I just spent a solid four and a half hours reading through the entirety of this blog in order to compose a "Best Of" list, which will be published soon. But before I write that up, I wanted to offer a few observations about my blog. Yes, this is probably self-indulgent.

- I just cannot believe how much my beliefs and opinions have changed over the last four years. There are a few posts from my freshman year that I cannot even imagine ever having written. This, of course, is one of the purposes of a blog or any journal: to chronicle how my thoughts have changed. I just didn't expect things to be so different.

- On the other hand, it was hilarious to run across certain lines from my freshman year that I could have written yesterday. Some things never change, I suppose.

- It was fun to see my voice gradually grow closer and closer to how I think now. As I made it through the posts chronologically, I gradually became more and more comfortable with the writing and with the ideas expressed.

- Holy cow, my friends are not joking when they call me verbose.

- I put much more time into this little project than I ever anticipated. There are certain posts through the years that took me literally hours to research and write, and I'm very pleased with the cumulative result. I really do love writing, and it makes me smile to be able to read posts from four years ago and still find the ideas raised interesting.

- Reading the comments from my friends and thinking about what those comments say about my friends (especially as they changed over the last four years) was as interesting as anything I wrote on the blog itself.