blatherversary raze well, slap a trick candle on a cupcake. twelve years today. that feels a little odd. in blather time, i was born just over a month after red went live. my first ever blathe was on "feel", over on blue. reading that now makes me laugh and cringe in roughly equal amounts. proof that even back then i was a hopeless overthinker. the more things change, the more they stay the same. the more the lion growls, the more you try to shave her mane. 130304 ... raze thirteen. 140304 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Well, happy birthday blather! Even if I am a day late. 140305 ... raze it wasn't blather's birthday exactly...it was the anniversary of my stumbling into it. but that's okay. you can share my cupcake, as long as you don't mind the fact that it's been sitting for a year. it can't be that stale, can it? 140305 ... e_o_i I don't think fictional food goes bad - or else when it does it goes literally bad and starts robbing banks and such (idea pilfered from a Far Side comic). It's a cool blather-birthday anyway! I don't remember when I started writing at blue, I was sixteen and my first post might have been under "Eowyn," which might be confusing since someone else was already Eowyn. Anyway. But this is pretty close to my red blatherversary. Lemme check. 140305 ... e_o_i Nope, not quite. It was March 21. 140305 ... raze i missed it this time. fourteen years, two weeks ago. yikes. that's a lot of years, and a lot of words, and hey, where did almost half my life go? 150318 ... raze sixteen years, a few days ago. that's insane to think about. and there are still-active 'skites who've been here longer than me. some of y'all will be twenty-year veterans pretty soon. 170309 ... e_o_i Happy late blatherversary! Sweet sixteen and never been misunderestimated. 170310 ... raze i missed my blue blather birthday by about a week. i didn't miss this one. twenty-one years on red today. i don't know if i can even process that. 220310 ... kerry cheers to you, raze! it's fun to look back and see how long it's been. i think my 21st was last month some time, but does your blathe history stay in chronological order if you add to one you previously wrote? am i making sense? 220310 ... past they're listed in the order of your first post to a blathe, not any subsequent one. (happy blatherversary raze your words can drink in the states now!) 220310 ... raze hey, thanks! if i make any really egregious typos tonight, you'll know why. my words are gonna be flashing their id across the border and claiming all the free drinks they can. (and just to supplement past's answer to your question, kerry: i've seen it happen a few times over the years where blathing to an already-existing blathe bumps it back up to the top of someone's name page. but that's happened so infrequently, i think it was just a brief glitch in the system. usually, as long as you're sticking with the same email address, or just not using one, your list stays in chronological order, and new additions you make to blathes you've already written on don't move them up within that list, the same way the "who" page won't show new additions to an existing blathe from someone who's already written on it unless they change their name or email address. if that makes any sense.) 220310 ... tender_square happy blatherversary, j. you posted back in 2017 that other 'skites were nearly 20-year veterans, and you're a part of that select group. woot woot! to say i'm grateful to experience your words every day and to be able to reach back in time know you from your early blathes is an understatement. your writing and your heart are such a tremendous gift to this community; your words make me think, your words make me feel, your words inspire me to write with greater intention and intensity than i did before. thank you for being here and doing all you do to keep the creative spirit and camaraderie of red alive and kicking. 220310 ... past if i traced myself back properly, i'm less than a month from my red words walking over a bridge and enjoying a fine time in quebec themselves. 220310 ... raze let me know when that day comes, past; my words would like to buy your words a celebratory beverage or five. i love the shared history we all get to be a part of. as for you, tender_square ... there was a time when i would have done everything in my power to brush off an incredible compliment like that. but i'm proud to say i've made great strides in that department. and so, what i have to say to you is: I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I? 220311 ... raze twenty-two years. (that's ... a lot of words.) 230304 ... ovenbird To say that the events of this past year have been unexpected would be a dramatic understatement. The complete accident of connecting with raze could be a novel all its own, and being introduced to Red sparked a cascade of transformations that have altered the entire fabric of my life. Today I’m celebrating one year of blathing, (small in the big scheme of things, and in relation to the history of blather) but it runs far deeper than that. When I first stumbled into this place I was riveted, but I didn’t expect to show up every single day to feed my words to this growing world. I also didn’t expect to feel that I was part of a small but vibrant community. I didn’t expect to feel so much for the souls keeping this place alive. I didn’t expect this to be the thing that finally brought me back to myself after my mind shattered fourteen years ago when my first child was born. While I had built myself up into a facsimile of who I once was from the ashes of my postpartum experience, it always felt like a shard of my soul was missing. I didn’t expect Red to give it back to me. I didn’t know how badly I needed a place to write and process and send down roots. I didn’t know how badly I needed to disconnect from social media and much of the online world. I don’t know most of you well, if at all, in the world outside this red realm, but you all mean an awful lot to me. Maybe that’s crazy, to feel like people you’ve never met, people whose real names you never use, are deeply important to the story of your life, but that’s a thing I feel every day. Blather is such a strange and beautiful project. One I hope to be a part of for a very long time. 260319 what's it to you? who go blather from