One Year Blog-iversary

When Marcus over at All the Way to the Backstop posted earlier this week that his blog had hit the one year mark, I had to stop and think about when I had started mine. As it turns out, we're almost twins at two days apart!

Although with a lot more followers, a bit more views and a handful more posts, he appears to be the Arnold Schwarzenegger to my Danny DeVito. It must have been that two day head start!

Knock on wood, I lead a pretty cushy life. I'm not rolling in a bunch of money, but I have a job I enjoy. My kids like the sport/hobby and my wife at least tolerates it. She probably wouldn't admit it very often, but she thinks some of my "stuff" is pretty cool. Despite keeping busy with the family and work and school, I look forward to my (mostly daily) hobby time.

It took a few weeks/months of lurking around the blogosphere before I got the inkling that I too had some things to say. Trying to carve out my own niche, with the Cubs specifically, seemed daunting but I feel like I've been welcomed into the fold. The comments on my posts have been increasing. And I've made dozens of trades in the last year, something completely foreign to me in the pre-blogging days. My Sportslot and JustCommons accounts are gathering cobwebs because of your generosity!

While I try to keep to a Cubs theme, it makes sense that some of the more popular posts in this blog's history had a more universal appeal. For example, one of my top viewed posts revolves around my ATCRCS card of Oscar Gamble. I have no delusions that its because of that card, but rather all of the different photos of his hair I showcased. People seem to like to Google Gamble's 'fro.

Also, you all seem to like a good box break, whether it's a blaster of a new product, a group break of hobby boxes or one of my recent Repack Sundays. As a matter of fact, Sundays used to be a day where my posts seemed to die. But since I started doing Repack Sundays, they are usually one of my top two posts every week even though they're mostly junk wax. If I could afford to break boxes and post the results every day, that would be a fun blog.

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to those who choose to check out my posts whenever they get a chance. I try not to pay attention to the statistics too much, at least on a daily or even weekly basis. But it does bring me great pleasure to see the month to month increases in viewership. I'm always looking for some more good reading myself so I'll take any recommendations you don't see in my list already.

And an even more heartfelt thank you to those who provided feedback about my blog and custom cards in the form of comments, emails, voting on my polls, etc. All of these interactions have helped fine tune my collection quite a bit.

Thank you to:

But you know, in a nice way...