Happy 5 Year Anniversary

Yes. A Boob cake.

This is the picture of the exact mug i have.

KHANNNNNNNNNN!!!!!

So HAPPY 5 YEARS BLOG POSTING ANNIVERSARY…

To me… and more specifically, Irresistibly Fish…

For those of you who have journeyed with me for some or most of that time, thank you. As much as this is the online diary of my general musings, it has also been a place where i have hoped to challenge and wrestle and encourage and entertain others and every time you show up and read and especially when you engage through commenting or sharing pieces you particularly like it starts to feel like a community is growing.

The ultimate aim of having this blog is as stated in my tagline – Chewing the marrow out of life – you know the hard to reach but completely tasty bits – life to the absolute fullest in terms of God and Relationships and Humour and just general life and being people who Love well – i hope that you have experienced that over the years and will continue to.

LOOKING BACK

Without a doubt the two sections i enjoy most on this blog [and which have seemed to have the highest popularity again and again] are:

Taboo Topics – This has been a place to mostly invite people to share their stories on topics rarely spoken about both in church and often in general life. Particularly some harder experiences [like losing a baby, infertility, being a parent of a child when it’s not been that easy and even singleness for some people] but also areas such as Adoption and Race which are not bad things in themselves, but which may have painful aspects linked to them. So many incredible stories and it has been so great to see the encouragement this has often been to people who might be going through the same thing but have not had a safe place to share their stories.

Relationships – From Single to Dating to Married as well as other aspects of relationship such as Mixed Race or Culture and of course Sex, these have been posts that have obviously related to so many different people in a variety of different ways and again it has largely been through inviting people to share their stories and things they have learnt along the way that have tended to be the most helpful.

In the Fun section, it is the Pearls before Swine strips that i share from time to time [my favourite comic strip by Stephan Pastis] and the absolutely ridiculous Dangerous Things You Can Least Expect videos my alter ego, brad Fish, puts out from time to time, that deserve special mention, although hands down my absolute funnest [to me] picture that i possess is this one of Cloud Man which makes me literally outloud laugh [or at least nose-snort] every single time:

AND THE WINNER GOES TO…

Okay, so there is no winner – hopefully different posts resonate with different people and i really love it when people engage with posts and some great conversation happens in the comments section, which often leads to follow-up posts and inspiration for series and so on.

But there are posts which have proved popular than others and after 5 years of blogging, according to the WordPress stats, the Top 10 blogs in order of views are the following:

[1o] How much Sex in Marriage? [2500 views]

[9] Taboo Topics: Sex Before Marriage [Intro] [2673 views]

[8] Taboo Topics: Living with Disabilities – Meet Uel Maree [Spinal Cord Injury – Unfortunate diving accident] [2950 views]

[7] Taboo Topics: Sex in Marriage [Intro] [3143 views]

[6] Married People [and how to maybe do it even better] [3462 views]

[5] i kissed dating: the parts [4049 views]

[4]  Marriage through the years… part Intro [4424 views]

[3] How to raise your children as world changers: Meet Nigel and Trish Branken and their family [4770 views]

[2] How to save a marriage [before you need to] – the parts [4838 views]

So you guys are all about Sex and Marriage for the most part it seems?

Although in 5 years of blogging the absolute number one most visited, shared and popular post has been:

[1] Taboo Topics: Singleness [Intro] [5057 views]

i wonder what this list will look like five years from now as the blog continues to gain more traction and as our base of subscribers grows – i hope we will move to a time when this feels  a lot more like a community of friends and travellers trying to do the best thing with this life thing that we can.

i really do want to thank all of you who made it down this far and are a part of the community – every time you like and share and comment it ups the chances of an article or series being seen by more people and hopefully encouraging, challenging, humouring and more the people who you really care about.

MY FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY PRESENT

If there is something you can give me as a gift for this moment of celebrating five years, i would like to ask you for a SHARE. If there was a post on the top ten popular posts that particularly resonated with you then please stick it on your Facebook, Pinterest or Google + page or Twitterer it to all your followers. If there was a particular Taboo Topic that you found meaningful, then post that link and tag the people you think it will encourage. And if there was a relationship post or series, then stick a link on the page of three or four people you think might appreciate it. If you’re just here cos you’re a Brad Fish fan then choose your favourite ‘Dangerous Things You Can Least Expect’ video [which is probably this one!] and post it on your page and tag your friends who appreciate ridiculous to check it out.

Otherwise SUBSCRIBE to the blog and have each post link emailed to you directly, so you can choose which posts to check out and which to leave.

With 300 plus subscribers at the moment, if each one of you shared a post or series in your social media field, it would invite a lot of new people to come and check this out.

Finally… you might be wondering, why ‘Irresistibly Fish’?

Well FISH which has been my nickname since 1993 [i’m THAT old!] stands for Faithful In Serving Him [which is something i really do try to do with my life]

The ‘Him’ in there is Jesus. God. The One who gives my life meaning and fills me with the capacity to Love [which, yes, i can and need to do a whole lot better]

I try to live my life for Him and believe that it is the best way to really experience life to it’s absolute full. It is not always easy or straightforward. But it is always good. Even when it doesn’t seem to be.

That’s my experience anyways.

Happy 5 years to me. I hope you’ll be around for the next 5… and bring your friends! 

If you send me one of these you will be much loved.

marvin the marshoes

Looked at the stars

Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And everything you do,
Yeah, they were all yellow.

tbV and i have been home [back to South Africa after a three year journey in Americaland starting in Philadelphia and ending up in Oakland, outside San Francisco] for just over a week now.

after a really frustrating trip involving two and  half hours of fighting to try and get me on to the plane i had a ticket for, having to leave a box of paintings behind in SF, having the airline leave a bag of ours behind in Washington, losing movie capability for the last 8 hour flight after the refuel in Dakar…

and after a fairly frustrating week of disconnection in terms of trying to get phones and internet unlocked and set up and working [which we still largely haven’t, besides my dad’s old doesn’t-even-have-predictive-text-capacity Nokia which we have managed to get some air time on]…

we had the most excellent 5 year anniversary celebration at a place called Monkey Valley, which looks something like this:

but even more specifically, something like this [containing my very special someone]:

while there was both good and bad [and fun and difficult and crazy and amazing and ridiculous] about our time in Americaland, one interesting thing that stood out to me in both Philly and Oakland was the lack of stars… now i’m sure Americaland has stars [and i DEFINITELY got to see them in boatloadsfull on the houseboat trip i got to do on Lake Shasta] but i remember every time i came back to South Africa [which was twice during our stay] it was the biggest thing that stood out to me [besides the edible and tasty mayo, of course] – the fact that i could see a whole lot more stars than when i was over there.

i imagine it had something specific to do with the two places in Americaland we ended up staying, but it was one of the things that i remembered missing a lot when we were over there. and so it is so good to be back – and this weekend was ridiculous because we were high up on a hill and had a huge window next to our bed and so could lie in bed and see an amazing array of stars.

i have my own star constellation called ‘The Horse’ [because it looks like a horse, duh!] which a few of us discovered about 15 years ago on a youth camp [beyond ‘The Horse’ i seriously know Orion, the Southern Cross and on a good day can maybe point out the Big Dipper so not big on the constellations] and as we arrived back from our meal Friday night to the house we were staying in, i looked up and immediately saw it, and even better, the beautiful Val [tbV] looked up and spotted it straight away too.

just so good to be back. still not connected or plugged in or properly transported. and those things might take a while to get right. and missing a lot of people from Americaland for sure. but the stars are back. and so everything seems just a little bit more alright.

It’s true,
Look how they shine for you,
Look how they shine for you,
Look how they shine for,
Look how they shine for you,
Look how they shine for you,
Look how they shine.

Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And all the things that you do.