It’s amazing how fast a year can go by.

And at the same time, events from a year ago seem even more distant in memory than they really are.

Last week, I celebrated — OK, more like looked back with appreciation —my one-year anniversary as a Patch employee. On Oct. 18, we’ll celebrate one year of bringing Havre de Grace Patch online.

As I’ve told many of you when I’m out and about in Havre de Grace, this has been the most gratifying part of my career. It’s been more than just reporting the news. It’s been representing our community on a forum that has become part of the town's fabric.

There were growing pains, for certain. But ultimately, Patch has been accepted in Havre de Grace much like I’d hoped it would.

We’re not alone, either.

There are more than 800 Patch sites nationwide — three in Harford County, including Aberdeen and Bel Air. Within the last few weeks, Patch surpassed the million-article plateau.

We’ve been responsible for a little more than 1,800 articles in less than 10 months.

The numbers are astounding — you can ask our ad manager Hunter Kalman for more of those. But the most positive number I saw recently? Five.

That’s right, five. Patch was ranked No. 5 on a list of the most important online publishers in the nation.

We’ve been able to provide the news faster than ever before, and more locally targeted to our readership than before last October.

But we won’t rest on our early accomplishments.

At least I won’t.

We’ve changed features. Added features. Dropped features. Tweaked features. Brought back some of the dropped features.

It’s an always-evolving product.

You can play a role, too.

We have blogs, announcements, classifieds and events. All of those you can add to the site yourself.

Of course, there are the additional means of reaching the readers and me — including Facebook and Twitter. Or email me at sean.welsh@patch.com with whatever is on your mind.

Let us know what your favorite stories have been.

And don’t forget to share story ideas and news tips with us, too.

I’m still looking for some ideas on a series of stories similar to that of the adoption series we published two weeks ago.

Finally, thank you for reading.

The months we spent building the site starting about a year ago were well worth it. The months that followed have been a blast.

Thank you for making the work so rewarding.