At the beginning of '07 I said to several good friends, "This is my year" and then I proceeded to make it so. It has been quite a year. Since June I've been on the outskirts of society and am learning to swim my way down the stream of life. I've perplexed plenty of people including my family and often late at night I wonder if I'm going totally insane or becoming completely enlightened. I'm taking the latter and learning to trust it. It's been a miraculous trip this year of mine. In October I thought I'd starve but I didn't. I learned to track Craigslist like a fiend and it produced a couple of jobs that got me through till now. My mother gave me two more installments beyond the sabbatical she funded and I am forever grateful. Friends have helped me with loans and I am humbled and honored. Miracles erupt every day and I'm finding out that staying in the present moment is essential to manuever through this exhilirating, exhausting experience. On more than one occasion I would have easily given it all up to have my teaching job back. No more complaining. A paycheck every two weeks, the hell with burn out, stop being a baby! Comply! Comply! Comply!

But every day I see growth, change, wisdom emerging from the knowledge, the determination to hold on despite the critical eyes, desperation, and what appears on more days than not, small progress. "What do you write?" is asked of me whenever I declare myself as a writer."When is your book going to be done?" I've heard, too. And then the looks that say I'm posing, coasting, in a breakdown, in flux, in trouble.

I'm writing articles that come to me as I go about my day and I'm sending them out and I'll send more and more until I know I'm a freelancer. I'll finish the novel and release it when I say it's done.

I'm carrying around an idea notebook. Being a writer is a commitment, as true to the act of marrying someone, promising. I promise to work on this every moment of my life. And on the days it seems like I'm totally out of my comfort zone and not a good writer, I'll write more. And the small breakthroughs will continue to come as in labor when it seems hopeless, finally the head will crown. But what I have learned this year is to enjoy it all, this incredible journey.

2008. It's going to be a great year.