Happy Anniversary, Y'all!

This newsletter just turned one!

Exactly one year ago, on June 4, 2023, I wrote the first edition of Engulfed in Flames. And somehow, every week since that, I’ve managed to send you something new to read. That’s, like, 52 newsletters already!

I actually can’t believe I made it a whole year and didn’t give up on this. I tend to be the kind of person that starts a lot of personal projects and abandons them halfway. Some of that is just due to the stress of keeping things consistent when life gets busy — but I am also just someone who gets bored easily and gives up on hobbies when they no longer feel fun.

As a living testament to this, I have a whole closet full of half-finished crafts that I’ve tossed to the wayside when they no longer held my attention. Half-knitted scarves, half-sewn dresses, half-finished embroidery hoops … some dating back to high school. (I don’t even know what to do with all of that stuff and I don’t even want to think about it!!)

For a while after I started writing this newsletter, I wondered if I’d inevitably grow bored and this project would become another ghost of hobbies past. At least an abandoned newsletter doesn’t leave behind any physical detritus.

Believe me, there were weeks when I felt like this was gonna flop. Even the first or second week into the newsletter I started having second thoughts, since I got laid off from my job and it totally threw me into a funk. At the same time, though, I saw the potential for this newsletter to become a place to really let my creativity flow and write what I wanted, rather than what an editor needed me to write.

And so far, the lot of you seem to enjoy when I write whatever I want. That is extremely cool and makes me feel like maybe I might be half-decent at this writing thing.

When I was a wee kiddo, I wanted nothing more than to be a writer. Not a journalist or a newsperson — just a writer. I ended up studying journalism in college because several adults told me that doing journalism was a valid way to make money writing (questionable advice, if you ask me). Somehow I got a job in this industry right out of school (which is a rarity) and that’s how I ended up where I did. But amidst all that hubbub about careers and whatnot, I kind of lost sight of why I even got into the field in the first place.

I really just wanted to write. That’s all I’ve ever wanted!

Sending you folks stories about my life and whatever topics are on my mind every week has been helping me rekindle that deep love for writing that I’ve always had. For a while I forgot that writing essays and stories is a lot more fulfilling to me than reporting the news. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate journalism or anything — I just like this better.

I feel like I can actually be myself here and not dull my personality or experiences in order to write something worth reading. Journalism is so different in that you have to put yourself aside to write a good article (or at least, that’s the old-school method of thinking). You have to be good at putting yourself in other people’s shoes, so much that you start to forget where you left your own.

Here, I don’t have to do that. It’s just me with my big old clown shoes on, baby, and you all get to see it!

So thank you for being here, reading my weekly drivel — and actually, I hope, enjoying it. I’m having a good ol’ time, but I really wouldn’t feel as encouraged to keep doing this if so many of you didn’t subscribe, donate, and send me kind messages with your thoughts on my essays.

I haven’t really given much thought to what year two will look like, but I hope it will be good. I hope you don’t grow bored of my stories or that I run out of things to write about. There might be some changes down the road, but I haven’t decided yet what I want to do to make this newsletter even better.

But it’s no use fretting about those things! Instead, have some assorted cakes. I would send you all a real slice of cake if I could, but that would be expensive and complicated. So here’s a feast for your eyes:

Oh, and if you feel compelled, you can send me a newsletter birthday gift on my Ko-fi page. We’re almost to that $800 spring goal, which I hope we’ll hit before the summer solstice on June 20. Thank you to everyone who’s already donated — the fact that I make any money from this work whatsoever is a huge honor.

Cheers to the next 52 weeks!