The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for my blog. Yes, I’ve been busy writing and thankfully you’ve been reading!! Here’s a fun metaphor they created to help visualize my digital visitors:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,600 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
I love markers. Highway markers. Trail markers. Indicators which gauge how far we have come. Milestones worth a nod of accomplishment, a moment of recognition, and certainly a toast with bubbly. Anniversaries are markers; so this, my 3rd Anniversary as Nine Cent Girl, is certainly worth reflection and celebration!
One of my favorite rituals on a birthday is to ask those gathered to share their favorite birthday memory. The stories are as varied as those gathered. On an Anniversary I love to ask a couple how they met. Those first precious dates imprint their unique story. Writers too have worthy beginnings, for some these originate in childhood, but the early twinkling of Nine Cent Girl began during a hot summer while I was in my twenties.
May is a month of commencement speeches and graduation parties and time to reflect on how far you have come since your own such celebrations. Still, there is nothing like physically returning to your alma mater where you studied ad infinitum through the night, prayed the printer worked 15 minutes before class, made best friends by lucky circumstance and earned every drop of ink on your diploma. For me, last weekend’s fortuitous return to Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English recreated powerful emotions and rich memories from my four remarkable summers earning a master’s degree in English there.
Nine Cent Girl 