Ally Bean (aka The Spectacled Bean) published a post yesterday in which she asked:

Who doesn’t like a visual representation about some aspect of their life?

Then she proceeded to post a somewhat bizarre-looking, angular map of the United States that showed each of the 50 States plus four American territories that color-coded each state based upon whether she lived in the state, stayed (presumably at least one night) in that state, visited, stopped, or passed through that state, or if she hasn’t yet been to that state but wants to go there.

If you want to see her results, click here. I completed the map for my domestic U.S. travels, which is displayed at the top of this post. What it shows is that I’ve lived in nine states plus the District of Columbia (aka Wahington, DC).

That reflects two things about me. First, my family and I didn’t take vacations, we relocated. I do have a confession to make about noting that I lived in Louisiana. I did live there for six months while serving on active duty in the Army for basic training, but I never declared residency in Louisiana as I did everywhere else I said I lived.

Second, I traveled a lot for my job. And when I say I traveled a lot, I mean a lot a lot. As a result, I visited and spent at least one night (and in most cases, multiple nights) in every state in the union. The only state I stayed in that wasn’t for my job was Alaska, and I stayed there for a week visiting my son, who was working up there.

Anyway, if you want to make your own personalized bizarre-looking map of the U.S. with your own state-by-state accounting, go here.

And now for something completely different

In this same post yesterday, Ally let us know that she will be taking a break and, as she put it:

I’m bugging out of blogland for the month of December.

Then she asked two random questions which I have decided to answer herein.

If you have a personal blog, what is your reason for writing it?

Mostly it is simply because I love to write. But I also have strong views, perspectives, observations, and opinions about what is going on in the world around me and I leverage my blog and my love for writing to provide a soapbox to express myself.

What are you looking forward to doing, or not doing, in December?

I’m not going to go into it here, but bloggers who follow my blog know that 2023 has been irrefutably the worst year of my life. So during the month of December, I will be counting the hours until the clock strikes midnight on December 31, 2023, and I can start the new year doing everything I can to ensure that 2024 will be a better year than 2023 was. Or I’ll die trying.