First of all I must give thanks once again to my amazing followers and WP friends for your support long before the de-facto lottery win last week. Without you I would never have been in a position to have been chosen to be Freshly Pressed.

I also want to welcome again all new followers to The Blissful Adventurer and thank you for your curiosity and interest in this work that I call a career. I hope you will stay with our journey here as we are going to exciting places and sharing the inner workings of Sicily, Bandol in France, Cambodia, Thailand, and more of the wondrous state of Colorado in the coming calendar year. In addition to real life experiences I will always be penning some edgy fiction from each of our destinations including the series on Piedmont, Italy which continues tomorrow.

In almost every sense the posting of my blog on FP was a boon; however, I want to tell a little bit about the process as I am confident those of you who have not yet been FPed will be.

1. I learned that I had been FPed at around noon last Thursday from that point until about 3PM yesterday all things I had planned, all responsibility to my own established routine, and all detailed bits of writing I had expected to pen completely ceased.

2. My email inbox on Thursday and Friday swelled by 10-15 notifications every 10 minutes. Of course I could have ignored this and pushed forward as planned but I knew this was a rare opportunity to gain support. My long-term goals for this blog are to assist me to being published and establish a base of wonderful friends and connections around the world. This was what I wanted and therefore I had to diligently respond to every single like, follow, comment, and/or query.

3. What surprised me the most was that in all of this over 4 full days there was only 1 comment I could not publish as I deemed it combative and out-of-place with our constructive forum. I assumed there would be many along these lines and was pleasantly surprised there were not.

4. In all I believe over the 4 days if my email serves me well that I received close to 2500 notes in my inbox and through 9pm last night I had addressed all but a few stragglers left for this morning. In essence, I slept little, ate when I had to, and lived here at the desk. This is why I am writing to you all today. If you wish for this (and I sure as hell did) know that it will come with preparation and life altering akin to a colonoscopy. By yesterday I had it in mind that my 4 month streak of continuous posts might end, and by the grace of God and the support of my wife I mustered a post I had planned to use while I was in Italy. Being Freshly Pressed will be exhausting. I would not trade it, and at the same time it was much more work than I anticipated. When this happens to you, take a deep breath, clear your schedule, and get ready to receive so many wonderful new people on your blogs.

5. In the end I want and hope this little exposure bonus happens to all of my readers who want it. My work in no way was deserving of this fortune more than any of you. In many ways I have felt a little guilt for this gift from WP. This blog was before and continues to be a humbling exercise in the presence of wonderfully talented writers, travelers, photographers, craft makers, and cooks. We are all in this together and I cheer for each of you in my comments and my actions. You are the reasons The Blissful Adventurer is growing much more than anything I am doing.

My love and gratitude to you all. This is truly a blessed community.

Vi abbraccio,

Michael