20 Twenty 20 Twenty 20 Twenty 20

This post is to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the esteemed, dearly loved,cherished and sadly neglected  "Coming to Terms..."  

I am posting snippets from each one of my anniversary entries, all the way back to the beginning.

Two things surprised me:

1.) That I only completely spaced the anniversary once, in twenty years. Not too shoddy. 

and...

2.) That I have actually done this before (in 2015.)

2023-- 

2022--

2021--

For the NTH year in a row, I've completely spaced my blogoversary.  

On September 25, 2003, I sat at the keyboard and clacked out my very first post to the "new" AOL hometown construct-- "journal land."

 Infant, yea, almost embryonic social media.

2020--

It's all I can do just to get up in the morning and keep myself busy and distracted for 16 hours, so I can go back to bed and slip into blessed separation from all the crap that's going on in the world.

And I distracted myself SO much, I missed my own Blog-a-versary.

2019-- 

It has been such a weird, mostly silent year...  And a busy month.

So I almost forgot to note the anniversary of this, my own little space on the interweb.

16 years.

2018-

-As I've been ticking away at this post, it dawned on me that my "blog-a-versary" was 2 days ago.  

Fifteen years.  

Fifteen years I've carried on this love/hate relationship with the internet, its gifts and its poisons.

I really don't know how to comment on that, just now. 

2017--I posted a screen shot of my first blog entry in 2003.

  

2016-- 

...And speaking of still being able to write things that make sense...

I've been doing this for thirteen years, now.  

Not exactly going strong anymore, but still going.

2015--

(I posted exactly as I'm doing now...didn't realize I'd done it before.)  AND--
2015--
Twelve years.  I hardly know what to write.  But I'll think of something.

2014--

Eleven is the number of years I have maintained this blog.

As of September 25, 2014, Coming to Terms is eleven years old.

Wow.

2013--Missed the date entirely  (??!?!)

2012--

2011-- 

Since September 25, 2003.

From famine through feast and back again.

2010--

Since September 25th, 2003

Seven years is a pretty long time to do anything.

2009--

 Coming To Terms is coming up on its sixth birthday. Six years. Wow.

I love this little blog. I do. It means so much more to me than anyone could ever imagine. Even sans the readers and the community out of which it sprang (or into which it sprang…)

2008--

People and things that have endured at least five years of me:

My family (at least, most of them…)

My husband (31 years and counting…)

Eighteen pets… 

One or two friends…  Three homes…  Two jobs… 

…and “Coming to Terms…”

2007--

Happy Birthday,

“Coming to Terms...”

2006--

I just realized that I have passed the three-year mark on "Coming to Terms." And what a long strange trip it’s been…

Could it possibly be only three years that I have been chained to this love/hate relationship with the world of the blog?

Surely it is longer that three years…decades, perhaps…that I have known and cherished my "friends of the ether" out in journal land.

Mary. Christina. Cynthia. Robin. Robbie. Gigi. Jackie.  Meredith.  Oh my god...and I forgot Kat!   You've been with me from almost the beginning!  Augh!!!  My brain is indeed fried.   

2005--

Seven hundred thirty-one days ago (that’s two years, including a leap-day), "Coming to Terms…" sprang forth from my keyboard to the AOL ether-waves. Well, maybe "sprang" isn’t exactly the word. More like clotted, chugged, and coughed. In those early days, posting entries presented challenges—both electronic and verbal—that are now the stuff of distant memory. For the first few weeks, the words sputtered like rusty water from a long-disused faucet. It took hours to compose a satisfactory work, hit the "save" button, and then run smack into that "2500-word-limit" brick wall. Or hit the "save" button and have the words disappear into cyber-limbo, never to be seen again…

2004-- So, anyway, one year ago today, I opened the Pandora’s Box of AOL journals. LOL! I shouldn’t really call it that…nothing bad has come out. Except maybe the guilty feeling that I’m spending too much time here that could be better spent on something else; like housework, WORK work, exercising, reading Shakespeare…all the self-improvement crap you never do anyway. The wonderful things about having this journal far outweigh the bad. As I’ve said several times, the community aspect of journal land took me completely by surprise.

2003--

 So, this is my first "blog."  I wonder how this will affect my writing, knowing that someone might actually read it?  I've been writing journals since I was in high school.  Always with the secret hope that someone might read them, and get to know or care about my thoughts, confusions, and yearnings.

In closing,

let me paraphrase an observation I have made at least twice in the past:

Twenty years is a long time to do anything.