It’s been a while since my last sappy retrospective post, but given that TODAY is the actual 1 year anniversary of our existence, I hope that you can indulge me once more.

I set out to create PorchDrinking as a opportunity for old friends to come together share a few laughs, drink a few great beers, and meet new friends. More specifically I missed writing, and I missed my journalism friends from college and I knew they missed writing as well.  So we thought we’d start a little blog, one that was going to center around being fun, yet also be well run at the same time. And I’m happy to say that’s exactly what we created.

I remember back to June 25, 2012 when I spent 13 hours on an old black rocking chair on my porch at 1355 Adams St hacking away at finishing touches with my designer Adam Muniz.  He had graciously stepped in at the last minute to help with site design when it looked like we had hit a road block.  I still remember it being around 5 p.m. when I furiously ran back and forth between our porch swing and my beer fridge staging the picture that would serve as our site’s initial masthead and current Facebook page header image.  And I remember the numerous calls I made with Kate Stark our content coordinator lining up the posts that would go live that first week.

Back then we flew by the seat of our pants and today we kinda still do.  As of 11 p.m. last night we had 1 post scheduled for today and by the time you’re reading we’ll probably have 4 scheduled to go up. But that’s what makes this so fun.

I thank everyone for all of your support along the way. I thank everyone who helped us get started, some of you have left, but I ensure you that you were every bit of the inspiration to keep this thing running when it hit it’s roughest patches. To those who we’ve met along the way, I have valued your friendship and hard work more than you can imagine.  Some of you I still have never actually met in person, yet I feel as strong of a bond with you all as I do to my family.

To our core, I owe you everything. I’ve said it a million times but this is just as much as your baby as it is mine.  You all helped me in more ways than you’ll know and I’m so excited by your energy, creativity, humor, and intelligence. As such I cannot wait to see what the future holds for this site.

And now to the future. As Samuel L. Jackson famously said on the island of Jurassic Park “Hold on to your butts”.  We’re about to do some awesome shit and we look forward to having you all along for the ride!