A year ago, on a chilly Saturday night, I started this blog with a Jerry-Maguire-style mission statement of a post. And the tens of onlookers met it with a rousing cheer of “oh, ok, sure, I guess!” And over the course of the year I was able to put up a whole SIX POSTS.*

*cue ‘How You Like Me Now?’ by The Heavy

I dejectedly mentioned this to Adam as proof of what a sad non-writer I am. But Adam, ever my cheerleader (whose favorite cheer is STOP *clap* COMPLAINING *clap* JUST EFF-ING WRITE) said, “that’s 600% more blog posts than you wrote the year before!”

At that point I immediately got anxiety because I’ll never be able to produce another 600% increase in blog posts this year. That would be 42 posts, which is 3.5 posts per month (yes, three and a half posts, so once a month there would be a post where I’d just kind of drift off in the middle, and you’d have to wait until the following month to read what happens next).**

**I’d like to pretend I did all of this math in my head, but I definitely had to use an online calculator.

Looking back, I suppose it was a year of implementing and rekindling good writing habits. At the very least, I tried, and I’m technically a millennial so my trophy should be arriving any day now.

In addition to the six posts I wrote and shared, there are a dozen others waiting in the word-document wings. It’s so hard to get them to a point where they feel done, where I have nothing more to say on the topic, where the prose flows, and where I’m happy with my work. Sometimes, as with this post, you just have to decide to post half-baked – like a gooey-centered cookie, which I guess isn’t so bad.

This is a both easy and difficult thing I’ve discovered about self-publishing: there’s no editor, no sanity check, no second pair of eyes that scans and scours your ramblings so you don’t embarrass yourself.***

***Luckily, there is spell check to alert you that you’ve misspelled “embarrass.”

There’s an Ernest Hemingway quote that goes “we are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” And this from a person who was actually GOOD at writing (though not so great at motivational speaking). Meanwhile, I’m here with my wand, all thumbs, trying to get the broomsticks to clean the room but actually creating a huge chaotic mess while you watch.

I dream of a day when I can entrust cleanup to MY EDITOR. Not just because of the invaluable editorial services she will provide, but also because I really want to casually drop her into conversation, like “I have to get ten more pages to MY EDITOR by Friday,” or “I’m having lunch with MY EDITOR tomorrow,” or “MY EDITOR is going to kill me – I just watched an entire season of Gilmore Girls when I was supposed to be revising.”****

****Yes, even in my fantasies I disappoint MY EDITOR, but in quirky, whimsical ways, so it’s okay.

In the meantime, you’re stuck reading the unpolished tidbits I’m able to eke out between binge-watching (excellent) TV shows.

And with this tidbit, I just have 41 and a half more to