1,500th post

I can't believe it.

On the 2nd of March 2009, I wrote this as my first blog post:

Compelled to start

After weeks of debating with myself and others about starting a blog, I finally fell over the edge and decided to give it a go. After all, I will never know if I never try. Why "on the edge of ordinary"? As an Aussie in Japan, I never feel part of the main stream - neither here nor in Australia. However, our lives are full of the most ordinary things. For example, I am due to pick up my middle son from kindergarten right now. So...I'd better go and continue my new role as a blogger some other time.

I've been contemplating for a while how to celebrate this 1,500th post, or even what to say here. And I'm still no closer to an answer.

I started this blog with a goals that still hold true:

• To write about our lives as ordinary Australians who are living a little bit on the edge of what most people consider ordinary life. I wanted people to be able to see how not-super hero we really were.

My sub-goal became (I don't know if it was there in the beginning):

• To get into the habit of writing daily. I call myself a writer, but I wasn't being very disciplined at actually writing (at the time I had 3, 6 and 9 year olds). My blog has helped my writing.

I don't think I anticipated how much I'd enjoy blogging. I can't say it's an obsession, but it certainly is a discipline, to think of something somewhat meaningful to write almost every day. Most of the time I love it, occasionally I struggle. 

It was a great tool for communication during the natural disaster of 2011. The number of people reading it went through the roof, but I appreciated the opportunity to just "shine" where I was planted. I wasn't doing anything but trying to live my ordinary life (I never went up to the disaster zone at the time), yet my words were helpful to others wondering about the situation in Japan.

Probably the most difficult thing about blogging is that at times there are things I want to write about our lives here, but it is inappropriate to do so (for various reasons). Learning to discern that has been a process (sometimes painful). Sometimes the things that I hesitate the most on putting up here are those that get the most positive feedback about. It isn't easy to know where the boundary lies.

One of the really fun things about blogging is the unexpected things that happen as a result. This post gives an example.

I'm wondering, do you have a favourite post that you've read here? I'd love you to share which one it was. I can't decide one for myself.