comes to my head. I have a lot of started blogs, where I jot down ideas but by the time I can take the time to sit and write it isn’t with me anymore. I am for sure a write-in-the-moment gal (and prefer when I can be a live-in-the-moment gal too). When I tell Stormy I have planned time to write, she never gets a thing. When I do, she usually gets a surprise text that I have one ready to post!

I can’t pick my favorite blog. I would say I still love reading about the “Bloggers.” Maybe because it is when it started and speaks to both of our personalities. I always look forward to new ones from Stormy. Usually I know some of her tendencies and they make me laugh (belly buttons and big bird) and I also usually learn something new. If forced to pick, maybe our joint ones like “True Confessions” on parenting. The joint ones illustrate what this blog is about and started for. Stormy and I sharing and supporting each other through the good and bad. We decided that it made us feel good to know we weren’t alone in being quirky and a bit messed up, maybe we would share our random thoughts online in case they connected with others.

I look forward to what will ignite next year’s posts.  My hope for the new year is to start making time to get back to posting more. I am getting more settled into my new job and hope to find my rhythm again. My posts are often inspired by moments with my friends and family. I can’t wait to see where 2017 takes us.

Cheers Stormy! I look forward to hitting our next milestone, as well as the laughs, cries, talks, drinks and chaos we share and write about until then.

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Back in the fall of 2012, I was toying with the idea of doing a blog. I had been thinking about it for several years because I like to write, but I was having trouble committing to a theme—and I knew I would have trouble committing to a schedule. I floated the idea by KitKat thinking a partner might help keep me accountable (and, as former colleagues, I knew her writing and work habits). I was actually a bit surprised when she seemed receptive to the idea. After all, my kids were mostly grown, but her children were in elementary school and her free time was (and still is) very scarce.

We spent a bit of time trying to determine what our theme should be (and as you can tell, it’s a pretty loose one) and tossing out some ideas for topics, a blog name and our nom de plumes. We decided that we’d try to follow a schedule of us each posting every-other-week. This would require us each to post twice a month—a rhythm we thought was achievable. We launched our blog with the new year in January of 2013.

In the four years since then, I’ve learned a lot—about writing, myself and KitKat. First of all, the writing. I’ve always liked to write and often thought that—as someone who liked to write—my goal would be to write a novel someday. After a couple of quickly failed attempts at that, I realized I do NOT have a novel living inside me. It’s simply not there. While I usually have a couple of impassioned rants lurking in my soul, there’s not a novel to be found. In fact, there may actually be a non-fiction book lurking in there somewhere—the jury is still out on that one—but definitely no novel. And that’s good to know. Therefore, the blog perfectly fulfills my current need for written self-expression without any larger purpose looming in the shadows.

I’ve learned a bit about blogging. This one is admittedly pretty rudimentary, but we are using the free WordPress option. I recently upgraded to a business account (Look ma, no more ads!), so you may see a few more bells and whistles on here in the months ahead. As a marketer, it’s helped me to understand the medium in a way that simply reading them wouldn’t do.

Blogging as a means of global understanding. One of the fun surprises of our blog is seeing just how far our readership extends. We have readers in 54 countries—some of them countries I haven’t even heard of! I can’t help but wonder if they have actually read one of our posts—or stumbled on our blog by mistake. I like to think it’s the former, probably accompanied by a shaking of their head in disbelief about those crazy Americans.

My favorite blog: KitKat’s. KitKat and I have been friends for quite a while, but I still learn new things about her via her blog. For example, who would have guessed about her freakish cushion-equity obsession? At the same time, we’ve both discovered that sometimes the things that are weighing most heavily on our minds are the topics we can’t constructively write about. But whatever can’t be written can usually be hashed out over a walk or a drink (and thanks to our new Christmas bottle keepers, we can do both at once). My favorite blog of hers was probably the note to her daughter’s other two moms. Since we’re both parents of both adopted and biological kids, that’s a unique bond we share.

My favorite blog of my own. Occasionally, I’ll be looking to link to a previous post and stumble upon something I forgot I had written. It nearly always makes me laugh to remember whatever it was that moved me enough to make a post out of it. Some of them are pretty trivial, but I’m proud of others and find nearly all of them interesting in the journaling sense that KitKat mentioned—they allow me to relive a moment in time. I particularly like the New Year’s posts because they show so much optimism for the future. (Although it’s a little depressing to realize that I haven’t progressed much in all of my self-improvement efforts!) I’m sure the next time you hear from me, it’ll be about my latest attempts at perfection. 🙂

As my co-blogger mentioned, I too am better at coming up with ideas and starting things than following through. I’m equally surprised (yet delighted) that we’ve managed to keep it together for four years. That’s longer than many of the jobs we’ve both held! Most of all, I’ve enjoyed tackling this project together with KitKat who, despite her occasional episodes of writer’s block, is an excellent parter in crime. I’m excited to see what we come up with in Year Five.

We did it—100! Happy New Year’s to all our readers (or those who happened to accidentally land here) worldwide.  We hope you stick around for #101.