An Exacting Life is One!

L’il Dar

One year old, that is! It was last December 26 that I decided to post about my exacting ways, and I am delighted that you have found me and followed me and read my posts. I am especially happy that so many of you understand and share an Exacting Mentality. I am not alone in making lists or tracking goals or living deliberately. The same skills that make me successful at work and efficient at home could also curse everyone around me if I didn’t have this blog 🙂 The very best thing about being here is getting to know all of you who read and comment, and being part of the blog community – sharing our lives and  supporting each other.

In the past 12 months, I have written 139 posts, received 353 comments, and gained 97 followers. I love that you have stood by me despite my complete refusal to cater to popularity and profits! The best example is that ever since I posted a 100-word review of the new Anna Karenina movie which included two photos of the actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson, my blog has been deluged with hits from his fans. I can’t imagine writing a post about him with the sole objective of getting more blog traffic – this will never be a celebrity news blog. If any of my regular readers are curious about who he is, I would recommend this article, but I will not be linking to photos of his underwear ads, just sayin’!

The most popular posts I wrote this year were:

• Zero-Based Wardrobe
• Are We Alternative?
• Be Prepared?
• I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got
• Vegetarian Month Chez Exacting

I have a varied assortment of followers of all ages who are interested in food & vegetarianism, clothing & fashion, goal-tracking and green living. I would suppose that my foodie followers are not interested in my minimalist wardrobe posts, and so on, but I am not focused enough to create a blog for each topic – so thanks to all for tolerating my randomness 🙂

As you know, An Exacting Life is not monetarized, so any ads you see were put up by WordPress in exchange for using its free site.

I would like to apologize to Economies of Kale and Sew Exhausted. Both of them nominated me for a Liebster Award and I did not comply with the terms, which is very uncool 😦 I want you to know that I enjoy your blogs and I feel humbled to have been selected by you.

Three nice bloggers have put An Exacting Life on their blog rolls. A cheery shout-out to No More Spending, Cash Only Living and Canadian Doomer!

I bet you know what to expect in the coming weeks:

• A report on my December goals
• A year-end re-cap of my 2012 goals including my wardrobe clear-out, my vegetarian challenge and my full-year grocery tally
• And, of course, a new set of goals for 2013!

I can’t claim to write a personal financial blog, a mommy blog, or a food blog. When anyone I know asks about my blog, I tell them it appears to be about domestic life, but it has the “no-so-secret agenda” of being about ethical living. I’m sure you figured that out.

I’ll end this post by stating a simple truth: Life is not exacting. It’s messy and complicated. I just like to pretend otherwise!