Happy 1900!

This is my 1900th blog post.  Blogger counts for me.  I ran out of fingers and toes to count that high long ago.  Awesome that it's coming in a month of posting every day and also the day before my birthday.  To celebrate, I looked back and found some of my favorite old posts.  And I went way back.  It was interesting to pick out some themes from years past.

2004: One of my earliest blog posts, I still remember this day.  After getting in an accident, not having a car for a month, riding the bus 90 minutes to work and 90 minutes home, my machine is returned to me on the most treacherous day for driving I'd ever seen.  Awesome.

2005 I returned to school for my Master's Degree and that was a fascinating experience.  Writing papers was always pretty easy for me.  I crack myself up sometimes.  Some other aspects of returning to school were much less fun.  That was really the last time I'd had problems with panic attacks before the great fiasco of 2012.  It was also really interesting to read this post given that seven years from when it was written was about the time said fiasco started.  The dream didn't do reality justice I say.

2006 I really didn't blog much in the beginning and then a lot at the end.  I still remember the Social Work Conference where this happened though.  Elephants.  Cave fish. Bears. Snakes. There was a lot going on.

2007 was full of changes.  This post sums them up.  I graduated, got a job, and prepared to buy a house.  Big changes.  Kind of amazing the panic attacks didn't come back then.

2008 seemed to be the year of 'nesting' and really starting to, um, take control of where I lived.  There was the kitchen remodel that never seemed to end. Repainting the living room and kitchen, something I'd wanted to do since moving in.   The moment when fixing a light switch is the biggest accomplishment ever.  And then there was this little gem.

2009 I found the best comic ever written.  Everyone who went to Walnut Hills knows this paper.  It was also the year of running long.  I was training for my first ever marathon, and having a blast doing it.  There were milestones like my first half marathon, my first 15 miler on the dumbest course possible, Ragnar 1, and one of the most educational training runs of my life.

2010 saw a couple of funny posts, particularly this gem.  I also got to watch my cousin and his wife prepare to be parents if you could ever really prepare for such a thing.  It's also famously the last time my parents have come to see me.  Don't think I let them forget that.  And it ended with one of my favorite runs ever.

2011 was just, you know, even with alcohol, I remember this night and what I'd said.  I tried to forget the TV show.  I'm also grateful for moments like this one.  I still feel that way on runs sometimes, although rarely in the summer when the humidity threatens to drown me.  And, this day was hilarious.

2012 was basically a good year, with a big patch at the end that was both rough and a blessing.  So much so that by the end of the year, I really did not want to do a year in review post and did this instead.  It'd been about 5 years since I'd had really bad panic attacks and lost serious weight because of out of control anxiety, so that was not fun to deal with.  There was a run of the mill heart break concurrent with some of the panic attacks.  To outsiders, the two appeared connected.  It only made my loneliness more pointed that I couldn't adequately explain the beauty of what happened, or why I saw the panic attacks as a separate issue.

2013 has been fun so far.  I got better and better with each passing day.  The trip home for the Pig seemed a big turning point in feeling more like myself, and today I was thinking "huh, I think I'm kind of normal again".  Weird.  I got a new phone which led to taking about a billion more pictures than I ever had, and I'm trying to train harder than ever for the next marathon and finally dump some serious minutes off my finishing time.