*taps mic*

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*clears throat*

…Um…

<feedback> <echo>

okay, so .. um…

*bumps mic*

Hi, my name is MontiLee (or Penda, depending on how long you’ve been following me), and you may remember me from such blog posts as The Chicken Man of Madison Heights and Memories of Another When.

Part of what I want to do this year (2015) is get back to this *waves hands vaguely* blog-writing-thing. I’ve got this great platform, this great theme (32 great themes, if I’m honest about my obsession), all of the space I could ever want to run my mouth and rant and pretend anyone cares —

— and it’s just sitting fallow. That’s a shame.

There’s an instant nonsense to Facebook that I’m growing to hate, especially the way I can scroll back hours and (sometimes days) to see the same posts I’ve already looked at and still have nothing new to say. If I wait a few hours, those posts will be shared by different people and I can still have nothing new to say, but there will certainly be more nonsense in my feed.

(there was a whole paragraph of snark I just cut out because it’s been so long I can’t tell who my audience is anymore and some of you are really, really sensitive)

So, while I’m not going so far as to remove the FB app from my phone (I’m not crazy) I am making a more concerted effort to post here (littleblackduck) more and there (Facebook) less. I need a break from some of you. Some of you I’ve already divorced, you’ve just been avoiding the process servers.

(I’ll wait while everyone runs to check to see if we’re still friended)

I’ve given myself very explicit deadlines for what I want to accomplish in the first quarter of 2015 (CDI, several posts and reviews, a few running milestones), and frankly, I can’t afford to be sidelined by some stupid meme or political nonsense or Outrage of the Week. Facebook is a time sink, a black hole devoid of creativity in favor of homogenized likes and the same blessed meme and clickbait site shared 100 times. I can’t devote my free-time righting some grammatical or typographical wrong to prove how clever I am.

I am clever, and I don’t need Facebook to validate it for me.

I’m not getting any younger and there’s a lot I want to do. I’ve have two projects that were dear to me fall right into the crapper because I was waiting on the other person to just do something. I put a lot of trust into others and I got hella burned for it. I can no longer trust people who want to “collaborate” to make an effort and to not be afraid of  becoming something huge.

I can no longer keep dwelling on a shelved projects I sank my soul into because those projects are dead. It’s time to stop grieving and move on.

So I am. I expect to be complete with CDI by the end of February. While I’m pounding that out, I’d like to get 100 miles run, either in the gym or on the road. Doesn’t seem like a lot on the surface, but I don’t know a lot of people running 50 miles in a month, so it’s putting me in very select company.

These are two small goals (not resolutions) I have for myself, and I’m not going to ask anyone to be a minder for me. I know I can do this, I just have to do it. I might even kill an evening looking for an adorable little widget because the internet loves widgets.  I’d like to get back to a weekly posting, I’d like to get back to bentos, I need to get back to the thing that makes me me. They’re too important and I can’t afford to ignore them anymore.

I don’t want to be a cocktail party writer, you know where it only really comes up at parties and people ooo and ahh and ask if they’ve read anything I’ve written. I don’t want to just post about the places I’m hanging out because those places are so much cooler than the fact that I’m not really writing Further – I don’t want to be the writer that shows up at places and makes the scene artsy and cool.

In 2014, I was five for five in the places I submitted for publication, and one of those was to a big 5 imprint, so yeah, I’ve got a little momentum I’d like to build on.

This is more than tracking word counts and calories – it’s going to be like tracking a shooting star. Sure, I may crash and burn and break up into a million pieces that never touch the ground, but what a dazzling impact I’ll make.

I will stop finding excuses to not finish The Things I’ve started. I want to look over this blog in January 2016 and say to myself, “huh – that’s what happened.”

And that’s my New Year’s braggadocio.  Write, run, smile.

(and before people start pointing out the irony of the gifs in this post, save your breath – Carter is the very definition of impact.)