Six Years

Today marks six years since this space was born.

I'd been writing a little bit online, in a space that the church community I was a part of at the time had established.  This space was born when a very good friend of mine traveled to Sri Lanka to do tsunami relief, and established a blog.  I wanted to comment on his posts, and couldn't do so without a blogger account of my own, so I signed up.

The idea of my own space online was intriguing.  I loved the church space where I'd been journaling, but was struggling with feeling like the things that I wrote there all needed to be about my faith, or about God, and I just wanted a space to talk about whatever it was that happened to be on my mind in a given moment.

Six years later, I show up here an average of twice a day, with whatever I'm thinking about.

The writing has changed, I think, over the years.

I can say with great certainty that thanks to some events in my personal life, some traveling, and relationships, I've been more cautious over the last three years in what I've shared.

A year and a half ago the Daily 5 was born, and that changed the writing, too.

Because of this space I've made friends across North America and the world.  Some of them I've even had the chance to connect with in my offline life.

Yes, I sometimes censor my thoughts here more than I did six years ago - the caution of a couple encounters with people "stalking" this space is a reality for me.

But this is still the first space in which I want to talk about my day, about what I'm thinking about, what I'm reading, what I'm feeling and experiencing.  It's still the spot where I process.

And, as I continue to heal, my plan is to move backwards, to be able to share a bit more openly, to in some ways reclaim this bit of internet that has been mine for the last six years.

Thank you all for reading, for journeying, for commenting and emailing and dialoguing with me.  Thanks for making this a fun place for me to show up.  Here's to the next six years!