Today is the final day of my “Year of Creativity.” 365 essays. Published each morning at 6:05am.
Which is either a tender act of devotion… or evidence that I should be kept away from arbitrary challenges. (But we’re not litigating that today.)
When I started this, it wasn’t a polished plan. It was a wild hair that turned into a dare. My brain asked, “Could we write something every morning for a year?” and the chorus inside me answered, “Let’s do it.” No strategy deck. No grand theory of readership. Just a stubborn little commitment and a curiosity to see what would happen if I kept showing up.
And now here we are: the end of it.
The biggest thing I learned is that writing every day doesn’t automatically make every day’s writing important.
Looking back, I can see plenty of times where I added nothing to the discussion—where I was just contributing more yada to the world’s already-industrial supply of yada. The world does not need more yada. It’s practically running on it.
But maybe that was part of the point: to keep showing up long enough to hear the difference between noise and signal inside my own head. To write my way through the static until something honest came through.
And when I scan the archive now, I don’t just see the topics. I see a person trying—again and again—to connect. To lower my guard. To show myself as I am, regardless of the subject, the mood, or how coherent I felt before coffee.
And in that sense, I think I succeeded.
I feel real affection for the Porch Talk series—like I was setting chairs out on the porch and hoping someone might wander over and sit a while. I loved the week of “glazing” people I respect, because it felt good to name what I admire instead of only pointing at what’s broken. I loved writing about consciousness and futurism and parenting and all the little side streets my mind likes to explore.
And yes, I wrote about politics too—often while carrying a kind of rage that doesn’t make for elegant sentences. Not performative rage. Real rage. The kind that tightens your throat and turns every paragraph into a blunt object.
Still, I’m glad I did it. It mattered to me to put my name next to the refusal. To be able to look back at this year and say: I stood against fascism, racism, and all the other isms. I didn’t stay quiet just because silence would’ve been easier.
But maybe the deeper lesson hiding under all of it is this: One more voice shouting about the ills of the universe doesn’t always move the needle the way we want it to.
Sometimes what lands harder is the smaller, stranger truth—like why I meander through neighborhoods when I drive through the city instead of taking the highway. The intimate stuff. The human stuff. The particularity that isn’t trying to win an argument—just trying to be real.
Tomorrow I start a new project.
The Year of Creativity gave me 365 essays and 101 finished paintings (which still sounds made up when I say it out loud). But the bigger gift is harder to measure and easier to feel: I’m here at the end of this year without medication or the constant reliance on alcohol—two things I’ve been wanting to release since the pandemic.
That change will shape my future more than any single essay ever could.
So the next year is a Year of Health: getting in physical shape through diet and exercise. I’m ready to point this same daily commitment at my body and see what kind of life it builds. (Also, I’d love for my knees to file fewer formal complaints.)
I’m still going to write. I’m still going to paint. I’ve applied to several art shows. So far the rejections have been… consistent. So I’ll keep stacking canvases in the corner.
Creating them is enough.
I’ve even considered taking them all and wiping them clean—like a Zen sand garden—painting them white and starting again. Because the point, for me, was never recognition. Never likes. The point was the act. The practice. The honest time spent with myself.
And if you’ve been reading any of this—if you’ve opened these posts, replied, or quietly kept showing up on the other side of the screen—thank you.
There were mornings I felt like I was just writing to myself, which isn’t much different from the ongoing conversations I have with myself all day anyway. But then I’d remember: a few of you kept showing up.
That matters more than I can properly express.
So this is my last post of the Year of Creativity. Thank you for being here.
See you tomorrow.