The 1500th Post

Canning jars on red-and-white checked tablecloth.

Did you ever hear the story about The Penny Jar? The one where a bride and groom are to put a penny in the jar every time they have sex during the first year of marriage, then remove two pennies every time they have sex thereafter. Typically, it takes a lifetime to empty the jar of pennies.

So it goes sometimes with blog posts.

I started this blog on September 28, 2010.

Eighteen months later, I published my 500th post in March 2012.

Seventeen months after that, I published my 1000th post in October 2013.


Now, three YEARS later, I'm writing my 1500th post.


I could argue that my life got so big between October 2013 and the present, that it's been difficult to keep up with writing about it. There's truth there.

Between October 2013 and September 2016, I lived in or traveled to:

• Lafayette, Louisiana (one year)
• Opelousas, Louisiana (one year)
• Antigua and Lake Atitlan, Guatemala (one month)
• Longmont, Colorado (three weeks)
• Washington, D.C. (one week)
• Toronto, Ontario, Canada (two weeks)(stories yet to come)
• Back to Louisiana for a month (stories yet to come)
• Move to my 2016-2017 home for a year (stories yet to come)

I did some scary things. 

Maybe not scary, per se. More like fearfully exhilarating things, like riding a roller coast. Like, ooh, that was scary, now let's do it again! Like: 

• Learn to dance, practice it in the wild, put myself out there to be chosen and rejected, look stupid while learning, and experience transcendent dance joy when all the energy forces align. 
• Engage in a brief romantic dalliance. (Maybe "brief" and "dalliance" are redundant?)
• Actually get up in front of an audience and read aloud some of my work. On more than one occasion. Jeesh! 

There were professional adventures. 

While in Lafayette, Louisiana, just at the moment when I maxed out on the number of English-learner students I could handle, the company offered me stable hours to do teacher recruiting and on-boarding. I worked with a phenomenal team of women who lived in the Netherlands, Ireland, Romania, and Serbia.

I had the pleasure of collaborating with my lovely team mates for a full year, when I struck out again on my own.

As a freelancer, I've got more flexibility over my income and schedule. As usual with this line of work, one of my job benefits is meeting tremendously interesting people.


And personal challenges. 

No one paddles her canoe from Port A to Port Z in life without being hit by tempests that threaten to swamp the boat. Several storms rocked my little canoe in the past three years, and I didn't like it one bit. But I clung on and kept on rowing.

Still am.

And I am still one lucky woman.