37 days challenge

"I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear." – Joan Didion

This blog began with a sense of urgency that centered around what I would do if I only had 37 days to live.

The answer was that I would write frenetically, putting into syllables and symbols and sounds as much as I could out of my very heart and brain, to leave behind a record of who I really was for my daughters. It was a sense of urgency that drove me to it, the knowledge that when that countdown really does start, my friend, it will be too late. There may be no time for reflection then, but perhaps only time for regret at not reflecting earlier.

These essays have emerged, one a week, for the past year. I’d like to regain the sense of urgency with which they began, the daily breathless investigation that led me here. To do that, for at least the next 37days, I’m going to write an essay each day, shorter, different, exploratory, fodder for longer essays, rough works in progress, notes on a palette of sorts, thoughts that might end up here in some form.

I’m remarking on this process not because I think it is infinitely interesting to anyone but me, but because when subscribers to 37days enlisted, they were told they would only get updates once a week and I don’t want to break that promise. So those works in progress will be posted here. Perhaps you’d like to join me in this 37 days challenge by writing a personal story or essay each day for the next 37 days? We make meaning of our lives through narrative, don’t we?