Thanks for following along for the countdown to 20 years of blogging! This was my first post, on April 7, 2006. So today, exactly 20 years later, here we are. To celebrate, here are a few highlights and facts from the last 20 years.
1. I started off writing about travel, but then at some point I just had fun writing! One of my favorite fun for me posts was this one I wrote about trying to save the environment. It is funny to look back at my mind 20 years ago, but also our figurative environment and to see what has changed since that post!
2. When I first start training for my first half marathon in 2006, I documented it, as we do, and I wrote this post on my 4th training day, where I asked myself, "is this going to get any better, or will it only get worse?" Hah.
3. I was also a financial guru from the get go. Like in this 2007 post where I talk about trying to balance spending and saving. PS I opened my first brokerage (non-retirement) account in 2006.
4. Including this post, I have 1,208 published posts, or an average of about 60 posts per year.
5. A whopping 22% of those posts were all in one year, 2011, where I published 265 posts. The reason for this is because that is the year I did a round the world travel trip for about 12 months.
6. My three most popular posts in this time are one I did about the funny signs in Thailand, one I did about how to make cake pops, and a guest post by Mr. Lovely about why Nepal is better than India.
7. In 2008, I was traveling in South America for most of the year, and I even did a Dia Normal (DITL) post about one of my days there.
8. In 2019 I only wrote one post, and it was this best of books post. These posts have been a regular occurrence, even in the lean years! However, I did not even do the Money Pie!
9. In fact, I had a bit of a slump in a four year period, with total published posts per year of 3 in 2018, 1 in 2019, 11 in 2020 and 6 in 2021. I also skipped the Money Pie at the beginning of 2020, but luckily, it was back in January of 2021!
10. My top three labels in order of most to least are Lists, Travel and Running.
11. While blogging, I have lived in (and blogged about) the following cities: San Francisco, New Orleans, Santa Cruz.
12. In 2022, I decided to get back in the game, so to speak, and I upped my number to 17! I also started cycling longer distances for the first time, and I wrote a post about that.
13. In 2023, I talked a lot about decluttering, as this was when I had decided to sell my house and all my things and hit the road again.
14. Since I started this blog, I have read roughly 1,700 books and blogged about many of them. I even created a bookshelf with some of my favorites.
15. Like many of us, I went through a food phase, and took photos of food etc. I even created a recipe page.
16. I only did NaBloPoMo once, in 2024, and I probably will not do it again. It was fun but I can't keep up with other people's blogs as diligently as I would like when I am doing it.
17. In 2024 I took several weeks off from posting to race my bike from Canada to Mexico.
18. I also had many great blogger meet ups over these years, including places as far away from home as Poland and Wales!
19. 2025 was another great round the world adventure, mostly in the European region.
20. Next up, the world. Here's to 20 more years of fun, community and learning new things! Cheers!
