I wrote 1,000 posts and all I got was this t-shirt

When I opened the dashboard on Wednesday to post for State of the Weight, I skimmed the numbers I saw staring back and saw that Wednesday’s post was #999.

That means that this is post 1,000.

1,000 posts of words and pictures and moments and vents and happiness and sadness all put out into the Universe to be stumbled upon someday. Or not. It’s a toss-up.

I started to think about what blogging has meant to me since I first dared to put fingers to keys on an April day in 2008. I went back and read those early (horrible, terribly awful, kind of embarrassing) posts and realized that well, I’ve come a long way, baby.

What began as the somewhat asinine and whiny ramblings of someone trying to have a baby has grown into something much bigger, greater than I ever imagined.

Yes, there’s still whining occasionally. Sorry. I think. At least sometimes I’m sorry.

But there’s a community of people here who impact my life. You guys matter.

This song and dance we’re doing here, we’re doing it together.

As much as we all want to say we’re doing this for ourselves, that we write for ourselves, and as much as that’s partly true, we also do it because we want people to read it. We seek human connections through these words we post online. We throw them out like a net and hope to catch a friend or two in the process.

I do what I do for me but also because of you.

If people weren’t reading, I probably would’ve stopped this long ago, and then I’m not sure where I’d be. This blogging thing, the compulsion to write, as much as it sometimes frustrates the daylights out of me, it’s become a part of my identity.

I’m slowly growing comfortable with calling myself a writer. Sort of. Maybe.

Since I first started out, this thing I’m doing has evolved, not unlike me. I’m not the same person I was when I made my first post. I became a mom twice over. I battled postpartum depression. I left my career to seek out a different path. There were tiny and relatively insignificant moments in between.

In the midst of everything, I found my voice. And while it may be a small voice, it’s a steady one. And it is mine.

In order to keep going, to keep thriving, it has to continue to evolve or I’m afraid it will die out.  And I don’t want it to die out.

I have to stretch my wings a little, push against my own resistance to change. I have to challenge myself in order to grow.

This is my 1,000th post.

Here’s to 1,000 more.