I opened my three-ring binder where I keep hard copies of my blog posts and counted the essays. I knew that I had been blogging for almost four years, which meant I had completed over 200 posts. And I have – 203 to be exact.
I considered my reasons for writing and publishing on social media. In January 2019, I built a Square Space website, set up a MailChimp account to distribute my writings to readers, and created Facebook and Instagram accounts. I was in the final editing stage of my exercise habit formation book, Daily, and I hired a social media expert to help me navigate those slightly scary waters. My goal was to use social media to sell books, and for the first several months, my posts focused on habit formation, the benefits of daily exercise, and practical tips to make daily exercise easier.
But one of the mystifying, yet beautiful, learnings about beginning a journey is that it often leads you to unexpected places. And that turned out to be true for me. I began blogging to promote my book, but it evolved into an exercise more exacting and fulfilling than I thought possible. I shared my views about life, marriage, work, and memories of my childhood and young motherhood. I perused my soul, my values, my shortcomings, and my dreams. I became an observer of human nature and Mother Nature in a way that I had not done before.
I became a better writer. I learned how to start my essay with a hook and end it with a bang. I focused on eliminating repetitive word usage, and I expanded my vocabulary with alternative terms. I struggled with present versus past tense and passive sentence structure, and I won a few of those battles. I strove to strike a balance between a tone that was genuinely authentic without being overly evocative.
As I paged through my essays, I smiled at several of them. Others irritated me with their simplicity and banality. Occasionally I read one that astounded me with its honesty, its depth, and its sincerity, and my eyes softened.
I am someone who plans endeavors with industrious detail. Some pursuits have concrete starting and ending points, particularly cleaning projects. In 2012, I challenged myself to clean closets, cupboards, and storage boxes for at least thirty minutes a day for 50 successive days. The pandemic motivated me to clear out and eliminate our storage unit, a weekend task that began on June 20, 2020, and ended right before the fall election. A 15-minute-a-day office clean-up project started at the same time and ended, as planned, 50 days later.
I began other pursuits without knowing how and where they would end. I spent seven years studying Portuguese every day on the Duolingo app, and I recently quit, as the reason for wanting to learn the language had ceased. I began my Health Coach Institute Life and Heath Coach program in 2019 and finished it on June 15, 2020, diligently studying new materials and completing the homework assignments and practice sessions but being uncertain how long the certification would take.
I planned my retirement two years ago, scheduling communications with my partners, with staff, and with clients. I followed my agenda with rigorous diligence, knowing that I would regret anything short of assiduousness. I closed cases and transferred files to other attorneys in my law firm. I fully documented every case and created follow-up action items for attorneys and staff. I prepared a detailed management memo, and I trained and mentored the new firm manager. The two of us spent countless hours discussing not just the mechanics of running a business, but the nonquantitative aspects as well.
Some of my pursuits are permanent: I will work out every day for the rest of my life until I am immobile. But unlike exercise, my blog posts seem to have arrived at a natural conclusion. My life as a working lawyer invigorated but consumed me, leaving little space to respond to beckoning whispers. Similarly, my blogging history was gratifying, yet demanding, in its own deadline-fixated way.
I post this final article on my website, and I schedule the email for transmission at 10:00 am PST. I am excited, yet nervous, about ending an undertaking that challenged me in so many ways over the past four years. I will miss the heartfelt emails that my readers sent me, reminding me of the commonality of our shared human experience. But if I have learned one thing in life, it is that there are no guaranteed outcomes. You make the decisions that seem best for you, move forward, and adjust your path as new developments lead you.
I have had a good run.