Welcome, 2019!

As 2018 drew to a close, I found myself thinking time and time again about this blog. When I started blogging a decade or so ago, it was a way to encourage the discipline of writing in my life. I had become an editor at that point and spent my days poring over others’ work rather than my own and I didn’t want writing for my own personal benefit to fade out of my life.

In those days, I blogged daily, first thing. But since leaving the editing world (at least full-time; I’m still open to freelance gigs), I’ve been writing daily. And most of the time, these are stories I’m excited to tell and tales about people I want the world to know and experience.

I write every day, but I blog … rarely.

I had hoped that by the time 2019 got here, I would have a plan for what I wanted to do with my blog. I’d tossed aside the idea of closing it down completely and thought that I’d magically have an editorial calendar of sorts all planned out.

But 2019 is here—and I don’t have a plan. I don’t have all the pieces lined up and the stories written and a plan for what I’ll post here tomorrow or next week or next month.

And maybe—just maybe—that’s a little how my life feels right now. I have a beautiful life, but I don’t have all the pieces lined up, a detailed plan for how 2019 will go. And maybe that’s because I’ve lived long enough to know that life is more like a river than a straight line. It’s full of curves and rapids and long months or years where it feels just like you’re floating or stalled—either way, you’re getting nowhere fast.

So in 2019, I’m embracing the reality that I don’t have to have everything figured out. It’s OK to be unfinished, as this blog has always proclaimed. And while I have some goals for this year—reading more, getting to know my neighbors better, consistently studying Scripture, investing in the lives of people I love better, taking time to enjoy the things I love—I don’t have a 2019 plan of action.

And I’m OK with that.

All that to say, there are some things I know I want to do on the blog this year. I want to continue to highlight things I love: family, faith, writing, cooking, reading and the creative arts. I want to see if there are ways to work in more journalistic approaches to stories, maybe including profiles of people I know or meet. I want to take a deep dive into history and examine something or someone, to research and learn and write about it.

These are all unfinished ideas. But like I said, that’s always been the idea behind this blog. So here’s to a new year and a fresh start—and a hope to publish more here in 2019!