100

This post has special meaning for me. 

Unfortunately, it won't be filled with deep philosophical musings or disclose the meaning of life, but it will contain my heartfelt ramblings on how much this blog means to me. 

You see, this is my 100th post, an accomplishment that didn't seem possible when I took my first tentative steps towards creating this blog in January 2013. (I'm foolishly hoping confetti will shoot out of my computer, sirens will blare, and balloons will fall from the ceiling when I hit "publish.") Each action, which started with reading The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron in summer 2012 and continued with her suggested "morning pages," which led to journaling and eventually this blog, seemed small at the time but was monumental in hindsight. 

Once I overcame the initial fear of writing publicly, for the first time in nearly 10 years (since leaving my newspaper job) and started telling people about my blog, posting became simultaneously easier and more difficult: easier because I discovered that I could present my writing online without breaking the Internet, receiving negative feedback, or causing the earth to crumble around me. In fact, I've been deeply encouraged by the kindness and support of my readers; but also difficult because I simply run out of writing material occasionally, now that I don't have multiple journals of unpublished material to cherry pick. (And God forbid I become tediously repetitive.) Also, I'm a private person with a filter, so not everything happening in my life ends up on this blog.

But my hope is that what does is meaningful, at least to me, if not to you. I share as much as I can without compromising my privacy or personal safety, and it has benefited me in innumerable ways. I'm so thankful for every one of these 100 posts, and I thank you for reading them.