Blogging is funny.

One minute, you’re just some silly sap sitting alone at your computer sending words out into the nothing and trying not to indulge in your penchant for alliteration and bombastic sentences, and the next minute you’re a semi-known online personality with a blog zooming past the 225,000 hit mark, a supporting forum with more than 45,000 page loads in under 4 months, and more online friends than you can shake a stick at (not that I’d want to–who shakes sticks at friends?).

I regularly get comments on Baby Off Board where people gush about “how great it is to find someone else that feels this way” and “what the blog has done for them.” I accept these incredible compliments freely because you have to savor kind words when they come along, but every time I stare blinking at the screen and think, huh? What exactly am I doing that’s so special?

I started blogging last March because I was frustrated. At 28, I still didn’t have children, and I was still in no hurry to start. It often felt like everyone on the whole planet was giving me crap about it, and I got fed up. So I did what any healthy, well adjusted, independent adult female would do–I started talking to the Internet about my issues with life at large.

You all answered back. Something went bump in the ether at the sound of my noise, and it was an ever growing troupe of new and delightful friends.

It meant, and continues to mean, the world. The blog has helped me figure myself out, like a mirror that shows me both who I am and who I want to be. I am constantly grateful for every single page load, every single reader, and every single comment. I don’t respond a lot because I don’t want to clog the comments pages with more of my own words, but I read everything, and I appreciate everyone who’s interested down to my toenail polish.

I went to a funeral recently for a woman who was the human equivalent of a lightening bolt. The minister paused and said, “There’s no way to summarize Elizabeth in one service. So let us say some things about her that are genuine. Let us say some things that are true.” There’s no way for me to convey how much I appreciate you, readers and friends. So I will say some things that are genuine and true.

Though it makes my cheeks redden from behind the Zoro-mask screen where I bashfully hide, I love you. I really do. Thanks for all the wonderful words, the delightful journey, wild excitement over things to come, and let’s never forget–the uproarious fun.

Happy Valentine’s Day,

Aurora Bordeaux