One Year Later

It's hard to believe but it is already one year since I began my blog. My family had always been after me to write something and I had been trying to figure out where would be the best place. I used to write reviews of movie soundtracks and although I still collect them on occasion, I haven't written a review in a long time. I used to get visitors from all over the world who would write to me about their views on my reviews and it was an interesting way to hear opinions from around the world. The idea of continuing that global connection appealed to me but it takes time to listen to a CD and then review it. I wanted something where I could write on topics I felt like writing about. Maintaining a blog seemed like the best way to do it.

You may not realize just how many people can happen upon your site and when I take a look at the search results that I have gotten hits off of or places people have come from, I smile because I realize just how small the world really is. I have been writing almost daily for a year now and in that time there has been so much change. The day I wrote my first blog was the day my father went to the hospital for a simple angioplasty. It turned out that the angioplasty ended up becoming bypass surgery. Dad came out of the surgery fine and both he and mom are doing much better now. My brother finished his thesis for his master's program and has now officially graduated from college. He jokes that he attended school for nearly 20 years straight and now is his time to relax and get to work.

So many things have changed in this past year not only for me personally but in the world in general. As it happened, I used my blog to comment upon the things I read or the news I saw happening. Some people choose to use their blogs as personal means of relating their lives to others. I find that to be a bit scary simply because it's like opening your house to the world and letting everybody and anybody come in to visit with you. Unfortunately not everyone who chooses to come in is there for good purposes so it's better to hold your cards a bit closer to the chest rather than showing them.

I chose rather to write my opinions on certain things (most notably Starbucks as my brother will point out) and relate to my readers some of the incidents that have occured in my life. Some of them have been good and others have been sad but it's part of life and in writing things down and stating what I feel at the time let's me and others look back and see how things were at that moment in time. I often go back and look at what I had written before and feel that I could have said something differently or stated something more clearly but I stop and hesitate in revising what I wrote. I usually write whatever it is I am feeling at the moment and let those thoughts come down on paper. They may not always make the most sense and they may not always be the most neutral in terms of my stance, but it's a reflection of what my emotions were at that point.

It's been a very interesting year and while it was filled with it's good moments and its bad moments, they are all moments that I will carry with me for the rest of my life and they will have definitely help to shape my life for the years to come. I'll continue writing and I'll continue hoping for more visitors from around the world. For those of you who come here regularly, I hope you'll continue to come by and read when you have the time. For those of you who are new here, I hope you'll find something of interest in my past blogs and become a regular visitor as well. I encourage everyone to try blogging. You don't have to be a writer, nor do you have to be a verbose writer with long drawn out paragraphs, just write what you want and who knows, maybe soon you'll be celebrating your first year too!