Joy Returns! One Year of Blogging Today

It is so hard for me to believe that it was a year ago today that I sat here and wrote on this blog for the first time.

At that moment, I have to admit that blogging was the least important item on my list of things to do this past year. Now I know it was the most important decision I made.

You see, I've been a writer for a long time. I've written a lot for other people—through newspapers, magazines, book publishers, and other commercial clients along the way.

But when it came to writing for myself, I honestly felt I had nothing to say any more. When contemplating a book idea here or there, I felt empty. And when I started this blog, I was seriously considering what else I would like to do that did not involve writing.

A frightening thought because writing has always been akin to breathing for me.

My first few blog posts were a lot like pulling my own teeth. I realize now that I was feeling quite "formal" about the whole process. But once I relaxed and decided that this space is really for me—though I'm always glad to have company—I wrote whatever I wanted to write.

And that made all the difference.

This blog became a practice in priming the pump. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I realize I had become bored with what other folks wanted me to write. It had been sooooooooo long since I wrote purely for the joy of writing that I had forgotten what that felt like.

Now I remember.

As a consequence, I'm close to done with a first draft of a new novel that I really like. I finished Your Book, Your Way, a project I've wanted to complete for years. I have 363 posts on this blog, and plan to use the best of them, augmented by my log book for the year, in a book that I plan to do on Blurb. (Probably only print one copy just for me.) And I have two versions of my Nellie Bly mystery, called Exposure, to integrate so that it can be published next month. And I founded a non-profit to bring handmade quilts to people with Parkinson's disease.

I lost my Mom, an ache that's eased but will never go away. But we became best friends in the last years of her life, a fact I treasure more than my words can express.

My family weathered a difficult winter in more ways than one. But the Canada geese are honking outside my window this morning, and I got some beautiful fabrics to play with from my husband and my son will make my favorite barbecued chicken for supper tonight and he baked me my favorite cookies last night. (I'm not much of a person for cake.)

So a new year begins for me, and I am so grateful for the one just completed.

My daily blogging focus is shifting to the Inkblog on my personal website: www.SonjaHakala.com. I will welcome your company there.

But I promise to come visit the Power of 60 at least once a week.

I like this place a lot.