Countdown

There have been a lot of milestones since embarking on this blog-a-day project.  When I completed my first month of blogs, I remember how proud I was to see the Blogger template close out the month of January and begin posting blogs for February.  There was a rush of exhilaration when my hit counter reached the first 1000.  After 122 consecutive blogs, I was thrilled to realize that I was 1/3 of the way toward my goal. 

Six months into this enterprise, my beleaguered spirit was lifted by passing the halfway point.  I was even more invigorated at the unexpected support and encouragement of my friends.  The number of you who read consistently humbles me.  I am buoyed by your sweet comments—some public, some private.  It is interesting to see which stories push various buttons across my diverse array of friends.  It has become a game of sorts to predict who will react to the story of the day.  The breadth of your collective interests helps me to expand the realm of my thinking, searching for yet another inspiration to make it through yet another day.

So here we are on September 23^rd.  This blog marks the beginning of the 100 day countdown.  After today, the quest is reduced to double-digits.  It may seem like the home stretch, yet all I can think of is one endless night as a young girl.  Packed on a sweltering school bus with a bunch of Girl Scouts, I was introduced to the classic, “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall.”  Exhausted and quite a bit punchy on the long bus ride home from camp, the group of us endeavored to count all the way down.  One by one, the scouts abandoned the song, causing the last songbird to leave off somewhere in the thirties.   Since then, I have been involved in dozens of attempts to make it through the full ninety-nine bottles.  To this day, I have yet to discover how this song is supposed to end.  Perhaps only the “counting sheep” know the answer.  As for me, I hope that as we ring in the next New Year, I will at least know how this challenge ends.

In the meantime, I am not only searching high and low for daily blog topics, I am also making a list of the many things I will undertake once this commitment draws to a close.  Several writing projects have now presented themselves, and I am eager to take off on a new creative path.   If I consider the hours I have been able to devote to personal writing this year, I now realize that there is always time to do something that you really want to do.  I have also learned, much to my chagrin, how much I depend upon the rigor of deadlines and the specter of public humiliation to keep me disciplined.

Those of you who have tagged along on this journey, I hope you will continue to stick with me through this final countdown.