It’s the last few hours of 2012 here in Cal­i­for­nia, and I’ve got some res­o­lutin’ to do. I haven’t post­ed any­thing in over a month because I had begun to think of this as a port­fo­lio of (almost) fin­ished pieces. That is just intim­i­dat­ing enough to ensure I will nev­er write here again.

1. I resolve to treat this as the web hus­tle it deserves to be : good, bad, and hasty writ­ing will co-min­gle. Quan­ti­ty is qual­i­ty here at the dog.

2. I will bus­tle 3 times a week. Let’s see how quick­ly that goes south. But it might not. I have also been keep­ing a jour­nal, and late­ly my entries are ten to fif­teen pages each. I find that writ­ing is the best way to write more.

3. I resolve to be a work­ing writer again. It’s tak­en most of a year for my fac­ul­ties and my ener­gy to bub­ble up to the sur­face again after all my super fun crap­pums of the past decade. Five years ago, I was­n’t able to hold a thought long enough to write it down. A year ago, I was micro-nap­ping so furi­ous­ly that I could­n’t fin­ish a para­graph of even the most basic prose with­out hav­ing to come back to it sev­er­al times. Late­ly, I feel how I felt when I first began to real­ize I love to write : I’m myself. That’s the only way I’ve ever been able to tell that I am a writer, and that deeply grat­i­fy­ing sense of being where I belong has returned.

I am fifty years old and I am all promise and very lit­tle show to this point. It’s nasty to real­ize most peo­ple my age have either reached the zenith of their accom­plish­ments or are near­ly there. I can­not think about things like that if I want to do any­thing great. Don’t look back. But the truth is I am about to be seri­ous about my work for the first time in my life.