Happy Fifth Birthday to Sacred Ordinary

Happy birthday to Sacred Ordinary! This blog will be five-years-old tomorrow. My sincere thanks to my host, Typepad, who celebrated their own fifth year a few months earlier. I can't recommend them enough. My first tenuous post was on November 11, 2003. I was unsure when I started what Sacred Ordinary would be except that I wanted to chart my life, I guess, and use the blog to prove to myself that every day life has all kinds of sacred moments. I also stated the intention of making the blog part of my daily writing practice. I have not written daily, but I do write often.

Since 2003 I have written 1,588 posts  and 4,982 comments have been logged that I have approved. Though I’m a pretty mainstream author, now and then someone will say something mean-spirited or ignorant about what I’ve written or attack someone who has commented. I don’t make those comments live. I have periodically taken the author controls off, but then I get a lot more cranky people commenting. 

Since I put up the Site Meter widget in 2007 there have been 56,650 visits with about 249 visits per day this past week.  Total page views since then have been 80,820 and people tend to spend about 1.4 minutes when they visit.

But, I’ll admit that I rarely check my stats and referrers so I’m amazed to tally things for this post. Feedjit is my widget for referrers and their locations world-wide which I actually display in the left sidebar.

I have written in a diary since I learned to write my alphabet and have seriously kept journals since my 20s. I have taught journal keeping for the past 25 years and the blog just seemed like a natural evolution of yet another way to write. It has also been a powerful way to be part of yet another community and to make new friends (and a few enemies). I have met at least a half dozen of you who read here often.

Sometimes I get in the doldrums and wonder if I will continue Sacred Ordinary, but then I'll get a creative burst and I hang in there. I think I am ready for a new design, however. 

Tonight we are belatedly celebrating my grandson’s 20^th birthday and I went to one of my favorite bakeries today to get his cake. King’s Hawaiian in Torrance has a Paradise cake consisting of layers of tropical fruit flavored cake and whipping cream. I will take one piece home tonight so Sacred Ordinary and I can celebrate our fifth year of companionship while "we" write tomorrow's Veterans Day post.

Thanks to all of you who read here and to those of you who take the time to comment sometimes. I deeply appreciate your visits and hope a little wisdom has seeped out now and then.