This is the continuation of a promise I made to Jennifer Crispen in Wellness Class, 25 years ago. I pledged to make a website–it was a stretch then, and it’s a stretch now. I have never been good at foreign languages like HTML or even things GUI-er (gooey-er–you know, graphic user interface-ier), like platform from which I am writing. The stimulation from climbing this learning curve is the point…and it’s been waiting a quarter century for me (so now I feel old).

For more than a decade, social media has provided an off the shelf platform to share bite sized pieces of news in the format I learned from my family’s Christmas letters (the first rule of Christmas letters: no one cares about your Christmas letter). However, after breezily downplaying minor dramas like Thermos B*** 2020 and other cautionary tales in a post or two, which were joyful to share, I found myself anxiously scrolling your stories. I worried about your troubles, unable to focus on running my own race as I saw the beauty of your life and your needs I wish I could take action to meet. I still love seeing the beauty of what you are doing…confounded by these social media leviathans making choices about whose stories we all see. I took Lent off again, started reading more books, and I got happier. I read about finding what to do with my one precious life, and I realized that I love crafting stories for you. I heard you say they make you laugh–even from my sister, who said she often pauses before reading one of my texts at work in case her laughter would signal she’s checking her messages. I’ll deal with the egotism that I have something to say a little later–my goal is connection. I don’t send *useful* messages to my sisters; most of the time, what I’m sharing isn’t useful at all…just another ping on the radar. I map my souls on the reverberations of those pings.

Writing something more substantial seemed like a next step. Publicly airing my writing terrifies me in a way I ironically don’t feel when I write you something on a social media outlet (the place where I think I am actually ceding my exclusive right to the content and *anyone* could find it). The algorithm also may chivalrously hide my boring posts from you. This format exposes a little more, and I will have to work harder at creating value for you because why would you be here otherwise? You’re worth extra effort, and I strive to make the content worthy of your time.

Here we go.

I don’t know what I’m doing yet, and I expect I will improve with effort, so I am posting the picture above: be brave enough to suck at something new. Today, I begin sucking at this.