Where were you five years ago?

A lot can happen in five years, and a lot can stay the same.  It is a marvel to me to think back on all that has happened since 2009 and try to imagine what the next five will bring.  Ups and down, for sure. Trials make us stronger and build character and lovely joys keep us floating in hopefulness and delight.  I vote for both in our lives.

This blog just turned five.

 

Five!

Reminiscing how this little space was born cracks me up, still to this very day. The very first post was a riveting review on chicken broths for an upcoming colonoscopy. Yep. Apparently the goal was to serve all of the billionsof readers out there who weren’t sure which chicken broth tasted the best to sip on before those critical twenty-four hours pre op.  In my heart of hearts I just KNOW that I made a huge difference to everyone… err… no one. Ha!

Hopefully along the way I have shared something useful and served a reader or two.

When this blog was born, I was living life dairy-free for fifteen years and gluten-free for five.  Most of my posts were a sharing on which products were junk and which ones were worth spending money on.  Sprinkling in-between those posts were ones dedicated to alerting everyone of an upcoming Williams Sonoma class.  While it is true that I posted three times a week back then, many of the posts were just facts of upcoming events. Nowadays those get shared via social media links, not here on the blog. In reality, I was just finding my way.  My voice.

Fast-forward five years.

Now I am no longer dairy-free or gluten-free.

Now my posts are lagging behind and infrequent even though I am DYING to post regularly.  My rhythm is off. My photo gallery is over-flowing and begging me to post more often.  There still is so much to share about the discovery of new ingredients, hidden gems, and the stories of discoveries.  Oh, the stories!

Now I rarely do giveaways.  Remember all of my giveaways?  There were so so so so so many. I LOVED giving things away.  It made me so happy.  My blog traffic stats soared!

But then, I stopped the giveaways.

Slowly my traffic numbers started declining.

Yet.

Yet, engagement scores such as Klout increased and I started having real connects with so many of you.  I realized that traffic wasn’t just based on people reading my blog… perhaps a large part of it was just that some were coming here hoping to score something free.  And when it stopped, they stopped.

That’s okay.

You are still here.

And I love that.

Thank you for checking in and dropping a comment here and there and on whichever social media channel we are connecting on every day.

I have great plans for us.

There is so much to share, to discover, and to explore together.  Food touches all the highs and lows of our lives, from a baby’s first taste of citrus or mashed whatever to the end of our days when we revert back to liquids and mashed whatever.

Here’s to life!

May we always be friends.

Eat well, my friends. Eat well.

 

Lyndi