365 posts in a row and I am at a loss for words.
It feels so strange to sit here at my desk and type, knowing that I accomplished a goal I had been striving for since I got out of college. The simple act of writing every day is so easy on the surface that anyone can do it, because, well, all you have to do is sit down and write.
But if it were that easy, everyone who ever wanted to write would be a writer, or at least a person who wrote every day.
Writing every day ain’t coal mining, but it ain’t that different either. There is always more to unearth, another vein to find and explore, more work to be done. But before you get to those rich deposits of minerals, you’ve gotta start somewhere and this blog has felt like a start for me.
When I first started stringing words together on this site it felt so foreign that it was almost as if I’d never done it before, as if I’d never picked up a pen to even try to write my own name. It was nerve-wracking to try to form cohesive thoughts and sentences knowing that a handful of people were reading, but writing this blog has taught me to stop paying attention and to just do the damn thing.
And now a year later, writing every day has just become something that I do. There are days when it works well and breezes by and I feel as though I’ve said what I set out to say, but they are dwarfed by the number of days when I struggle to fill the page with anything, let alone anything of substance.
But I managed to push through anyways, and the whole of the thing is better for me having just sat down and practiced it. I have begun to figure out how my voice works on the page, the kinds of words I can use best, and the subject matter that I am suited to. I have learned that I always pay attention to people when they smile, that I have an ear for dialogue and a general hatred of brand names when describing anything.
The titles of my blogs taught me a few things too, not the least of which that I seem to pay more attention to song lyrics line by line than song by song. Finding an appropriate lyric for my blog every single day sometimes proved challenging, and in a few cases even led me to songs and artists I had never given a listen to before. Other times, a lyric would stick in my head and burn itself into my thoughts so deeply that it ended up being the inspiration for an entire post.
And I learned that there are diamonds sprinkled not just through the classic songs of Bob Dylan, Outkast, and Frank Sinatra, but through the music of LL Cool J, Phil Collins, George Michael and Warren G.
Inspiration can come from anywhere if your ears and heart are open.
This year was full of good things and to go back and read about some of them as they were happening is something I am grateful to be able to do. Not everything that I wrote about happened, and some of the things that did happen happened a long time ago, but to have a general impression of a year is something I never really thought I’d have considering I stopped keeping a journal a long time ago.
I also learned that some of the things that people play close to the vest, I have no qualms in talking about via the written word. My addictions and drug use, my OCD and depression, some of the more lurid details of my life I never once felt the need to curtail my words. And in contrast, some things that people have no issues talking about are hard for me to talk about in any sense whatsoever – like the fact that I am phobic of dancing.
As for the things that happened this year that I didn’t write about, I feel as though I drew enough of a boundary around my personal life to keep the private things private, even though there was more than one post that I wrote and didn’t publish. Knowing that people who knew me were reading made me skirt a couple of things I might have written about otherwise, though I see now that it was also because I found a certain kind of voice in my blog that I stuck with because it worked for me.
The blog now feels a little confining for what I want to do next, and writing a book is going to allow me to explore subject material far outside of my own personal experience.
And I like the idea of pushing my own boundaries. It keeps the process fresh and a new challenge will keep me sharpening my knives so that I can slice through words even better as I go forward.
Speaking of moving forward, I need to get on the road. It’s New Year’s Eve and my first one working the night shift since I got sober. There will be drunks and maniacs and traffic and as much as I would love to sit here and go on and on about my year and what I learned…
…there are bills to pay.
Before I sign off this evening and before I click the ‘publish’ button in my WordPress, I would just like to say thank you.
Thank you readers, whoever you are. Whether you came here from my Facebook page or combed Twitter or somehow found me on Tumblr, thank you for taking the time out of your day to read my words. It means a lot to know that there are people out there – whether I know them personally or not – who found time in their busy days to spend a couple of minutes and read these things that I write.
It has changed my life, and for the better. I only hope that I have managed to occasionally bring you something worth the time it you took to read it.
I hope all of your years were as blessed as mine was, and I hope you keep reading my intermittent posts in 2014.
I’ll still be updating this blog here and there as the situation warrants.
But until then… Happy New Year!
