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My Last Post

My first post here was published on August 20, 2008. Well, technically, that was on my Blogspot blog. But everything was ported over to this one, so I’m standing by that date.

My blog had a bit of a slow start, then it picked up a lot of steam for a while, and then it sort of fizzled out. Rather than breathing life into this old thing, I’m starting something new.

Introducing…

My Substack! You can find my second post HERE. Please go read and subscribe!

Yes, there is a first post. If you follow that link, I promise you’ll find it.

Thanks to everyone who has read this blog over the years. Your comments, feedback, love, and support have meant the world to me. But it’s time to move on to the next phase of my writing life. I hope you’ll join me along the way.

I Love a New Year

If you know anything about me, you know how much I love new years, months, weeks, and any other beginnings. There’s something about the ability to start fresh that really motivates me. It might just be the new notebooks and planners. Regardless, after the very complicated 2022 I had, I’m very glad to have 2023 finally here. But first, I want to acknowledge a couple of things.

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Promises: On Five Years of Sobriety

At 10, I swore I’d never have a drink. My dad drank. I wasn’t going to do that. I knew better.

At 13, I ate some canned fruit salad that was marinating in vodka because older, cooler girls were doing it. There was no pressure. It was just something that happened. This was social and fun; not like my dad. It was okay.

In high school, having friends old enough to buy alcohol and a mother who was just done being a mother made it easy to indulge myself. I was just blowing off steam. I was practically an adult anyway. I wasn’t hurting anyone. I went to school every morning and worked my part-time jobs. I got excellent grades. It was all good. I didn’t need anyone to tell me what to do because I could take care of myself.

If it was at all cute that day I got drunk in the Dairy Queen where I worked on the vodka we had stashed in the front freezer when I was 18, it definitely wasn’t cute years later when I’d have too many margaritas at lunch and sway my way back to my cube and attempt to make insurance presentations. Still, I was handling it more often than I wasn’t, which was more than I could ever say about my father.

Once I got pregnant, I knew I would have to stop drinking. But I didn’t stay pregnant forever and moms deserve their wine; isn’t that what they tell us all now? Parenting is hard. Wash it down with a drink or three.

I told myself that the irresponsible behaviors of my youth were just that. I was mature now. I was in charge of another human so I must be able to make good decisions for myself.

After five drinks, I didn’t make good decisions. I could argue drinks number two through five were also not good decisions.

But I got up for work every morning and I wrote essays and I kept a clean house. My kid was smart as a whip and I got him to daycare on time. My dad screamed and yelled in drunken rages, passed out, and stumbled into things. I wasn’t my father. I was responsible.

Waking up in a hotel room at 36, the night’s events a total blur, I didn’t feel responsible. Meeting writers I admired and making an ass of myself as I drank and carried on didn’t feel responsible. Orchestrating an overnight adventure a few weeks later at yet another hotel, the one situated next to a bar so I could stumble back to pass out, didn’t feel responsible even if I said the reason for the hotel was to be responsible in the first place.

I saw through my own charade. I’m kidding myself if I think no one else did.

At 36, I didn’t swear I’d never have another drink. Instead, I swore I’d stay sober that day. It worked. I did.

I got up the next day, still 36, and swore the same. And so on. And so forth.

At 41, I’ve woken up every day since and made the same promise. Some days were harder than others, but so far, so good. Whenever I feel like I might break, I think of the days, 1,826 now, when I didn’t.

I don’t plan to break my promise. And as long as I get through today, I’ll make the same promise tomorrow.

Refocus.

Last year I decided I wasn’t going to do NaBloPoMo. Instead, I wanted to write 25,000 words toward my memoir. I did that and then some. It was great and I’m still really proud of that, even though virtually no one has read any of those words.

I have an idea for a novel that has been brewing but I can’t quite figure it out yet. The more I try, the more stuck I am. This idea is half-baked at best. For a brief moment I considered trying NaNoWriMo, banging out something of a first draft. But without a full scope of the story, that seemed impossible. I tried to write an outline, but it didn’t work. I thought about winging it but I didn’t know where to start.

Without a big project to work on, I figured I’d do NaBlo again. I thought if I could get myself in the swing of writing daily again, I could get that novel going. Or something. I’m not really sure what I was thinking.

First of all, I do write daily. Between the day job and freelance work, I’m writing all the time. It just isn’t personal writing. The reason my creativity is in the toilet right now is that I am writing so much in other places. I’m not complaining, but it’s not like I don’t understand what’s happening.

Also, diverting my attention away from the creative stuff I’m actually pursuing is totally counterintuitive. The only way to write a novel is to actually sit down and WRITE A NOVEL. I know this. You know this. Writing 30 blog posts isn’t going to help that. Reading other people’s blog posts is going to help it even less. (I didn’t really read that many other posts, which makes me a terrible participant. Sorry, friends.)

So let’s call bullshit on this, shall we? I did this daily thing because I am afraid to write the novel. I set up a month long distraction from important stuff so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the important stuff. Hey, guess what? It worked! I accomplished nothing.

You could say that I did blog every day (assuming I get through tomorrow) but 90% of the blogs I posted this month were crap. Anyone reading this blog for the first time is going to wonder what I’m trying to do here. If the goal was to do myself a disservice, well, congratulations to me!

I’m not knocking November challenges. I think they are really powerful. However, I think they don’t serve everyone the same way. I have about 32 seconds to spare per day — I have to use them wisely. This wasn’t it. The truth is, this isn’t the only example of how I’ve been all over the place, spread too thing, unfocused. This is symptomatic of a larger problem.

Having a few days off work and a few days without other freelance gigs gave me some time to think and I didn’t like what I came up with.

There is nothing in this world I cannot do. I knew that when I was a toddler and I know that now. But, and it’s a big but, it all takes work and focus and that is not at all what I’ve been doing. I got so bogged down with not having a job in the beginning of this year and then having a new job and then trying to do the freelance and, and, and…

Stop for one second. Just. Stop.

Refocus. I cannot be everything to everyone.

I cannot be everything to everyone.

Tomorrow’s a new day.

No more wasted time.

This is yeah write’s nomo day 29.