Today marks my 500th consecutive post. Because the Cameron Peak Fire took out my house, I missed two days; otherwise, my streak would be closer to 545. I’m not complaining. It’s kept me out of the bars. Oh, wait, COVID already did that. 🙄

So, what have I shared for five hundred days? A lot of talk about losing our home, for one. It took more than a year for me to wrap my head around our experience and be able to write about more than our disaster. I gave you a lot of quotes during that time. I hope some of them helped.

Getting out for a(n almost) daily walk helps. Some days, though, the weather just isn’t conducive to being outdoors if one doesn’t need to be. Yesterday was one of those days. The outside temps were in the single digits with a light wind and snow as I wrote this. The days between storms have been warm enough to melt what Mother delivered last week, not to mention recent squalls leading with rain. Makes the sidewalks a bit like ice rinks, and I never was any good at ice skating. My poor pup gets disappointed on days like yesterday. She’ll live.

Keeping this blog has given me a way to process life. I began blogging back in 2014 when First Reader and I took off on a month-long motorcycle adventure. I came up with a goofy blog name (Adventure On A Motorcycle). I began posting about the anticipation I felt as we prepared for the trip of a lifetime. I kept up our adventure blog (sort of) into 2021 until this space took over.

I created my blog in June of 2016. I introduced myself, and forgot about it. Don’t ask me what happened between August 2016 and March 2017; I don’t remember. Probably job stress. Once again, I neglected this blog until 2019, when I began posting on Sundays. By September 2019, I had been laid off from my job, and this space became my outlet. By November, I posted multiple times a week and was putting something up almost every day. Then I discovered graphics. I took pictures, found freebies on the ‘Net, and drew some of my own stuff. I took weird pictures and “cartoonized” them. I got creative.

Then came our bump in the road. OK, it was more than a bump; it was more like shock and awe. Up to that point, I struggled to maintain a focus for these pages. All of a sudden, I had a preoccupation I couldn’t ignore. So, I ran with it. More than half of you are reading this because of our new direction.

In about three months, I will reach the one thousand post achievement. With luck, our story will have changed again.