Yesterday, I skipped the Year in Review feature I usually do on December 31. The reason for this is simple. I did not blog at all in 2022. My last post is literally the Year in Review feature from December 31, 2021. I didn’t even do a “Fifteen Years” post on January 1, like I usually do and like I’m doing now.

So this year’s January 1 post has a question mark. Am I really celebrating sixteen years of blogging when I only actually blogged for fifteen of those years? Or am I instead marking a birthday. The blog is indeed sixteen years old today.

2022 was a pretty lousy year for me. I spend most of it unemployed, begging and borrowing, temping and tutoring, gigging and gagging, trying to stay afloat for another week. It was a lousy year, but it had a happy ending, and I’m hoping 2023 will be a better year because of it.

In November, I got a job as a high school English teacher. I am teaching classes of 9th and 11th grade students. And will I get the chance to teach a certain Renaissance writer who may come up from time to time? Yes, I will. I’ll be teaching Romeo and Juliet to the 9th grade classes and Macbeth to the 11th grade classes in May and June.

So there should be more to write about this year, now that I’m a Shakespeare Teacher.

And the creative project I mentioned last year, Project Bootstrap? I can tell you now that it’s a novel, and I’ve done a lot of work on it in the past year. I still have a long way to go before I’m ready to approach publishers, but I have a lot of passion for the project and look forward to enjoying the process of writing it. Maybe I’ll check in here from time to time to discuss my progress.

Happy New Year!

Well, this is the time that, every year, I list my top ten posts of the year. In light blogging years, I’ve limited myself to the top five.

But this year, I only posted three times. This post will be the fourth, so even a top five list will be difficult.

So let me review the three posts I did manage this year, followed by the usual excuses, pledges to do better in the future, etc.

I started with my annual January 1 Blog Birthday post. I’ll probably do one again tomorrow. This one is full of promises to be a better blogger, promises that ring especially hollow looking back on it a year later.

Later in January, I posted a video I created for an online Shakespeare event. This was meant to replace a real-life Shakespeare event I used to attend back when attending events was a thing. In the video, I splice together two speeches from the same character at different points in his life, taken from two different plays.

Jump ahead to November 1. I posted a challenge I hoped would go viral, inviting visitors to cast a Shakespeare play using only the cast of one movie. I did a couple myself. It was fun. Feel free to give it a try.

So those were my three posts for the year, and this one will make four. So, what happened? Well, honestly, I personally had a truly lousy year, and if I were looking for an excuse for not writing, I wouldn’t have to look much past that. However, the real reason I haven’t been blogging is a lot simpler and a lot more positive.

This year, I embarked on a new creative project. I’m not really ready to talk about it yet, but for the moment, we’ll refer to it as Project Bootstrap. I’ve spent a lot of time working on it this year, and have a lot to show for it, though there is much work left to be done before I attempt to unleash it on the world. Any surplus creative energy I may have had this year was spent on that, which is why I didn’t feel the need to come here as often.

In the new year, I hope to be able to do both. Thanks to those who are still here to read this. Happy New Year!

And a warm Rest in Peace to Betty White who left us yesterday. It was a sad note to play out a lousy year.