I have been writing a blog post every day for a year now. Well, a year and a day.

I do that kind of thing, set myself a task and then labor diligently to complete it, day in, day out, one step at a time. I have completed many idiosyncratic projects that way in my life, just succeeding by showing up, even when I didn’t have any motivation.

The other day, for instance, I reminded my group that I’m going to need a 53-year coin in September, just as a heads-up. And I have four over-50 world championships medals in a frame on my wall because I decided on a whim to start fencing in my forties, and then kept doing it.

Mind you, I don’t want to make money at writing, or fame, or even get respect for what I do, not any more. I just figure if I’m going to write every day, it’s only polite to make it available for people to read, at least for a while. If I decide I don’t want it up any more, I’ll archive it and delete it.

I mostly write for myself. Even the first book I published conventionally was written in the first place because it struck me that the idea would make a good book, and then I got published by accident.

I went to a publishing conference once run by Writer’s Digest, and (as usual when I got to things like that) was politely baffled by people’s ambitions. I have a few screws loose. That said, I still get royalties from time to time from the books I self-published later on.

I write first for myself, and then secondarily for other people in case they need something to read. I can’t help it. That’s how I’m built. But I think I’ll look around for a writing group again, if I’m going to continue to be alive. I’ve been working on another book, after all, and now that I’ve written a blog post a day for a year, I am free from that commitment and can try a few others.

I’ll see what happens. But meanwhile, I have some other things I’ve been meaning to get to, and now I can.