Jan 10, 2017

I’m ten days in and I feel like I just need to acknowledge how much more of a challenge this has been than I anticipated. I thought the hard part would be in carving out the time each day to write. Or just remembering to write. And it’s been a little of those things, but mostly the work has been in landing on something to write about. 

I’m not super into the idea of following some list of random prompts. Not that it’s terrible, it’s just not what I want to spend my time on. And I’ve thought about writing a few posts at once and keeping a back log, but that wasn’t the point either. I wanted to write every day. Something real and fresh on my mind. Not mind-blowing, perhaps, but not stale.

I also find myself waffling over what’s worth writing about and what I’m willing to write about for public consumption. Some topics are off-limits. Some just don’t sputter out enough of a response. Some I could go on about for a while, but I don’t think either you or I would be the better for it. (Or rather, I guess what I’m getting at is whiny or preachy topics that we’d all be the worse for. I have no problem talking about fluff.)

Saying something worth saying really is something. And I can’t say I’ve done it yet. But I’ll keep trying.

Anyway, I hate to be like the Berenstein Bears and have a moral to every random thing, but I didn’t decide to write about writing today for lack of another topic. (I’ve been tempted to start almost every post out saying how I had nothing to write about and blah, blah, blah… but I didn’t because that’s lame and annoying and I can do better.) No, the reason I stopped to share that it’s been a struggle is because I know there are some out there who would see me writing every day (such as it is) and think, “Well, sure, it’s easy for her to do. She’s good at writing.” So I wanted to stop and say out loud that it takes work, that I feel dumb publishing nearly every single post, that I worry about how pretty much every part of it is going to be received, and have considered giving up for nine out of the ten days so far (the one day I felt sure about it being Jan 1).

That was the main thing I wanted to say. And also that your comments are like gold and I mean that in the neediest, more pathetic way possible.

Thanks for being here. And keep being in the places you know you need to be too.