100th Post - Thank You Blog

Wow.  I did it.  Pop open the champagne and celebrate with me!

100 blog posts.

I am quite shocked and proud of myself for hitting the 100 mark inside of a year of blogging.

Granted, some posts are just pictures or silly videos, but still 100 posts!

So many things I've learned about myself and about the blogging world.  So much more to learn about both.

I have always enjoyed writing, ever since my 9th grade English teacher introduced me to the great William Shakespeare and poetry.  I discovered I had a knack for writing AND that I really enjoyed putting my thoughts and feelings on paper.  It was a great release for me.  It was a way that I could attempt to have others understand me all while I'm learning to understand myself.

After about a year of writing, I started to notice that my work was getting dark and gloomy.  I was very depressed. Being bullied in school, still not getting over my parents divorce, struggling with self image issues and "boy problems" led my writing to be anything other than fun.  So I stopped.  I began to become more depressed by writing my depressed thoughts and feelings on paper and thought it would be better if I just stopped releasing my feelings and hold it in.

This of course, was not a good idea because I learned how to hide my feelings instead of feel them.  After a long time, I slowly became better at speaking my feelings to my close friends and family.  Almost to the point where some things were probably better left UNsaid, but I'm not sorry I said them.  I'm not sorry for the way I feel.  I'm done hiding my feelings.  I let a decade pass before I wanted to write again.

A few years ago a friend introduced me to her blog.  She blogged about her family and events they went to and activities they did.  She told me that to start a blog is free!  So about halfway through my pregnancy, I joined Blogger (Blogspot) and created this blog.  I was disappointed in myself for not starting sooner at the beginning of my pregnancy so I could document my progression weekly.  So I didn't start writing at all.  I thought it would be a little weird to start documenting my pregnancy mid way through.  I pushed it off to the back burner and thought to myself that I would blog when the baby came.

Well who the heck has time to blog (and LEARN blogging) with a newborn!?  What was I thinking?  If I had already gotten into the swing of blogging and understood it by starting it when I first created it, I probably would've been better at doing some blogging with a newborn.  So I wrote my first post I think when Annaliese was just under 2 months old.

It took some time to get into a writing groove.  I held myself back from writing because I didn't really like the look of my blog.  I became more obsessed with the look of my blog than the actual content IN IT.  I knew there were a lot of features I wanted to have, but had no idea how to get them.  I had chosen a template that looked pretty but didn't allow me to reply to comments (not that there were any at the time).  I also didn't know much at ALL about blogging and setting up a blog.  But with a little experience and getting some tips and tricks from some bloggers I've come across, I like how my blog looks now!  It's been a working progress!  Someday I'm sure I will change the look/layout, but that will be far down the road.

So now I think it's safe to say that "I'm a blogger."  I blog about my thoughts, my feelings, my family, my growth.  Me.  It's a place where I feel I can express myself all over again.  I have people who encourage me and support me just by commenting.  I really enjoy link ups because they direct me to read other blogs and stories!  My blog is something that I can say I created (with the help of my husband- the html code master) and I take great pride in.  :)

So thank you blog, for bringing back the side of me that I thought was gone and lost forever.  And thank you to my 19 followers for showing even a tad bit of support just by following alone.

Here's to the next 100 posts!  :)