2025 Holiday Letter 😬

An old friend IM'd holiday greetings to me from Thailand. 

She has been like a big sister to me since high school--no matter how far apart we have lived, no matter how great the expanse of time between us.  

She asked about my writing, which she described fondly as confident and quirky. (Sounds about right.) Had I written anything in 2025? 

If I had posted anything new, she hadn't seen it on FB. 

Could I please send her the links? 

😬

I wrote her a long rambling reply, as if to make up for not having written anything all year. 

~Dinkus~

Writing. You think it only matters to you. And maybe not even to yourself. 

You believe it doesn't matter at all, objectively, whether you write or you don't.

And then someone undeniably smarter and braver than you are, someone you have looked up to with love and admiration since high school, evinces interest in your writing. 

She is looking at you, saying,

"Well?" 

"..." 

You are gobsmacked  😶 by shame for having written nothing. 

That inner voice that holds the remote control to your electric collar gives you a sudden painful shock. 

I mean, it's not like you had to write commentary and join that whole big-pile of redundant ranting. 

It's not like you had to write something so astonishingly brilliant it would fix everything expeditiously. 

You could have written some small, personal, stupid stuff--while the country went down in flames. 

While mothers were shot in their minivans with a dog in the back seat (did we not see a retriever in the back seat?!), you could have written some very personal, small-scale crap.

Sure. Why not?

You could have written about what it's like to be so comfortable in your life. So bougie. 

~Dinkus~

The weird thing is, you literally keep a list of writing ideas on your Notes app. You used to update it as though every idea were a movie you read was good. 

Moreover, you suspect your creative powers have returned since that whole change-of-life ordeal. (The headaches! Remember the headaches?) 

On the other hand, you're not medicated for ADHD any longer because you don't want to have a stroke, which was definitely going to happen, and which is why you just now returned to the computer after two hours when you got up to brew yourself a cup of decaf and ended up brewing decaf, walking the dogs, feeding the horses, cleaning the barn, and peeling off two floor-to-ceiling strips of removable wallpaper  in Josh's room (not that easy to remove!). 

But your engines are revved and you have that list of ideas. 

And while most Americans could not care less what a bourgeois white women has to say about anything...

And while you totally understand why they wouldn't, and are frankly embarrassed by the list of ideas on your Notes app...

And because, let's continue to be honest, you have let your friend's kind words go straight to your oversized head...

You sit down to write.