Happy 10th Anniversary!!

 

Happy 10th Anniversary!! Can you believe it has been 10 years since I wrote my first article on this blog about the new Ross Dress for Less in Placerville. It is hard to believe that store location is almost 9 years old, and that the entire shopping center has received a makeover with the addition of a Target store, Mattress Firm, and Habit Burger since then. But it doesn't seem like it was that long ago when it seemed like getting those stores was like a dream that was likely years down the road. Man, time has flown fast. 

    Since that time, I have written 359 articles for the blog and have had 118,812 viewers total, with the most viewed post having 6,460 views. Plus, I even wrote a book called Ambitions in Architecture in 2014 describing what drove me to start writing my blog and why I started drawing plans for new businesses to develop or replace closed businesses and what essentially drives me to get up and look forward to the day ahead of me. In 2015, my mother composed a book of all the blogposts I wrote to that point as a gift for my birthday. In 2018, I volunteered as an intern for the Citrus Heights Sentinel which led to me writing four articles for the publication-https://citrusheightssentinel.com/?s=hayden+lepore. These were definitely tools and experiences which have grown my writing skills and my marketable skills for the community. 

But writing my blog has not always been easy. I would describe my experience with my blog as trying to keep a flame going that is clearly dying out in my life. If you see the blog archive on the right, most of my blogposts were written from 2013 to 2014, the first couple of years, totaling 247. Since then, I have only written 112 of them, and I haven't written a blogpost since August. My first struggle with my blog was after the first few months of starting my blog. It wasn't a trial or hiccups on the way, nothing like that. I was getting burned out after writing too many blog posts, because I usually wrote two blogposts a day for a while, from about the time I first started to early 2014. It was a struggle because I wanted to spend time researching the different businesses and studying geography and places, which I say are really my true interests. I first cut back on writing posts from two to one a day to keep my interest in the blog strong. Then, with less time to write blogposts, I got overwhelmed with needing to write about the new businesses opening I discovered on the news sites I was reading or ones I heard from mom or ones I saw with my own eyes. I was also getting busy drawing plans or thinking about drawing plans for new developments in different areas and remodels of struggling malls and shopping centers filling vacant spaces with new stores.

This ended up getting overwhelming because I needed to keep up with how full each shopping mall or center was so I could see where new stores were needed. These were all fun and lighthearted projects. But it was emotionally overwhelming for me. I have struggled with seeing businesses close, especially those I enjoyed going to, and it hurts me even more when it stays empty, or things change for the worse in the area and it leads to a downward spiral for that center or for the general area, when a factory or an employer leaves the area. I want to see those spaces filled with good tenants and that people remain employed with good jobs that contribute to the flourishing of their family and the wellbeing of society. I felt like I needed to keep up with the latest updates and that I needed to be ready to draw plans for shopping center remodels, and that these remodels would keep me from ever drawing a plan for a new development ever again. I took a little break from my blog for a bit.

Then, when I started researching the business world again, I wanted to see what places have the most people and what shopping malls and centers were thriving. My most recent blogposts have been about finding the remaining Christian bookstores, the remaining Video rental stores, and even trying to find where stores are most likely to succeed and fail at. I want to know that no matter how far different industries have fallen, that they won't be completely gone from our eyes and that they can and will turn around for the better. I want to know there is hope and that new stores and restaurants are opening in malls and centers. That there will continue to be malls and stores for me and for my children and grandchildren to shop at that are not on the Internet and that our country and state will head in a positive direction for the next generation.

I hope to continue writing about new businesses and that I can continue to be a positive light in my community. Even though I haven't been writing as many blogposts of late, I have been creating videos for my YouTube channel, which have been four so far and I hope to do more in the future about the local towns in the area and their history. 

Thank you for supporting my blog and keeping it going for the past 10 years!!