If I sat down and did an actual year in review I’d probably need to be institutionalized, so let’s focus on just the writing, shall we? In that regard it was quite a year.

I did not finish the book, but I almost did, and as soon as I figure out what the last few, and I really mean few, edits require, it’ll be done and I’ll start shopping it in earnest.

I entered not one, but three flash writing competitions, making it through to the final rounds though not winning. I’ll take it — I’ve neither tried my hand at writing competitions nor written flash before. One of the challenges, the 250-word one, is still in progress.

I submitted two pieces to Brevity Blog and had them accepted: “The Sto Po: A Hypothetical Rant Against the Knee Jerk Content Constabulary,” and “The Value of No.”

I dared to submit a few more pieces to a couple of other places and got turned down, but that’s part of the life.

Cognoscenti said yes, first to my piece about adoption, “I willingly, joyfully adopted my sons from Paraguay. I would never do it again,” and one in response to Trump’s reelection, “When it feels like nowhere is safe.”

Amazingly, I just heard from the editor that my first piece with them made it into Cognoscenti’s Best Stories of 2024.

And of course I’ve had this Substack.

I’m not kidding when I say that these travails and victories would feel much less real, and be much less possible, without the community you have given me.

On November 3rd, 2022, I started this newsletter with my first post, “You Might As Well Write.” I was at the time a hot mess, and the ensuing year-plus didn’t help things. I was terrified of losing a son to an obliterating life event. I lost my closest every-day friend to circumstances I didn’t understand, and then a beloved chosen family member and three other friends to death. I was ousted from my job of a fifteen years for no reason I was told, in the process losing my daily community. I was struggling with an illness that required loads of unpleasant medications and cause 24/7 vertigo, frequent migraines, and made walking difficult. I was moving my father to assisted living, and I was wrangling another family member’s life that had spiralled into chaos and harm to herself and others. My dog died. Even my shrink died, I learned when I decided I should reach out for a lifeline.1

I sputtered a bit, unsure of what to write, then on November 29th I published my first Tuesday post recalling the time a Russian man changed my tea-drinking life. After that you couldn’t shut me up.

You’re largely to blame for that. New writing friends suggested places I might submit work, reminded me when classes were, and that I’d signed up for them2. You responded to my posts, liking and commenting on them, offering me encouragement and kindness when I needed it most. Which apparently is always.

I don’t do well in a vacuum. The thing I miss most about songwriting is the immediate feedback, the give and take of instant harmonizing and rearranging, the excitement at ideas, and the laughter if they turn out to be terrible. Writing is very different from that, a much more solitary, stare at the blank page, “if you’re serious you’ll eventually put your head in an oven” kind of thing. Honestly, I don’t have the knees for that shit.

According to Substack, this will be my 114th piece of string too small to use. Somehow, out of all those tiny snippets, and with your help, I’ve jumbled together something meaningful, at least to me.

I’m not quite over the shock of being listed on Cognoscenti’s best essays list, but it feels wonderful to be appreciated.

I didn’t want to miss the chance to let you know how much you, too, are appreciated, and how much you’ve contributed to me standing on new but solid ground. It turns out writing is a team sport after all.

Tuesday is Christmas and people will be traveling and busy and all that, so I’m breaking my own rule and sending this out on Sunday night. Whatever the next week brings for you, I hope it involves very little work, much tea and sugar, and good company.

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