One Year of Competence

After being inspired by a sewing blog last year, I decided to start one. It took me a month to think of a name for it. Finally, I came up with something, and made my blog and then my first post ("Plaid Flannel and Duct Tape") on December 5th, 2010.

In February, I made a post ("Why Is This Blog Completely Pointless?") explaining my motives for writing. Also in that post I explained how the creation of the blog had been a challenge to myself: Write regularly, or face (mostly imaginary) public humiliation by having my unfinished project hanging around on the Web for everyone to see.

The motives - a need to write and a need to keep a record of our life (and I just won't mention the third one I listed) - haven't changed. The effectiveness of the pulic-humiliation blackmail hasn't changed, either. I know seventy-six posts in one year isn't exactly prolific; that's only an average of one post every five days, and I'd wanted three per week. (One month, I managed only two posts.) I never reached that consistent three-per-week goal, but at least I always came back.

I've written thousands of words I never would've written, taken hundreds of pictures I wouldn't have taken.

I've learned. I've learned so much. I know now how to sit down with nothing and make something. I've learned how to proofread and cut and re-word and polish and publish. I've learned which phrases tend to sneak into my paragraphs over and over, and how to hunt them and kill them so you don't notice them out of the corner of your eye and get that jolt of irritated recognition that takes you out of the work.

I've gotten faster. I've learned that you have to force those first few clumsy words, start slow and loud and shaky before you can gain speed and take off and fly for a little while, up where nothing can distract you and all you see is sun.

I've gotten better. Some posts make me cringe, but now I can tell what's wrong with them and what I need to avoid. Those posts teach me more than the good ones do.

I need to find my own voice. My sentence structure and the way I put the words together is all an unconscious imitation of a certain author whose work, after you count re-reads, is maybe 1/3rd of everything I've ever read (and that's a lot.)

But I'll get there. I am getting there.

Today, I'm going to be happy. I would've been happy anyway, because it's sunny and I love my life and I get to "put my shoes out" tonight (see: "Candy In My Shoes!"), but the other cool thing about today is that I get to celebrate my competence. For one whole year, I've worked on a project that hasn't always been easy. I've been doing what I was made to do. It's a wonderful feeling.