Even in my teens, when other girls counted friendships and boyfriends in weeks and months, I put little weight on anniversaries.

In my twenties, when I dated men for longer than months—years—I didn’t register the annual milestones, either.

Yet this is the one-year anniversary, to the date, of my first blog post on this site.

I wouldn’t have noticed this anniversary, either, if I didn’t have a detailed spreadsheet tracking my posts. And I thought it interesting that the anniversary post landed on the exact one-year date. I hadn’t planned it that way.

The realization prompted me to review my spreadsheet of posts and think back on the blog’s trajectory and my journey with it. I think I’ve gotten better at blogging—what works and what doesn’t work for me and for my readers. The process comes more easily than it did at the start and I enjoy it more. And I believe writing regularly has sharpened my writing ability.

Perhaps this is why the rest of the world has made anniversaries so important?

After all, as I’ve noted in a previous post, few things happen without a prompt. Perhaps anniversaries trigger a look back at the year or years past and nudge us toward reviewing the good and the bad. Perhaps they guide us to improve—to find out how to increase the high points and reduce the low ones.

Perhaps when we simply celebrate anniversaries without reviewing what they commemorate, we miss the point?

Do you celebrate anniversaries? Why?