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Introduction to Holidailies
December 7, 2009
Once again, as I have every year I’ve kept this online journal, I’m participating in Holidailies. In honor of Day 1 of this edition of the project and by way of introduction to those of you stopping by who haven’t been here before, I updated my about me page for the first time since 2003.
The first time I did Holidailies, in 2002, I did 25 entries. In 2003, I did 27. I think that was the first time there was a portal that allowed one to sort all the participants by number of entries, descending, and I ended up “below the line”, meaning I hadn’t posted the quota of one entry per day on average. In 2004, I did 31 entries in 30 days, determined to be above the line (though I seem to recall I missed by one entry for some reason—maybe I miscounted the days or something). It was the same story in 2005 (31 entries), 2006 (32 entries), 2007 (32 entries), and 2008 (33 entries). Pushing myself that far beyond my usual average of about five or six entries a month means that I write entries during Holidailies that wouldn’t get posted during other times of the year because I feel they might be too silly or crappy or boring or weird or maudlin or self-indulgent or braggy. And they might well be any or all of those things, but if I waited to post until I’d written something I was 100% sure was a quality journal entry, I wouldn’t post at all. Holidailies gives me an excuse to make my internal critic a bit more uncomfortable than usual, to stretch my boundaries for what’s appropriate here, and put a bit more of myself out there. Not everyone is going to like everything I write; that’s fine. I’m grateful to my regular readers who like enough of it to keep coming back, and I value the connections I’ve made through people reading my journal and me reading other people’s.
Wow, that got a lot more meta than I planned, but ending up somewhere I didn’t expect is part of the fun. Off we go…
On this date in 2008: Mush!
2007: No entry
2006: Red Scarf Two
2005: Winter Count—February
2004: Holiday Guilt—A Different Kind
2003: Scarred
2002: No entry
