It’s nearly birthday time for me and since I started this blog on my birthday two years ago, it’s time for my annual checkup: How’s the blog doing? Am I still enjoying it? And maybe, most important: Do I keep going? Or in a paraphrase of Dr. Phil: How’s it working for me? Although I’ve had the occasional blank mind in the last year when it came time to write my post of the week (resulting in one of my Throwback Thursdays) I would have to say that the blog IS working for me. Or maybe I’m working for it. Either way, the writing is getting done.

I will keep blogging because it’s good for me. The every-week self-imposed deadline makes me write AT LEAST one blog post a week. I am trying hard to establish a healthy writing habit but the daily-ness escapes me. I’m working up to it. The blog lets me say, “Yes, I’m still writing!”

I will keep blogging because I believe in the written record. It makes me unreasonably happy when I read something I wrote twenty years ago that I would probably never remember if I hadn’t written it down. It’s why I keep writing erratically in several journals at a time and keep ridiculous notes on my computer. It all might come in handy someday, even if it’s just to reminisce when I’m one hundred years old, at the tail end of my journey of a century.

I will keep blogging because it keeps the pump primed. I’m working on a book and as I said before, sometimes it’s hard to get my writing in. While it may seem counterintuitive to write something else when I should be working on a chapter, the blog keeps me honest. It legitimizes my desire: I write, therefore I am a writer. Therefore, I should be able to write a book. Whether or not I ever get it published, I have to keep going because it’s in me and it wants to get out. I just need to trust the process that all this “extra writing” is part of the process not unlike the gardener who plants an extra zucchini seed or the photographer who takes a thousand pictures to get “the one” or Connor McDavid who just keeps practicing every single day.

I’m thinking in the next little while this blog may evolve a little. I might narrow my focus, I might spend a little more time on the bones and the makeup and make it look a little different. It’s worth spending the time on it because it gives so much back to me.

I will keep blogging.