Interlude - Why am I doing this?

When I was a senior in high school, I wrote an essay about my future career. I remember the theme of it was that while I knew I wasn't good enough to play baseball professionally, I was committed to working in sports in some way. This clearly didn't happen, and to be honest, I never really pursued it the way my 18-year old self thought I would.

I've been a writer for a long time. Out of all my memories about school, stretching back to as early as 3rd grade, most involve an essay or story I wrote. There is a short story about a family trip a divorced father took his two children on and collecting sand dollars at the beach; or the story I wrote about my grandfather after he passed, telling his life story, which may or may not have included his boast about "shooting off Hitler's b$%@'s" as a tail-gunner based in England; and the many ideas written done in the various moleskin notebooks I bought or was gifted over those years. Then in college, my senior thesis was a collection of short stories, and I even won the Morse Hamilton Fiction Prize for one of them ("Before the Monsoon Season"). I hope my younger self truly appreciated that achievement and opportunity to read an excerpt in front of friends, many of whom had no idea that I was a writer, or if they did, had no idea what I was actually writing.

Besides a brief moment here and there, I haven't written much for myself since college. I had a blog (Groovin' Dubin - it's fine, you can laugh) when I was training for the Boston Marathon nearly 20 years ago, and I have written a few long passages in the Notes app when ideas popped into my mind. But nothing truly focused or anything I had to be accountable for.

So while the order of operation for this site and research was not 1) I want to write and 2) let me find something to write about, I think I've always been looking for a reason to write again, and this project provides the perfect constraint/focus for me to not only start, but continue for a longer period of time.

Wherever this leads, I hope that I can look back at this and say "This is where it started again." I know this site and what I write in the future will look nothing like what it does today. That's the point! To grow and make mistakes and learn and improve and enjoy the process. I used to have that, and recall the cheap little plastic stand I used to put my short stories when I was in the editing process. A professor or my thesis advisor would mark up my drafts by hand, and then I'd sit on my computer and go page by page, addressing their questions and comments. After each draft, I'd have a sense of accomplishment, even though I knew there was always more to be done.