~~ Double Century ~~

Note: I am yet to sync a lot of old posts in this space. The stats are from my original blog space where I did reach a 200 count today. I will update hyperlinks of other milestone posts listed here once my syncing is complete :-)

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Yes! As I publish this post, my “Total number of posts so far” would get updated to 200   I am super elated today. I have been looking forward to this milestone for quite some time now.

When I started writing in December, and then stuck to writing daily, with a little nagging voice within asking me not to call it a blog marathon until I successfully complete it – I had thought I had a long way to go, to reach 200. I didn’t know the goal was this nearer. And now, that I have reached it, it all just seems a bit surreal. 

Though I had a blog space before I started blogging here – it is here that I started to write seriously (if I may call my passion for writing serious enough).  It is here that I found a lot many like minded souls. It is with this super positive network that I still hope for a warm welcome when I come back after a long hiatus and never get disappointed.

I remember celebrating the first few milestones and also moving past a few without realizing. It took me 10 years to publish 200 posts   I wish I had reached this milestone a bit earlier, but then better late than never, right? 

Also, this is my continuous 17th post for the month. That’s surreal and unbelievable too  I think I do deserve some praise and claps.

Here are some statistics :

Total number of posts so far	199
Total number of Comments so far	4350
Total number of Subscribers	267
Highest number of comments	In the year 2010 – 1330 comments
Comments in the year so far	233 comments

Here are my previous celebration posts (including where I realized I had missed the milestones) 

25th – Too excited to have even written 25 posts 

50th  – On time 

75th – On time 

100th – Did not realize until I published my 103rd post 

125th  – Did not realize until I hit 150 

150th – Realized after hitting the publish button 

175th  – I did not even realize it until today 

200th – The one you are reading 

Somehow the trend seems like I am married to my blog   I was so particular about celebrating the first few milestones and then suddenly, the celebrations happened late and I am back now trying to patch things up by remembering to celebrate on time    

Jokes apart – I have to admit, this space has been the most patient sounding board for all my rants, musings and ramblings all these years. And you, of all, have been most patient with me and have found my posts worthy enough to leave beautiful comments – A very huge THANK YOU to each one of you 

I wanted to do something different – so I have updated my blog header and background with a THANK YOU image – I know it’s a bit messy, but that’s what I could manage – it will remain so for a few days so it can reflect how thankful I am for this space and your comments. 

Once again, a zillion thanks to all of you who made this possible! I hope you keep reading this space as I tread on towards newer milestones 

~~ Twenty for Twenty ~~

Yep, that’s what I am planning to call it.

If you haven’t guessed, I plan to aim for twenty goals for the year 2020 (and hence the name of the post). Yes, I am brave that way, even after failing miserably in few of my goals this year, I still want to go ahead and set up some goals for the year that’s to come. I do want to address the things that I couldn’t achieve this year. 20 is a huge number, yes, but the plan is to keep the goals as simple as possible. As I mentioned in my learnings of this year, I am also not going to be rigid about it, and if there’s a goal I am not enjoying enough, I am going to strike it off my list as I move forward.

I wanted to make sure I put it in writing here in this space, so that I am accountable to provide a regular status update.  I am going to be mindful to ensure that the goals are simple enough, doable without much fussing about required and doesn’t in itself add pressure or chaos to my already-busy-life. One of these past years –  I was too optimistic and had set myself up for a goal of reading 40 books a year and though I did complete it, towards the end, it turned out to be a chore due to other pressing responsibilities in life. I realized that year that I need to enjoy a goal I set, rather than doing it for the sake of doing it. And though I set manageable goals last year – it was still a miss on the most.  

I am doing something different for the coming year – I am segregating my goals into different categories – Health goals, Career goals, Personal goals, Vacation & Travel goals, Writing and Reading goals. I am also planning to ensure that I update here once a month on where I stand on these goals. It will help me reflect, be flexible and strike off/add goals as necessary.

How about you? Have you planned anything yet? Do you want to join me and list out your own Twenty for Twenty? If yes, then good time to start thinking about it and when you have clear set of goals, go ahead and post it on your own blog  Needless to mention, I’ll be happy if you let me know about it and I’ll be the happiest if you tag this post, so I know there’s one more soul like me who never gives up on setting up goals 

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~~ [Post 19] - A Happy Me Today ~~

As I hit the publish button yesterday night on my recent post in my organisation blogspace, I saw a number getting updated to 150. Yes, the blog post count.  I was stunned to realize that I had not kept track, yet again.  These milestones that I had religiously kept track of in my initial years of blogging, the achievements of reaching 25^th, 50^th and 75^th posts somehow eluded me during the 100^th, 125^th (I never knew when this milestone went past, I literally had to go through my posts today to locate my 125^th) and 150^th posts. I am really not sure why.

I took a moment to actually let the feeling sink in. If I had kept proper track, this definitely would have been the post that I would have tagged to RaRa’s weekly prompt with today's deadline -Euphoria!  Yep, reaching this milestone is no less than an euphoric feeling alright! I still cannot believe that I have completed a journey of 150 posts here where the blogosphere was revamped 3 times in my tenure of blogging.  I am immensely happy and proud that I have reached a target which was just a distant dream that I never even dared to think would see reality. There was a time when even the 50^th or 75^th post seemed like a long way to go, a difficult milestone to achieve. I have spent hours thinking of a topic to blog about every time I have hit a writer’s block which I must say is quite often and even with that, I have managed a count of 150, and that’s just worth a pat on the back :) It took me close to 9 years to achieve this feat. Soooooooooo long and it feels like I started just a few months ago. It also made me realize that I would be soon completing a decade in this organization. Whoa, wait, now that just made me sound so very old and somehow so very sad :P, so lets just move on about the 150th post and not dwell on this fact at all :P

When I look back at all these old milestone posts, I see that the way I write has changed, the topics 

that I write about have changed, the themes that I stick to have changed, the childishness in my earlier posts have vanished, well, only to an extent I suppose, so have the number of smileys drastically reduced. I also see a drastic decrease in the number of comments compared to those initial years of blogging. A lot of people who I used to follow in the early years of blogging and who used to follow me in this space in those initial few years have either left the organization or do not regularly blog anymore. I really miss those days as comments just used to trickle in non-stop and there was never a dull moment for a few days after you hit the “publish” button. I have posts with 95 comments from those days - can you believe that? !!  I am sure the old-timers who were here during those days share my feelings here. I blame it on the revamped site and the lack of themes, but I know, it is just an act to console myself.  Those days were just somehow different.  Blogging as such was on its prime, then! There was a different set of readers who left regular comments then and there are a different set of regular readers commenting now, and I must say, these are the only people who were and are the constant fuel for this comment-hungry woman to continue blogging here. THANK YOU LOADS good people. Without your constant support, this number would not have been possible at all.

I went through a few of my initial posts today and I just cannot believe I wrote a few of those. I mean, I do know, I wrote every single one of them, but, I was more startled by a revelation that I am not that same happy innocent girl who once wrote all this smiley laden straight from the heart, naive posts.  A lot of experiences over the years seems to have molded me to what I am now and I do see the gradual change in me/my personality very clearly in my posts.  This is exactly why I love to write. When you look back at what you have chronicled of your life over years, it re-introduces yourself to a new you. You go back and you know, you were a different person altogether, because of different priorities, different stage of life then. I tried to identify that sweet innocent girl who blogged without a care of what future held for her. I had a smile throughout the read. These old posts definitely helped me relive a few of the events and muse at how life is the greatest teacher of all.

Oh, enough of the philosophical rambling, phew.  Now that I having achieved this target, I am more geared up to set a serious blogging goal of reaching 200 posts at least around the time of completion of my 10 years of blogging. What say you? Oh, beware before you say anything, because you have a very important role to play in this journey too. Like you have kindly done for so long, you have to keep commenting – as that’s the only thing that keeps this still-hungry-for-comments-me going forward and achieving what is just a dream-goal for now.

Again, thanks a bunch - each and every one of you who visit this space and read whatever that is I want to say, even if most of the times, it’s just incoherent jumbled mess from my life :)  It is you who made this possible and I hope you continue to!!

Few stats to show off :P

Number of posts :- 150 (as of previous post)

Number of comments:- 3886

Number of unique followers:- 259

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