"Toot", says my Gatherversary horn: my ups and downs and all arounds.

Toot.

Toot! 

You heard it, didn't you? You heard the little "toot" of my horn as I announced to all of Gather that today is my 1 YEAR GATHERVERSARY?

Yes folks, I've made it one entire year on Gather and I'm thrilled! I did it! My 1 year Gatherversary is happening a little over 1 week after my youngest son turned 1 year old.

This means you can take a pretty good guess as to what I was doing at this time LAST year, right? You can see me now: Majorly sleep deprived, just a few days after coming home from giving birth to my 3rd child and desperately needing some sort of adult conversation. It's late at night or really early in the morning and I'm on the computer just waiting for my little one to stir again. I'm here listening to my husband happily snore just about as loud as he possibly can, and as I'm going through my emails... something catches my eye. 

It's an invitation to join something called "Gather". So I join and think nothing about it. Nothing. Days go by, then weeks, then months. In fact, I didn't really even publish anything substantial until the very end of September 2006. That was an article about my oldest son breaking one of his front teeth in half on the my 31st birthday! It got 5 comments. 2 of them were from ME. I tried again  a few weeks later posting an article about one of my passions, Ultimate Fighting. When I received 1 comment on that article, I chalked it up to the fact that there aren't many people on Gather with the same interests. Then I posted an article showing off my new tattoos. Guess how many comments I got? 3 this time. The next one was an article I posted about my recliner spitting me out and my kids laughing at me. This one received 4 comments.

Feeling discouraged, this is when I decided I'd give Gather just one more try and I posted an article about chronic pain. Chronic pain is something that is very close to me and is a huge part of my life, so I was thrilled and relieved that my article finally reached 28 comments! I realized that adding tags and posting to groups actually made a difference. Oh joy, I'm staying on Gather!

That publication made me crave conversation and I felt like I was able to relate to people in a way that I was never able to before. In my 'real life', I'm the person that people always come to with their life issues. That makes me feel great because it shows me that people trust me, respect my opinion and want to share themselves with me. The only downfall about always wanting to be there for other people is that I started minimizing my own aches and pains. I use to be STRONG and I used to be able to do everything and I still want very badly to be that person. I don't want people to stop sharing with me or think that I have too much on my plate just because I'm not as physically sound as I once was. I don't want people to feel sorry for me & I would never want to be seen as a weak woman. In real life, even among close friends, people see health changes and start to drift away. It's sad, but very true. 

Finding Gather was exactly what I needed. Gather finally gives me a place to go with MY life issues. If I ever feel like venting, I know that no one is going to judge me here and no one is going to think that I'm a weak woman. I'm just venting because I need to vent and life will go on and just because I'm a real person with real life issues doesn't mean I'm not here for all of you too. It's really just as simple as that and I wish that it could be this simple in real life. Don't you? 

If I could give you only a few tips to Guide you through your Gather experience, I'd suggest these things: Be open and honest and stay true to yourself. Join and create the groups that matter to you, post your thoughts to them and hopefully you'll make some meaningful connections like I have. This is YOUR Gather and I honestly believe that it will change you if you only give it some time and let it work some magic! 

Be good, have fun, and if you need any help... I'm only a few orange buttons away.

~ Faith