I am marrying a marketing and data geek. My baby is a data geek. He loves looking at data and numbers, and he hates it when people make anecdotal conclusions (well, unless they are his own, of course) unless they are backed up by numbers. Today, he pulled the entire history of my Twitter account and did a comparison of my Tweets before we began our relationship versus after. To be fair, I actually started Tweeting more after we got together because he loves Twitter and convinced me on how useful and fun it was. The comparison he did pulled out the most reoccurring themes/words that were used across posts.

Before Chris, some reoccurring words in my Tweets were “work,” “Thanksgiving,” “yum,” and “free.” After Chris, some of the most common words in my Tweets have been “love,” “surprise,” “homemade,” “happy,”and “Christmas.” So now, I indicate that I’m happy and that I love things more. Of course, the surprises are all his, since Chris loves to surprise me (but he doesn’t like them for himself… ever). I talk about Christmas more than Thanksgiving now because in a life with him, Christmas is always celebrated and loved in his family, whereas in my own, it was neglected unless Ed was there. Life has certainly changed since he’s been in the picture. My life has more surprises, unexpected fun, travel, and simply love.

Oh, and another word that has come up a bit in a world with Chris — “Bart.” That’s not necessarily a good thing because it’s indicative of the absence of Ed from my life now, but it shows a new phase of my life without him… and I guess the glimmer of hope that I still have the capacity to have a happy life despite losing my big brother the way I did.