Happy Anniversary to me!

It’s been a year. I started blogging this weekend one year ago. I decided that blogging was at least the next step to deviate from exclusively screaming in my pillow. I know that releasing the stuff that builds up is healthy. It is also nice to realize you are not alone. I also realize the true way to diminish suffering is through sharing your experiences honestly which may help another person diminish theirs.

In one year through my writing, I have also found that the amount of readers does not affect the quality of what I write, nor my desire to do so. I have seen a handful of bloggers and people on social networks who “harvest” friends and followers. I think they feel validated more by numbers than content. I simply like to release my words. I place them on the buffet table. If you consume, great! If not, thank you for coming. It is like when you were a child blowing on the dying Dandelion–we enjoy the act of releasing the seeds, where the wind carries them to take root is out of our control.

I have spent a year examining, digesting, and pondering. I do this not to become separate, but to become one–as indeed we all are. You can go kicking and screaming while debating this, but the realization does eventually arrive. Details aside, we all suffer, we all love or want to be, we all wrestle with similar demons, and embrace the moments when kissed by the divine. We can still be alone without being lonely in knowing this.

This year long path has allowed me the blessed ability to release the toxins I used to keep inside. I can place them before me to evaluate my adversaries and through the support of others gain the necessary momentum to keep on keepin’ on. I can clean out my closet and be able to make room for newer and better stuff. I can give away the rest, and I also have many friends who are there to tell me to toss certain things that are no longer necessary, and for that I thank you.

As I have gone back through my writing over the past year, I have seen the emotional ups and downs reflected in my writing. Some were spawned by my own circumstances, and some inspired by the plight I see others enduring. Ups and downs–the peaks and valleys; it is this tempo that is depictive of life’s EKG showing us we are alive. When we are static, we are flat lining.

I have enjoyed my documenting this journey so through my words I can live on. I can travel time and space and can meet people from around the world I may not bump into at the grocery. I can heal without a doctor’s credentials, and cry on the shoulder of a friend on the other side of the planet. Hopefully my words will be here years down the road, perhaps after my passing when my kids may want to know what Daddy thought about sadness or happiness, or for my wife to reminisce about how we crossed a chasm in hard times. I can enjoy immortality, omnipresence, time travel, and most importantly through the realization of humility, I can see I am one OF a million rather than one IN a million.

Thank you friends, one and all for pulling up a chair on the deck of this cruise I have been on for the past year. Thank you for those who helped take the wheel in some of the storms. Thanks to those of you who sat at the captain’s table to enjoy the fruits of good times. To those who appeared when I pulled into your port for the first time, thanks for the welcoming when I set foot in your neck of the world. I hope the weather was none too rough and I hope you would recommend the trip to a friend.

As with any anniversary, it allows us to reflect back and savor the past years journey–to be able to hold onto the memories and take stock of the journey. It is also a chance to hit the reset button and do it all over again, just hopefully being mindful of where the potholes were.

As I posted recently on a social network status, I feel it necessary to once again repeat:

“Blessed is the man who counts his riches not by the coins in his pocket, but by the friends in his heart. I am blessed. I am rich.” ~ me