December 31, 2021 – The Forth-Sixth Official Friday Night BeerBlog

So, during the first half of this year I had some brown paper hanging up on the closet door in Ian’s room, which I was using an an office before he moved home in July. On this brown paper I had several running lists, but one in particular was for this blog. Each month had an area on the sheet, under which the title of each blog that month was written.

When I had to vacate Ian’s room, I took down the paper, folded it, and stashed it in the closet. I did update it in September, but back into the closet it went. This morning I got it out again and filled out the remaining months with the blog titles of the remaining posts.

A Body Of Work Right Here

And there it was. 12 months worth of subjects, conversations with Mike – in total 46 Blogs published and 46 Podcasts recorded since January 15, 2021. How many people read the blog or listened to the podcast? I don’t really know and honestly I don’t care. Why? Because that wasn’t the goal on January 1, 2021. The goal was to do this thing for a year EVEN if it got hard. EVEN if it felt like I or we were talking to a wall.

Mike and I joke on every FNBB that we are very thankful for all five of our listeners. And that feels about right. But again, as much as we are thankful for those five people, this venture has been a real growth instrument for me and I think for us as well. The blog has forced me to sit down every week, when I have time or not and investigate what is going on around me and to really pt some thought into how those things are affecting me or someone else in my realm.

For Mike, it has made him reach outside of his comfort zone to do something new. And that’s a lot. For anybody.

Making Dreams Come True Without Even Realizing It

Bottom line for me, I desire to be a writer and this weekly exercise made me just that. I put down words and create something new and original every week. Not only that, but I push that PUBLISH button every week, a feat that took me a long time to gather up the hutzpah to do. Albeit on my own website, but I publish EVERY week and now now have a catalog of two years worth of these writings since I started the blog. Over 100 pages of insights into life from my perspective. It’s a thing I’ve created that will never be taken away.

And now we have a year’s worth of Friday Night BeerBlog podcasts – intimate conversations with Pickle regarding these blogs. What a fun thing to be able to leave the kids with as we age, as they age. How fun would it be for me to hear recordings of my parents just sitting around talking about life and having fun?

The Lessons Of A Year

As I look back on it, two things jump out at me. Number one is that I’ve still got it. That sounds pretty self-absorbed, but let me explain. I’ve always felt that I’m a creative, but really had hit a DIP in the last few years. So when I started this blog I had no idea what I was going to write about. Surely I would run out of things to say or write about.

That hasn’t been the case. It’s amazing that when you really sit and listen, how you are able to explore in between all of the layers of life. Because life isn’t just on the top layer. It lives in all those nooks and crannies. Some of it is yummy like the chocolate your tongue finds hiding in the corner or your mouth. Some of it’s gross like the lint crammed in your belly button. But it’s all yours and it’s all real.

The second, and most important, is that small things done on a regular basis add up to big results. If I never thought I could write a book or memoir, the fact that I sat down every week and put fingers to keyboard for an hour or so and have nearly a book by the end of the year screams volumes. That’s enough right there to encourage anyone to start taking small, consistent steps toward something you want. Because look how far you’ll come in a year.

Thank you to all five of you who have invested time in reading this blog or listening to the Friday Night BeerBlog podcast. I do it, and we do it for us first, but for you second. And that means you’re right up there.

Cheers to 2022.

LLM

The FNBB Podcast version:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1822142/9813195