This is my last post in 2010. It also happens to be the 500th post I’ve published on Marshallogue. I’ll tell ya: this took some planning. 🙂
Moving right along, here’s my second annual list of memories from the past year. Some of these seem fairly mundane. Others, a little more important. Either way, this is a snap shot of what comes to mind for me.
- Camping for the first time in my life
- Getting lost in the woods with my brothers and Dru right before a storm
- Moving to my new, personal, online home, MarshallJonesJr.com
- Naming the blog Marshallogue
- Completing my first year of consecutive, daily blogging
- Opening the comments here (but reconsidering this toward the end of the year)
- Attending Roger’s Bible study and volunteering at Lost Sheep Ministries
- Visiting Southeast for the first time for a weekend service
- Launching and blogging about Southeast
- Growing to 1,700+ followers on Twitter
- Tweeting thousands of times
- Reaching 450+ friends on Facebook
- Returning to IU Southeast to meet with a career advisor about PR jobs
- Calling Guthrie Mayes to try to work for them
- Interviewing at Spalding Insurance group
- Starting a business, Marshland Media
- Designing MarshlandMedia.com, how the content will flow
- Hacking the code for MarshlandMedia.com
- Creating the content for MarshlandMedia.com, including a series of instructional videos
- Cold emailing possible clients and learning what works (and a lot of what doesn’t work)
- Renewing my passport
- Requesting a Federal background check
- Trying to set up an author meetup at Barnes & Noble but it not happening
- Trying to set up an author meetup at Carmichael’s but that not happening either
- Meeting Chris Guillebeau through his Unconventional Book Tour
- Meeting other new friends at Sonoma
- Not meeting one friend I planned to meet at Sonoma even though we both were there (sorry again, Alexander) 🙂
- Experiencing an unforgettable day
- Building a child-theme on Thematic
- Shifting back to a minimal look for MarshallJonesJr.com
- Formating and writing new pages for my personal site
- Attending my first writing seminar
- Shopping all night with my brothers on Black Friday
- Re-started the bondC newsletter
- Releasing my first, free ebook, How To Make A Friend (In 10 Days)
- Teaching myself how to code by trying to simplify bondChristian
- Changing bondChristian’s home page to better collect subscribers
- Writing the auto-response series in real time for the first round of subscribers
- Making screen casts for the first time at bondChristian.com
- Doing interviews for the first time at bondChristian.com
- Getting 20+ guest posts published
- Switching to journaling online
- Starting to transfer old journals online
- Discovering Mixergy.com
- Discovering Simon Sinek and Start With Why
- Discovering Ignite speeches and wanting to start one in Louisville
- Discovering ItStartsWith.Us
- Watching mnmlist.com launch and grow
- Returning to think in terms of minimalism
- Losing a toenail
- Wondering if my toenail would ever grow back and then watching it do just that (it’s half way back now)
- Ditching my cell phone and getting a Google number instead
- Publishing 11 profiles here
- Watching and enjoying Inception in the theater
- Reading less than 30 books this year but not keeping track of which ones or how many specifically
- Rereading more books than I did in 2009
- Watching Jacob smash his teeth into the basketball goal pole
- Enjoying Thorton’s $.89 fountain drinks and coffees
- Missing almost every, single one of my goals from the beginning of the year
- Not joining Toastmasters
- Hearing back about a job that turned out to be a scam
- Writing a brief, bio timeline
- Sleeping under my giant fur to stay warm
- Receiving books to review because of my blog
- Writing another song after having not written a new one in years
- Teaching Sunday school
- Teaching on Sunday morning
- Watching William lead worship
- Watching more movies than I remember ever watching thanks to Netflix
- Streaming every episode of 24 through Netflix
- Hearing about Brooke divorcing Colin and getting together with Tommy
- Helping the Lyons move into their apartment
- Shaving my beard / goatee after having it for a year
- Trying out a mustache (not going to happen for now)
- Finding out that Tony Impellizzeri closed his restaurant
- Finding out that Green Tree Theater, the dollar theater in Indiana, closed
- Trying a bunch of new beers
- Meeting new friends, authors, and writers online
- Seeing Almin and some of his friends randomly driving on the freeway
- Rereading journals
- Rereading letters
- Changing my idea from My father’s a pastor… to My pop’s a pastor…
- Learning that most memoirs are written first (instead of proposal first)
- Researching memoir writing, especially through Tristine Rainer’s book, Your Life As Story
- Discovering two documentaries that I enjoyed a lot, Man On Wire and Between The Folds
- Noticing the narrow road off Blankenbaker Parkway and then discovering New Urbanism as a result
- Taking William to his baseball practices and then waiting in the car, writing
- Hearing Raquel win those ballet, point shoes in the raffle, the raffle I said she wouldn’t win (I almost didn’t cough up the two dollars for her to enter)
- Talking to Ted for half the night (multiple times) about school and, well, the future
- Uploading to Facebook the last of the California Trip pictures from 2009
- Creating “The Profile Picture,” the one that includes the thumbnails at the top of the new wall
- Contributing to Elizabeth’s Project Quotations blog
- Reading dozens of answers to the question, “If you could ask God one question, what would you ask?”
- Condensing old notes into just a few pages in a journal
- Finding exceptional grades and hand-written notes from friends among the notes I took in college
- Throwing out hundreds of pages of notes from college (the stack was over two feet tall)
- Getting an idea for yet another ebook, Churn, but not knowing when I’ll actually get to write it (ironic, considering its topic)
- Having a guest post turned down after putting a lot of work into it
- Realizing this is my 500th post on Marshallogue
- Realizing I’ve now published a combined total of exactly 700 posts on my two main blogs
- Not knowing what to call the new year… ’11?
- Not knowing what 10 other memories I’m going to include in this list (it seems like I should have more / better memories for 2010)
- Enjoying a freshly white Christmas
- Zach asking me for a piece of gum like 20 times on Christmas
- Sharing (with family and a few friends) about some major changes for me in 2011
- Growing super excited about the changes
- Feeling sad that the year is almost over
- Rereading this list and feeling grateful for what I was able to remember
- Making myself late to the New Year’s Eve party because I was still writing this (for the second year in a row)
- Wishing you a happy New Year!*
*By “Happy New Year,” I mean, may you be thankful all year.
#92! Woohoo!
Happy New Year! 🙂
Thanks. You too, Liz.
Great list. And you’re forgiven, of course. 🙂
Thanks, again. :>)
-Marshall