2021--The Year for Soul-Searching

It'll be a year of changes, like it or not.

I would like to think I reserve my soul-searching for the beginning of every year but the truth is, I’m always searching my soul about something. If I ever came up with the answers I wouldn’t have to do it as often, but the searching keeps me busy. Or distracts me. Or gives me an excuse to procrastinate. It rarely ever produces results. Or it seems that way.

But here I am, doing it again.

I’ve been thinking about this newsletter. As much as I appreciate friends and family who have subscribed to it, I never planned on it being a personal newsletter. I want it to be something that moves my writing along, that builds a like-minded community of both readers and activists.

The tagline is, “Writing from the Cultural and Political hinterlands”, and that’s where I want it to go, but I’m finding that I’m holding back because I know more than half of my readership is made up of people who know me personally. (Hi, y’all!) I find myself writing to them and not to a broader audience and, while I love my friends and family, that’s what Facebook is for. Not that I want any of you to leave; just know that much of what I write here from now on may not interest you.

Big things have been happening in my life, not all of them good, but the parts that are private won’t make their way here. That’s been my conundrum: What do I want from this newsletter? I think I finally know. I want to talk about writing, culture, and politics in a way that is both intimate and informational. I’ll be directing readers to other writers who have said it better than I ever could. I’ll be talking about the business of writing, sharing links there, too. I want it to be a go-to newsletter, not an exercise in self-indulgence—but I want it to reflect me as a writer. (Not asking for much, huh?)

I’m seriously thinking about downsizing my blogs, archiving my neglected Big One, Ramona’s Voices, for example, and instead sticking with Medium, this newsletter, and the occasional farming out of pieces to other sites when the occasion arises. I may even, at some point, monetize this newsletter and let it be my only voice. Others have done it and it works for them.

Too many irons in the fire when there is so much going on at home has ground me to an inevitable halt. If I’m going to go on writing about the things that are meaningful to me, I need to focus. And that’s what I’m going to try to do.

I want to be braver.

We’re on the threshold of new and exciting changes in our political system. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won’t be miracle workers. They and the Democratic majority will make mistakes. They’ll make us angry some of the time, and we’ll be scratching our heads in dismay often over decisions we won’t agree with. (Why won’t they listen to us??) But I’ll be cheerleading from here while playing mother hen, tsk-tsking a lot, but in a loving way. (Some things never change.)

I hope you’ll join me, even after all of this. I do love company.