This is my 1500th blog post. I wrote it yesterday because I’ve been struggling to keep up my buffer and, in my haste to at least get a post taking up Draft space on my blog so I’d have something to work on between coming up with the idea a week ago and it getting published (which has resulted in me not doing any work on it until the day before), I forgot to put together something for the big one five double-zero! Aside from being a large number of things to have written, there isn’t much significance to the number aside from this being a specific personal goal I set. You see, 1500 blog posts guarantees that I’ve written at least a thousand blog posts since I started this whole thing back up a few years ago. That’s a pretty significant number, considering that I haven’t missed a day (aside from planned breaks) in that whole time. I’ve posted some of these later than I’d have liked (mostly because I forgot to fix the scheduled post time but once because I just didn’t have anything written until partway through the day), but I haven’t missed a day that wasn’t planned ahead of time. I’ve had to reduce my scope by no longer sharing things on Saturdays, I’ve circled the drain of topics and journaled my misery for a while, but I’ve never missed a day.

Originally, I started this back up as something to do that’d give me a sense of purpose. I wanted to feel like I was doing something, to stretch my creative muscles and get myself back into the habit of regularly writing, and blogging was an easy way to do it in a publicly accountable manner. Now, three and a half years later, I’m not closer to making progress on any book projects than I was all those years ago. I’m probably even further from having a book put together in any sort of publishable shape. Hell, I’m not even sure if that’s a route I actually want to go anymore. It’s not like the publishing industry is doing particularly well these days for anyone but the stockholders and executives… It’s more difficult than ever to break into the traditional publishing industry, more difficult to make ends meet via any kind of publishing, and respect for writers is at an all time low as it feels like everyone in the universe is ready to replace us with a predictive text algorithm (that my employer has also embraced to the extent that all my emails have a rapidly evolving chain of ghost text to the right of my cursor as “copilot” tries to generate what I’m going to write next while I absolutely refuse to write whatever it is suggesting I write unless literally no other word will work). It’s despiriting, to put it simply, and I’m really not sure that I want to insert myself into that world any longer.

To be clear, I won’t stop writing, telling stories, and fighting to keep my creative spirit alive until I’m six feet under. I’m just not sure I can build a life on the shaky foundations that remain of my once bedrock-deep sense of certainty that I’d go the traditional publishing route. I wish I could go back a decade to when I was certain it would happen eventually and correct the skewed vision of my future I had back then since I think that would have saved me a great deal of emotional tulmult if I’d gone into my late twenties without the expectation that I’d somehow have my student loans paid off by the time I was thirty… Turns out income doesn’t actually work like that and rent in my current area is much, MUCH higher than I could have anticipated. I’ve got another five to ten years to go on those loans unless something changes drastically, but it’ll happen eventually I’m sure. Assuming there’s even a society and economic system to keep paying into at that point. Life’s wild these days and I’m really not sure what the next day will hold, let alone the next week, month, or year.

So, for now, I’ll just keep writing my little blog posts and slowly making whatever forward progress I can on getting my life back into some kind of decent shape. Slowly and surely. Eventually this new medication will be done and I’ll feel better than ever (this one is another two to six weeks, I think, maybe seven at the absolute most). And I’ll either acclimate to the other one (the one causing my recent increase in exhaution) or I’ll stop taking it because it’s not worth any potential benefits I might get from it. Eventually the weather will warm, I’ll be able to more easily and dependably go for walks outside, and the lingering traces of seasonal depression will vanish. Eventually I’ll get my buffer rebuilt and start spending some of this writing time on story projects again. Eventually my project at work will end and I’ll be able to take the time to rest. Eventually. Some day. All I have to do is keep on going. Here’s to another thousand blog posts and whatever future I’ll be living in when I hit 2500.