Post 100

This post is my one-hundredth post on MelissaSchlies.com.

100 feels like a very big number.

Yet, I haven’t even been blogging a year yet. Some bloggers post more often than I do and pass this mark a lot sooner. Other bloggers have been in the game for while. A few have even surpassed the decade mark. Their followers are in the five and six digits, where mine are still hard to calculate.

As a newish blogger, it doesn’t take a lot to feel small.

When you think about it, there are probably millions of bloggers world wide. This means that often my words can feel like I’m adding drops of water to the ocean. Sometimes, friends or acquaintances—out of genuine interest or curiosity— ask whether my blog is making money yet. But the truth is I am still a little small for that—and, honestly, I don’t want the focus of the blog to become about selling you something over genuinely giving you the best I have to offer.

Currently, my place in this online world, is very small. Yet all the while, today:

100 feels big.

See, writing has been a dream in my heart since I was nine or ten years old. But for a long time, I thought it could only be that—a dream. In college, as an English major, I read Faulkner, Shakespeare, and Flannery O’ Connor, and thought, there’s no way I could write like them.

Why bother?

I’d walk into large bookstores before Amazon was a thing. I’d stare at the beautiful floor to ceiling bookcases filled with almost every title imaginable. And then I would think, everything’s already been written.

Why bother?

But my dream to write was persistent. It never left me. And when it was time to leave my last job, I prayed for God to show me what I was to do next (next, not forever). Sure enough, He seemed to whisper to my heart, “writing”. So, when people asked me what I was going to do next, I’d say,

“I think I am going to write.”

Only I had no idea what that meant. I had no idea what I would write about. Nor could I fathom the work and discipline involved in writing—or in making any dream a reality. Thankfully though we live in a time in History where you don’t have to look very far to find podcasts and blogs where people who do what we want to do, tell us how they do it.

From other writers, I have learned that above all, the important thing is to write every day. That the hardest part of writing is not figuring out what to write or even getting people to read it (thought those things are a challenge). Rather, it is having the discipline to keep sitting down every day, and put words on the page—whether they are good and will be published, or sometimes, very bad and will never see the light of day.

Writing is a commitment.

As is all of our important endeavors on this earth. Whether we are talking about relationships or dreams, everything that matters involves commitment. But the thing we are rarely told, is that commitments often require long journeys outside of the spotlight, with very little recognition. When we find ourselves on these paths, it is up to us to notice, define, and even celebrate the milestones along the way. The benchmarks that with faith, will lead us to where we want to go.

For this reason, today I am celebrating 100. I am celebrating every time you have come to visit this space—to hopefully be encouraged and inspired. And I am celebrating every day that I get to write.