A few weeks ago when I was writing a different entry, I realized with a shock that the tenth anniversary of my blog was coming up. I can’t believe it’s been ten years already. I really had no idea when I found Blogger and wrote my very first post that I’d still be at it ten years on and I surely hadn’t a clue how it would change my life, either.

My original home

Through writing here (well, here and there, if we’re being literal), I gained so much confidence and made friends from far-flung places like Australia, Scotland, Iceland, and North Carolina. While I still battle with depression and diabetes, through my writing I know that I’m not alone even if I’m the only one in the room at the time. My blog gave me a sense of pride when pride was something I could only vaguely remember from before I started gaining weight. I have traveled to several blog conferences, learned more about how to hone my writing, and have picked back up the photography hobby I had forgotten about since I was 12. And now my blog is serving as my accountability partner, an integral part of Project Me, my one year quest to improve the quality of my life.

And it all started with a single blog post.

In honor of this auspicious occasion, I’m giving one lucky reader a Fitbit Zip activity tracker. If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll know how much I love my Fitbit activity tracker and Aria scale – they are both indispensable tools as I transform my body and my life, so it seems to me only fitting that I celebrate ten years of blogging by giving one of my readers the chance to transform their body, too, and perhaps their life as well.

To enter, just use the giveaway widget below. The raffle will close at 12:00 am EDT next Friday, April 12, 2013. Good luck!

ETA: And the winner is…my sweet friend, Greta Funk. I’ve contacted Greta to find out which color Fitbit she’d like and where to send.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Finally, I want to thank you – whether you’ve been reading here for years or if this is your first visit – because it’s knowing that you’re here that brings me to my keyboard to put my thoughts out into the world. Without you, there would be no blog or at least the blog wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.

Here’s to another ten or so years!

In the old days, when this blog was shiny and new (nearly 10 years ago now), there was no Facebook, no Twitter, no Pinterest, no Instagram – there was email and there was your blog. I don’t remember who left the first comment on my blog but I remember vividly how my heart lurched with pride when I saw that comment in my email. I suppose there was a way to track your traffic back then – I think SiteMeter was up and running then – but I didn’t have anything like that, so the comment was the first way that I ever knew anyone had read my blog. I am smiling now, all these years later, just thinking of it.

I do, very distinctly, though, remember on whose site I left my very first comment – it was Lori’s original blog, Tales of a Bathroom Scale. She was pretty and funny and talented, and enough like me that I just knew we’d be best friends if we didn’t live cross the continent from each other. We were single, we both had cats, and we were losing weight and blogging about it. A lot. (I don’t know how or why I used to post as much as I did but I can’t imagine doing so now.) And then both of us met boys who made our hearts flutter and we married them. So we blog a lot less now but we’ve never lost touch.

We’d been corresponding recently via Twitter about the Old School Weight Loss blogging club we’re going to form – in our spare time, mind you! – and chatting about the various weight loss badges we would award to members as they met various random goals. This morning I woke to find this slice of Heaven in my email inbox:

And that, simply put, friends, is why I love her so much: she’s just the sweetest, most talented, most clever girl on the Internet.

Yes, blogging has evolved light years from where it used to be but some truths are unchanging. We all write in solitude and hope that someone will come along and read what we’ve written. But sometimes, when we’re very, very lucky, we also find a true friend along the way.

I’m not even going to apologize for not having written in what feels like forever, I’m just going to write about my life. If that’s not OK, you might want to surf along.

I’ll be honest with you: I’m fed up. I’ve thought and thought about what to do with this blog – I’ve even had my finger hovering over the “Delete” key more than a few times – and I was still ruminating on that topic when Shauna and I went to dinner tonight.

[Did I mention Shauna and I have just begun Blogger Road Trip 2012? Oh yes! The two of us are going to spend several days tootling around North Carolina visiting some of our favorite old school bloggers and seeing interesting sights.]

So I was chatting at dinner with Shauna and mentioned my blog dilemma for which she had the perfect solution: just write something. Really? Could it be that simple? Could blogging be something that I get back into the habit of doing and then it stops being such a chore?

I think we need to run a little experiment and what better time than while I’m away from home for a week and attending a blog conference Friday through Sunday to see what it’s like to write something here every day. So that’s what I’m going to do – every day this week I’ll come and write about what I’ve done, without trying to sound like someone else or write in a certain style, just me and my thoughts.