A JOURNEY OF A HUNDRED BLOGS………..

My dad always encouraged me to write....But the one who made it happen is none other than my husband, who motivated me to do so. He is my sounding board and the biggest enthusiast as well as critic of my penmanship! Here's my husband's 'two cents' on my double whammy of 100 blogs and 1 year of writing/blogging!! Honestly, love and support of loved ones, of near and dear ones, is the driving force behind the determination to try something and keep at it, despite all odds.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step", said the famous philosopher Lao Tzu. US President Lyndon B Johnson, expanded on Lao Tzu's famous aphorism and famously remarked that "Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time".

For my wife, it was a journey that began a year ago - a journey to find peace and to find herself. A journey to deal with her grief and the loss, a journey of acceptance and a journey of self discovery. It was a memorial, a monument, a cenotaph and a tribute in memory of the first man in her life, one who was and always will be there, in spirit, if not in body - her father, an army officer who (along with her mother) made her the exceptional and amazing woman that she is today.

They say that "old soldiers never die, they just fade away". However, our loved ones live on in our memories and tales of them. The internet, where nothing is ever deleted, takes these memories and makes them immortal, living in the cyber world, with us, always. My father in law, always encouraged my wife to write. He continues to do so today, in spirit, though he is no longer with us.

Today, as the site turns a 100 blogs old, and soon (on the 11th) a year old, we look back and reminisce about the genesis of the site and blog, and, like all good tales, there is an anecdotal chronicle to it…………

…………….. The radix of the blog lies in an innocuous conversation I had with a friend. I mentioned how a mutual friend had created a website to compile news with SRS feeds from various news agencies and sites and he remarked how easy it was to create one's own website on "Wix". By the time the conversation ended, "the bug of intrigue" had embedded its fangs firmly in me. Once home, the experimentation began with a few draft sites and the first product was our elder daughter's site, www.mytho-nova.com, which was created on 31st August 2019. The new hobby engrossed us all and soon, our younger daughter, a mature young lady, fully nine years of age then, demanded for a site of her own. Thus, www.zinniasbooksandmore was born on 4th August 2019. The tempo of family activity reached a crescendo as we were immersed in the activity of making the blogs a success. But, we had forgotten our friend, "the bug of intrigue"! He stealthily climbed off my shoulder and onto my wife's and dug his fangs into her neck, morphing himself in the process. Sure enough, it was my wife who wanted a website of her own now, resulting in www.tamannassr.com and also her own signature logo! Oh, the bug!!!! He bit her deep and brought to fore her hidden and latent talent of penmanship.

On 11th August 2019, the site was live got it's first five blogs, poems from her heart. On 12th August, the first memorial to her parents, in three blogs, "Superheroes Without Capes", "Daddy Cool" and "My Supermom!" were published. After the initial erratic schedule, we decided on publishing every Wednesday and Sunday.

Thus, the journey of a 100 blogs began. She explored her thoughts, her beliefs and her feelings, expressing them through her writing. She relived her childhood and her life's experiences and, all the time, built a memorial for her father. She found comfort in the music of BTS, the K Pop music sensation that has taken the world by storm, and found solace and comfort in it. They became her muse and her creativity blossomed. It was, for me, a pleasure to see her engrossed in her writing, which she then discussed with me, her sounding board. Her father had always wanted her to write and she honored him by writing like a woman possessed - Ah! It was the bug that had her firmly in it's grip. At 50 blogs, I compiled them into a small book and printed four copies - she was an author now! One of the best testimonials she got was a message from one of her readers, a cancer survivor, for the blog "Bald is Beautiful".

The transition and evolution of her writing was inevitable. Tentatively, at first, she took her first hesitant steps into the world of fiction. Some were stand alone stories and some could be compiled into a series. She developed the characters and wrote some mesmerizing tales, and our friend, the bug, morphed again to engross her readers. The characters, incidents and emotions were, often familiar. I could see the inspiration from real life. With increased confidence in herself and her literary skill, the length of the blogs increased, bringing us to today, the 100th blog.

Standing in the shadows, my heart swells with pride as I see the transition my three girls (wife and daughters) have made in their writing and the places it has taken them as well as has the potential to take them, bringing to life a dream I always had. As the memorial grows, I can say with confidence, that I am proud of all that my wife has achieved so far and am sanguine that she will achieve much more by reaching stellar heights with her writing, highlighting the beautiful, wonderful and confident person that she is.

This is but the beginning, and I, as her self proclaimed sounding board, editor and website administrator can assure you, her readers, that there is a lot more already written, a lot more in store - the best is yet to come!