Happy Anniversary, Emily Pound!

I'm doing this a couple of days early, because I'll be away on Saturday, when it is the official anniversary of my blog. I want to commemorate the anniversary of this blog. It has seen me through a lot of changes.

I don't know what I expected when I started writing this thing. I guess I was hoping I'd get a ton of readers and lots of comments, like I see on other blogs. It doesn't seem that my blog has caught on to that kind of readership. Or maybe the people who read me don't have much to say about my posts. I don't know. But that's okay. I truly enjoy the comments of my regular readers, the 3 or 4 of them -- you know who you are. I appreciate your visits, and I appreciate your insights. Even those of you out there who do drop by, but don't comment, I appreciate you too. You are reading my words, and that is so important to any writer.

I remember many years ago, I bought a membership to a magazine where a bunch of us writers sent in our short stories and different kinds of writing. With a paid membership, you were guaranteed to get published, and there was such a feeling of accomplishment and pride whenever I saw something I had written in print there. We had our stable of regulars too, and people would regularly write in and comment on the various stories, and I remember what a thrill I felt whenever I saw one of my writings cited and commented on. Then seeing my actual story, or article, or poem, with my name underneath it. It was an incredible feeling. That magazine was my life back then. It was a monthly, and the time that passed between issues seemed like dead time ... the only time I came alive was when the new issue arrived in the mail. Then, I would spend the next two or three days with it, savouring it, reading it as slowly as possible, trying to make it last. It never lasted long enough.

I guess this blog is kind of like that, only different. :-) I guess I'm old-fashioned and seeing my work on a computer screen isn't the same as seeing it on paper, in 3-D, being able to touch it. And I guess I've grown old enough that other people's opinions, while always interesting, are not life and death for me anymore. They are just opinions. But I admit I check in to my blog often to see if anyone has left a comment, much like I used to check the Letters section in that magazine for any comments on my work. Writing is a lonely business. It's a very fulfilling, exciting endeavour, as long as you are content to live mainly in your imagination, which not many people are. I have found that I have grown tired of it, and am looking for the excitement and emotional fulfillment in reality now, rather than just concocting it in my imagination.

Yes, this blog has truly seen me grow and change. It truly is an anniversary. The anniversary of Emily Pound, The New Me, My New Life.

I'm blowing out the candle and making a wish right now.