Happy Belated Anniversary

An old cold rain fell for most of the night last night. I know because one of our old dogs has been sick the last few days and she woke me up several times to go outside.

As I stood in the doorway waiting for her, the wind out of the north sprayed a cool mist on my face.

When she came back in, I headed off to bed. I had to scrunch up to Jilda to warm up. Once I wake up in the night, it takes a while for my breathing to become steady enough drift off to sleep. 

While I was in that place between wakefulness and slumber, I heard waves of wind and rain rake the tin roof.

I had an early appointment with the knee doc to have x-rays and find out what I'm up against. As I drove in to Jasper, which is about 15 miles away, I began to see tiny bits of ice and snow hit my windshield. 

I turned the intermittent wiper blades down to an occasional swish, click, so that I could make sure my eyes weren't playing tricks on me. They weren't.

The doc told me what I expected to hear -- early arthritis in the knees but nothing to cause alarm. He gave me some options, none of which involved fly fishing and needless to say, I was disappointed.

But the last several days, I've had the feeling that I was forgetting something. I have all my friends' birthdays and other special dates programmed on my phone and I check for those daily, but that's not what I was forgetting.

Tonight as I sat trying to think of a topic, it hit me -- December 2nd was my sixth anniversary as a daily blogger. 

I started on this journey in 2005. I'd been writing almost daily since 2002 but most of those efforts were on the alumni website that I maintain.

That first day in 2005, I had no idea where I was headed with the blog. All I knew was that it was a perfect place to write.

During the early years, I only had a handful of followers -- Grandpappy, my friend Ken Owens, and Ms. AB Soup from Australia to name a few.

I had no goal, not agenda, nor could I give anyone a good reason why I spent a few hours every night writing words that few people read.

What I should have said was that I don't write for others, I write for me. This blog is almost like a journal. 

I can look back at July 25th 2007 and see that I was having problems with my cable connection and had called "Bob with the cable company to get the scoop." 

The blog is a record of what has happened in my life for the last six years -- what I was thinking, what I did, and who I saw. There are also pictures that I took along the way.

There are very few days since December 2, 2005 that I haven't written. A few times when we were out of town and had no connection to the outside world. And then in the spring of this year when tornadoes ravaged Alabama and left us without power for weeks.

I guess what I'm saying is that I think blogging is important, if it wasn't, I wouldn't have spent so much of my life energy doing it.

So, happy belated anniversary to me. May I have the strength and courage to blog for many years to come.