Three is a Magic Number. You're Magic Too.

Today is my three-year blogging anniversary. Three years - that's like, ancient, in blogging years, isn't it?

Those three years have seen me jumping around quite a bit, from one blog to another to another. And then back to this one, the first one, in which I have brought all of my blogs together to be one strong whole. I think.

I would like to write about something meaningful and inspired to mark the occasion. But wait, that's you!

No, please don't groan. No one blogs for him- or herself. I write in my journal for myself*, but blogging is all about people.

You, readers, who have never met me in person but pop in to say hello. You, my favorite bloggers, who share yourselves on your own blogs, and in doing so, pave the way for me to give back a little bit of myself. You, my fellow artists, who have encouraged me every step of the way, and without whom, there is no way I would be doing what I am doing.

And you, all my friends, around the world, who have made me feel entirely at home in an incredible community that is both larger and more personal than I could have imagined. Some of you, I have met. Some, I haven't. But you all mean the world to me.

Thank you for making it all, well, so magical.

I look back and marvel at how I arrived at this point, and so I thought you might like a little road map of sorts:

The first blog I ever read regularly was Looka!**, which I found right after I was introduced to Wilco, sometime in 2002. I am sad to say I haven't read his blog in years, but now that I mention it, maybe it's time to visit again.

I am not quite sure how I made the leap from there, but I started reading Dooce, Neil Gaiman's Journal and Making Light all at almost the same time, and read them frequently enough to qualify as slightly obsessive, but not quite enough to be stalkerish (I hope) for two or three years.

After I married and moved to Virginia, I discovered the world of craft and art blogs, especially the amazing Violette Clarke, who has built a community of artists with her blog; Posie Gets Cozy; and Emily Martin's Inside a Black Apple.

And Emily's blog, which I started reading at the beginning of 2006, apparently not long after she started it, led me to Etsy. Without any real idea of what I would sell or how to go about it, I signed up for a shop immediately, and, although it was exactly a year before I started selling my maps, that little step was the first in this unforgettable journey into a whole new world.

And I know I've said this before (like three or four paragraphs ago, but also in previous posts), and I don't want to drive you crazy by being maudlin, but I'd like to say thank you again, not just to Emily, and not just to the bloggers I've mentioned here, but to all of the bloggers who have put up signposts or offered directions along the way. And especially to you. For making it worth it.

* Well, and for my children, grandchildren, and my biographers, but for now, those journals are for me alone.

** I'd like to point out, as a matter of pride, that I might only have been blogging for three years, but started reading blogs when people still called them weblogs.

PPS: Regarding the title of this post: I never watched Schoolhouse Rock as a kid -- so deprived! -- so I didn't even know there was a song by that title. I was thinking more along the lines of the significance of the number 3 in fairy tales, folklore and spiritual traditions.