The chickens stopped laying a couple months ago, but last week Olaf suddenly started again. It felt nice that she's comfortable enough to lay eggs despite the cold. When I read that on this day two years ago she also ended a long hiatus, it made a pleasing connection in my mind.
It's been nearly four years since I added the On This Day feature. At that time, most days would show several entries from my ND years with an occasional entry from my sporadic post-ND journaling. But lately it's really starting to feel like the effort of the past four years is paying off—it's a rare day that doesn't have at least one entry from the past few years. I really enjoy looking back at posts and pictures of our family adventures (and sharing them with Jamie, often exclaiming "she was so little!"). And I also find myself surprised sometimes at which other topics I particularly enjoy revisiting. My reviews of Time Shelter and Breaking Bread with the Dead both came up recently, and I enjoyed rereading both (even though I have yet to read Der Zauberberg like I said I would). Maybe they fit well in my reminiscing because they bring up thoughts of time, memory and the past. Or perhaps it's because I let myself adventure beyond purely reviewing in both entries.
I also think that having achieved more balance toward recent years (if I keep up my current pace, posts from my ND years will drop below the 50% mark in another month or two), I am more able to read those older posts. January of my college years was apparently a time that I reflected often on how much I enjoy running, and even though I probably saw those posts in other recent Januaries, they seem to resonate more this year.
Does this bias me towards only posting things I think I will enjoy seeing again year after year? Probably. But isn't that the point?
One final thought: Do people commonly use "reap what you sow" in a positive manner?
The biblical parable the phrase comes from suggests both negative and positive outcomes, while the literal agricultural concept seems mostly positive (unless you're sowing poison ivy seeds or something). But it feels like I mostly hear the phrase in a negative way.
