Today is this blog’s fourth birthday.

Four whole years of Hugging the Cactus! I can hardly believe it.

As I think about 1,460 days of running my blog, other milestone numbers related to it come to mind:

• 605 blog posts that I’ve written
• 595 comments from readers (you guys are the best)
• 51,276 unique visitors – WOW
• 71,662 total views – OMG what
• 100 dollars earned (one month ago, WordPress paid me my first $100 for featuring ads on my blog. The honest-to-goodness truth is that I never intended to earn money from my blog, but the fact that I have is pretty cool considering the following bullet point…)
• INNUMERABLE HOURS spent writing new blog posts and coming up with graphics to accompany them – if I even attempted to calculate the amount of time, then I think my head would explode

It’s not surprising I’m thinking of the numbers behind Hugging the Cactus; after all, diabetes is a chronic condition based on numbers. People with diabetes spend all day long monitoring, calculating, and thinking about numbers. So it feels pretty natural to me to think about the numbers that have built Hugging the Cactus from a tiny little passion project to a bigger, more meaningful passion project.

And I can’t help but feel extraordinary gratitude for the numbers of people that have motivated, encouraged, and supported me and this blog – people who read this blog daily, weekly, or every once in a blue moon all fuel my desire to keep maintaining this blog and keep proving to me, time and time again, the power of the community that diabetes created. It’s a very special thing to be a part of.

With that said…here’s to four years, and plenty more to come.