Nine years
ago, I bought a chalkboard because I was trying to make a new place feel like
home. That was all it was going to be.
My marriage had ended. The Shepkids were coming
to Dad's new home, and I wanted something familiar waiting for them. Something
that said this wasn't just some empty place where their Oldman happened to
live. This was our place, too.
So I hung up a
chalkboard like the one back at their mother's house.
I started writing the date, the weather, schedules, and the sunrise and sunset times. Then came a quote. Maybe something
funny or something worth thinking about. Just a few motivational words in chalk before
the day got started.
Eventually I took a picture
and put it on Facebook and two dozen people liked it.
Today marks the ninth anniversary of that
first post and somewhere along the way, this family ritual became something
considerably bigger. I have chalked 2,872 Morning Chalkboards since that first post.
There is a Morning Chalkboard blog that gets
close to 2,000 hits a day. There
are people I have never met who read it with their morning coffee. Some come
for the quote, some for the grabber section and some for whatever story I have
decided needs telling that morning.
The Chalkboard wasn't created with a
business plan, a marketing strategy or an audience in mind. It was created by a
divorced dad trying to make his children feel at home.
Now we begin Year Ten and I want this one to be special.
I want to pull it all
together and finish the decade strong. Make people laugh occasionally and think
a little more. I want to help Chalkheads realize that astonishment, faith and gusto will always put a smile on the sun.
When August 27, 2027 arrives, maybe I will have something I never imagined nine years ago…
A decade of
Chalkboards. Ten years of mornings. Ten years of stories. Ten years of
trying to find something worth writing before the rest of the world wakes up and
maybe, finally, a book.
Funny thing about chalk. It is supposed to
be temporary, but somehow, this stuck.
