Yay me! This is my 500th post! (And it's also almost my blog's fifth anniversary!)
OK, I know, it's not all that exciting... but it's kind of cool, and it's a good time to regroup, examine why and what and when.

Five years ago blogging was considered essential to establishing an author platform and online presence. I'd just about finished my first novel, and was hoping to create an avenue to generate sales. That novel, though it earned a second-place finish in a national contest, is mothballed in my computer's hard drive.

I had also, at the time, pretty much stopping doing any teaching or preaching in our local church, for a multitude of reasons. Blogging became a necessary outlet for me to communicate.

It also kept me writing. When I felt frustrated with my fiction projects, I could always write a blog post. For several years I maintained a pretty strict blogging schedule. These days, not so much, but I hope to change that as I continue to evaluate my goals and purpose here.

A lot has changed in five years. We've graduated three of four kids from high school and one from community college, added a son-in-law and three beautiful grandbabies to our family, moved out of the town where we spent 14 years of our lives growing our kids and growing a church, sent another kid to college, one to truck driving school (and sideshow school), and one to public high school, completely changed jobs, schedules and living conditions, and had a radical hysterectomy.

Blogging has provided catharsis as I navigated all those crazy, wonderful, scary, poignant, events. It's been a way to put thoughts and feelings into words and find, to my surprise, that there are other people out there who think the same way, or who, even if they disagree, are still willing to maintain an open line of communication.

So, for now, the blog will remain as it is... just me, sharing whatever, whenever, and trying to be brave.
In. Truer. Ink.
(Which, when rearranged, spells my name. Cool, huh?)

Thanks for reading! I appreciate you!