Since my last blog post, I've had a birthday. I'm now 44 years old.
One more year went down in history as I said goodbye to 43.
It was a pretty good year when I look back at it.
Work challenged me at a whole new level, but I was recognized and received a promotion and the company's trust to play an integral part in the merger we've been going through.
I bought a new house, spent some fantastic times with friends and family, and watched my boys navigate their way through another year.
They're growing up way too fast, but I'm really enjoying the ages they are at now. We've now survived the first year of high school and one of them beginning his journey as a new driver.
As I reflected on the events of my life over the past year, I thought about my blog and the part it has played in my journey.
I decided I wanted to pull it all together into one document so I could see just how many words I've written.
It took about 3 hours to pull all of the content from my blog site into a Google Doc, mostly because I kept stopping to re-read my posts as I was doing it.
It was fun to look back on the different topics I've chosen and the lessons I've learned.
Turns out I've written nearly 41,000 words since I created this site (not counting this post I'm writing today).
Approximately 2,412 words per month, 79 words per day.
When I break it down it doesn't seem like that much; a totally achievable amount of content.
And it makes me wonder just how many more words I could have written had I started sooner. Or how many more words I could write now if I put my mind to it.
One of my life goals is to write and publish a book. A typical book starts at 70,000 words. If I write just 83 words per day over this next year, I can get there. Just 4 more words per day than my average.
My blog posts almost always talk about choices and how they shape our lives as an underlying theme. In fact, the word "choice" comes up 57 times and "choose" comes up 21 times in the 75 posts I have written.
No surprise there.
I think I ended my last post in a similar way, but I honestly can't say this enough.
We have to make our choices wisely if we want to move forward in life.
Seeing the total word count in my blog and putting another birthday behind me just solidifies it.
I'm going to choose to spend a little more time on this laptop (with my coffee and Firefly by my side to help me) so I can bring my word count up to 70,000 by the end of my 44th year.
And from there, I'll choose to take the next steps to explore ways to publish my work in actual book form for a broader audience.
I hope you all choose to read it!