Some of you may remember that I suppressed a rant the Monday before Christmas. I chalked that up to the spirit of the season. I was planning to circle back to those aggravations today. I even added a card to Trello to remind me to write that post.
I opened that card yesterday and I had to ask, “is this the way I want to remember 2021?”
It’s not. I want to think about the good things that happened in 2021 and the good things that those things have inspired for 2022. Rather than lead up to some fancy twist at the end of this post, I’m going to spill the beans right now. The good things that happened in 2021 may sound like accomplishments on my part but are really gifts from you to me. I’m not going through the whole year, but I do want to hit a couple highlights.
Guests at the Bar – If you want to know why I gave the bar a name for 2021, it was so I could make it easier to promote the people who visit the bar. We had five guests at the bar last year, Gwen Plano, Robbie Cheadle, Teagan R. Geneviene, Linda G. Hill, and John Mancini. I plan to continue to have guests visit in 2022, some new faces, some repeat visitors and some folks that might be considered “the usual suspects.” I don’t have a schedule, I’m not taking requests, but those posts have always been popular. Those posts are also a lot of work for the guests, and I appreciate their willingness to work with me.
Thursday Doors – I get a lot of credit for hosting Thursday Doors, but the success of the challenge is directly related to the effort of the participants and the time the readers are willing to invest. Consider these two examples:
1) Last year, I added a weekly recap of the Thursday Doors posts. This is a minor effort on my part (it’s mostly automated) but the recap routinely resulted in more than 50 clicks on links to Doors posts. There were many weeks where there were over 100 clicks. That’s people reading.
2) I introduced a Writing Challenge last May. In an aspirational move, I called it the “First Annual Thursday Doors Writing Challenge.” 10 People donated doors as inspiration, and there were fourteen written entries, including weekly Steffie Stories by Marian Allen.
I will repeat the writing challenge this year. Last year, Janis, from Retirementally Challenged contributed a badge for the challenge. I think this year, we will have a mini contest to select a badge. Speaking of badges, our Thursday Doors Badge Contest is underway and runs until noon tomorrow.
Everything here will proceed on schedule for 2022. I will continue to post on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. I will continue to offer the Thursday Doors Recap on Sunday. I have to publish a post announcing that, because WordPress doesn’t send notifications when Pages are updated. As in recent years, this schedule will be ignored in January as I periodically (as I’ve done today) join Linda G. Hill’s Just Jot January Challenge. Today’s prompt is provided by Janet – please visit her page if you can.
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