I made a small trip over to tonyandpaige.com and found his post from September. He had started blogging 20 years ago. Tony created this blog for me in 2006 so I have a few years to go to catch up. There are a total of 1265 posts published here so apparently I have had quite a bit to say. There were only a couple of posts here in 2017 and I imagine that was partly due to social media. I am still on Facebook though I have managed for the most part to withdraw from anything political. For a time I would click on Facebook in the morning and immediately became depressed or have my blood pressure go up but I have found that if I stick to posting or sharing things I think are positive and just scroll on by the things that were making me crazy, I am far better off. Mostly I look for pictures of my grandchildren who of course, are the most perfect and beautiful babies in the world!

I’m in the process of cleaning up the blog. As I go through past posts it’s funny how things have evolved as far as my interests. I started out with a lot of technology and education posts and then went through my years of writing poetry and short stories. Hopefully now that I am retired, I can revive some of that.

Since I have retired I have become a lay speaker at two Methodist churches on the first Sunday of the month. Now my posts for the most part, are either my bible study notes or my talk for church.

When I was writing I was in several poetry groups and had a lot of traffic (or at least it seemed like a lot for me) but these days I doubt hardly anyone reads but it serves as a place for me to document my journey with Christ and to hopefully see growth in my walk.

So thank you, Tony. I have never said that enough. I couldn’t leave comments on your blog so this will have to do. It was because of you I became a district tech which certainly affected my um…quality of life in retirement. Things were never the same after you left but I learned so much from you. I missed your kindness and integrity but I am glad you made the move for you and your family.

This has been a place of therapy for me, a creative outlet, a place of learning, and a place where I have made some friends that I have never met but stay in communication with so it shrank the world for me. It was a way for me to let friends know what was happening when Dale was so ill and kept me connected to the world when we were isolated for months in the hospital. I started here when I was 51 and now I am 65 and still writing. I’m kind of okay with that.