I've been thinking about what would make me really happy in the new year, and the thing that popped into my mind was writing. Sometimes I think it's so stupid to write these posts that no one reads. To vent my emotions through writing when no one will listen seems like a personal failure to me sometimes.

I think about all the meetings and parties and dinners where I've sat silent and listened and just waited for it to be over after having given up hope of getting a word in edge-wise. Maybe this is a bad thing, but it seems my whole life I've had a different way of connecting. Writing is what makes me feel alive. This is where I can say what I want to say. This is where I can be myself. Even if it's stupid or needy I *need* to write.

It disappoints me that I have stopped developing as a writer. Being a writer is being an artist, it's developing your skill with practice and with reading and appreciating things that aren't crap. I can still write a paragraph (fortunately) but I feel like a tenth-grader could out-write me at this point.

I'm not sure what this means, if I'll do another month of writing a blog post every day, or start working on some long essay-type posts, or try to get published somewhere. But I think part of why I have felt so lifeless is because I've stopped writing. Time to wake up.