That Was the Year That Was

A mix of what I wrote last year. I can’t say my ‘favorites’, because some of them were painful.

Author’s photo

Hello friends, here we are in the new year and nothing has changed except the year on our checks. Right?

I thought about skipping this roundup, considering what a year I’ve had, but through it all I wrote, I published, I bared my soul more than I’ve ever done publicly before. So after some minor soul-searching — and checking my posts — there are a few I’d like to share again.

Some of them you may have already read in one form or another. If you have and you’re still here, thank you!

I’m doing something different this year. I’m incorporating posts from both of my newsletters — Constant Commoner and Writer Everlasting. Some may have appeared at both, as well as here at Medium, but others have only been seen once. All of them are pieces I’m glad I wrote — even the ones about pain and loss.

As always, I’m ever grateful to you, my subscribers, both paid and free, and to those who have let me know in some way — including in notes or comments — that some of what I’m trying to do is making a dent.

It’s what every writer needs in order to keep going, and I try to pay it forward in my own way. It’s what we do as a community of readers and writers, and I’m proud to be a part of our writers’ communities.

So here they are, the earliest first. Feel free to share any of them, and, of course, to clap and to comment. (All photos my own unless noted.)

I’m here because of you. You are my guiding lights and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

(Medium readers: you’ll notice each of these pieces originated at Substack. That’s because I call it home now. I don’t post here often anymore, but I miss you all and would love to see you over at my places. Please consider subscribing to either or both of my newsletters there. If you’ve followed me here, you know what to expect. More of the same, only better, I hope.)

I posted this at the beginning of 2022. It morphs into a 2021 roundup of my favorite pieces from that year. Tricky, huh?