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So… This has been a year, hasn’t it? Perhaps our apocalypse outfits weren’t awesome cool badassery with knives and guns and bandoliers with military issue pants and boots scrounged from an army surplus store, but to be fair, we weren’t fighting zombies or aliens or killer robots either.

No, our opponent for world domination is this itty bitty cootie that can make your life absolutely miserable. Perversely, trying not to get the cooties also made our lives miserable, forcing us to do battle with bored children, our waistlines, depression, loneliness, catastrophic boredom, and that asshole who snagged the last of the soup, pop tarts, and toilet paper, who is now throwing a hissy fit in aisle 7 because he insists wearing a mask supports a deep state conspiracy theory.

End of the year reflections. Ain’t they awesome?

But in theory, we all learned something about ourselves. Maybe. Hopefully.

My sister-in-law introduced me to this idea of instead of New Year’s Resolutions, to pick a single word instead. A word that you can hang on to, be inspired by, or just stare at when it’s scribbled at the top of every page in your planner like some weird memo that you keep around, but you’ve forgotten the purpose of (or am I the only one who does that?).

The word I picked for 2020 was “Courage”, totally unaware of how much I was going to need before I hit June. I meant it more in the context of ‘Have courage to make mistakes”, or even “Have the courage to try new things.”

I certainly did not mean it in terms of “Have the courage to hold your shit together while your children are having mental breakdowns of their own because of everything” or the now tried and tired mantra of “Have courage enough to try writing tomorrow, since today went down the crapper.”

Although, by June I had already picked 2021’s word: “Persistence.”

To be honest, it was a close call between “Persistence” and “Fuck It”, but I chose to stick with the more classy “Persistence”. “Fuck It” might be 2022’ s word. Or 2027–you never can tell.

“Persistence” is what I hope to hold onto this coming year. Just putting one foot in front of the other to get the job done, whatever it is. Looking at each problem and finding and trying another solution to it, like my utter lack of anything even remotely resembling writing this year. I’ve tried several solutions, but what I think will work best will be a complete removal of myself from my home environment during the writing hours of the day. A friend has offered me some space in his home during the summer, now all I have to do is be stay on target and persistently show up on schedule.

It’s interesting how being persistent, realizing the changes that need to happen in order to be consistent and persistent, can be frightening.

Check out the Insecure Writer’s Support Group to see more writers dish about their concerns, their solutions to various problems, or their latest cute pet pictures.