IMG 0473 1

My Best of 2017

IMG 0473 1

I can hardly believe that it’s (already) time for me to wrap up the year in a neat little bow. This year flew by in so many ways personally, while at the same time in regards to the relentless 24-hour news cycle and social media turning into an often-annoying, combative place, this year seemed like a decade. My wish for all of you is that 2018 brings you peace, good health, rewards for your hard work, love, and if you’re a creative, an overflow of ideas and the energy to act upon them.

In 2016 I wrote only 75 posts and that was a new low for me. I stomped on that and achieved another shameful (to me) blogging PR in 2017, only publishing 54 posts. That said, it’s going to save me money when I get around to making these two years into hardcover books as I started doing last month, so I guess that’s the silver lining!

Besides my favorite and/or most popular posts of 2017, the best thing I did this year in regards to this blog is re-brand and move from Suburban Scrawl to this site. It gives me so much more leeway and I’m much happier with a personal brand whose name never has to change because it’s mine, but everything related to it can easily change with me.

Please do me two favors:

1. Like my new-ish Facebook page for this site. I just deleted the Suburban Scrawl Facebook page so if you want to follow this site on Facebook, you’ll need to go HERE and click “like”.

2. If you enjoy getting an instant notification whenever I post, please open up the comment box under this (or any) post and click “Notify me of new posts via email”. If your inbox feels overwhelming at times, no worries here: as you can deduce by making a projection based on the information I provided in the second paragraph up there, I will probably only write around 40 posts in 2018, WINK.

Now, for a few of the posts I wrote in 2017 which were either very popular or my personal favorites. Click the titles to read each one.

1. There are Worse Things to Obsess Over. This is the post in which I shed light on my constant fear that there’s not enough toilet paper. Much to my delight, I found out that I’m not even close to being alone on this.

2. Karma’s a Beach. I’m still laughing about this instantly classic adventure with my best friend Liz: the story of how I fell into the beach, only to be saved by my…well, just read it.

3. Home is Where the Heart Is. I was dreading moving away from Chicago, but in this post, written four months after we relocated to Knoxville, I realized I can have two hometowns.

4. Travel (Just Go Already). I love this post (and so did you!) because it’s filled with ways to combat your excuses about why you can’t travel, how traveling locally and cheaply when your life circumstances indicate that’s the best you can do at the moment is still traveling.

5. Paralyzed by Instagram. This post is all about how we have become so accustomed to taking the shortcut (Instagram) when we want to share a picture, and how I’m making the commitment to think twice before doing that instead of a blog post. Less is more sometimes, but more is better sometimes too.

Thanks for sticking with me; I appreciate you more than you know. Happy 2018 to all of you!

One Comment