Happy Two Year Blogiversary to Life After College!

Just as babies born near Christmas forever have their birthdays lumped in to holiday celebrations, my blog's two year anniversary happens to fall squarely into the annual "best-of blog" posts and year-end reflection round-ups. But such is life! It gives me a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Or should I use a cupcake? I started this website in March of 2006 as a resource for college grads (and as an excuse to practice my new-at-the-time HTML/CSS skills). After letting it sit painfully unfinished for two years, I added the blog in 2007, revamped the look and feel in January of 2008, stumbled around a bit and now FINALLY feel like I've gotten some traction (and beloved readers!) in the last year of blogging in 2009. (Check-out last year's round-up here).

Personal Milestones:

I'm proud to report that in the last year, I successfully completed the following:

Transferred into my dream role doing Coaching and Career Development at Google (after 3.5 years on the AdWords Training team)
Finished a triathlon and half-marathon (full marathon was last year)
Bought my dream car (the 2010 red Prius affectionately named Red Velvet)
Wrote the draft of my book and started sending my proposal to agents and publishers (more on this in 2010)
Led two People-On-the-Go Lunch and Learn webinars with Pierre Khawand, each with ~100 attendees (Gen Y in the Workplace and Twitter 101)
Co-created and co-emceed the day-long iThrive Weekend Experience workshop with Jenny Ferry; delivered (live and via webinar) the portion on "How to Rock Your Personal Finances"
Found out this week that I was selected for a three-year term on the International Association of Coaching's Board of Governors
Hosted several extraordinarily fun cupcake tweet-ups with my amazing blogger friends (IRL fo' Life!) and dressed up as a cupcake for Halloween.
Had the awesome experience of watching my Bruins play Tennessee from the sidelines at the Rose Bowl for my dad's 60th birthday (thanks T-Bone for the sideline pass!)

Blog Stats:

In the last month, I received 7,000+ visits (13,500 page views) from 97 countries - that's double last year's visitor stats.
The top two referring keywords are "life after college" (~600 visits this month, not including the hundreds of variations on that query) and - surprisingly - life checklist template (147 visits).
My favorite quirky searches that led to my blog are "I don't date," "dating sometimes you just have to go through the bad ones" and "are Harvard graduates really the smartest people in the world?" No - UCLA grads are, obviously!

Blog Features and Accolades:

Featured in Jun Loayza's Awesome Blogger Video Interview Series
Landed on Ryan Stephen's Top 10 Gen Y Blogs List: #1 in December (thank you!), #4 in August, #6 in June
Featured as a Blog Crush in Elisa Doucette's Blog Crush Series (almost made me cry!)
Winner of Grace Boyle's Crush It! Contest (with my Skills are Cheap, Passion is Priceless post)
Featured in Matt Cheuvront's Inconvenience of Change series (with my Complexity of Change post); also part of Matt's 13 Gen Y Rockstars and 10 Blogs to Follow in 2010 lists (YTB Chevy!)
Participated in Samantha Karol's Appreciation Revolution (with my Making the Shift: From Resistance to Gratitude post)
Featured in the always amazing Jamie Varon's Girl Crush post
Featured in Carol Phillip's Millennial Women Disproportionally Influential post
Nominated for Brazen Careerist's Best Blog Posts of 2009

My Favorite Life After College Posts of 2009:

Life: Temperature Check: What's Your Quality of Life?, Motivated by Achievement: A Blessing and a Curse, On Confidence & Unconditional Love, Stop Auditioning for Other People's Lives
Money: 3 Little White Lies we Tell Ourselves when Spending Money, Budgets ARE Sexy When Simple, A Day in the Life of My Paycheck, Are you Clogging your Financial Arteries?
Work: You don't ALWAYS have to pursue your passion full-time, Create a Professional Development Strategy: Part 1 and Part 2, Learn to Love Feedback: It's Your Career Currency
Happiness: Expanding Happiness: On Fear and Bliss (with notes from Dad!)
Dating: Do you go for Quality or Quantity? (my most commented-on post with 50+!), Dating is a Roller Coaster, A Note of Compassion for those Pesky Things Called FEELINGS
Organization: On Big Rocks, Frogs and Productivity, How I Stay Organized, Something is Better than Nothing
Book Notes: Living with Joy, The War of Art, Zen and the Art of Happiness
Misc: In Defense of Twitter, Video: Happy New Year! No, I'm not crazy*, Lots of good quotes (too hard to choose)
Templates: All of them!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart. Your energy, enthusiasm, support and presence here on Life After College mean the absolute world to me. This blog has changed my life, and you are an enormous part of that. Hugs, kisses and cupcakes all around!

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