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Kristin Rollins
Kristin and her courageous quest for authentic life

Happy New Year 2016! Welcome to A Page A Day

Yesterday was Day 1 of A Page A Day, my New Year’s resolution for 2016.

I wanted to take a few moments to share what my expectations are for sharing here about A Page A Day.

These posts on Medium? They are not my resolution. My resolution is to write at least one page in a notebook each day. But I wanted to start writing some things under the A Page A Day heading because I expect a few different things to come out of this project:

  • Things I write in my notebooks: I am going to be careful about these. I do not want to see these notebooks as things I am necessarily going to share. I think that risks making it more difficult to actually write. But some may show up here, either in re-typed form or as an image, illustrating something I am writing about here.
  • Posts about the process of keeping this resolution: I am sure that there will be difficult days and days where I am astonished by what I put in my notebook. Some days I may fill pages, others I may struggle to fill the required page. And I will certainly need to buy other notebooks over the course of the year if I succeed at keeping this discipline.
  • Creative works: There are some forms of writing that I kind of hope may happen once I start forcing myself to hold the pen in my hand. Depending on what form those take, I may share them (or excerpts or links) here.
  • Posts I can neither ask nor imagine today: A big part of this project is relaxing into playing it by ear. So there may be posts that I can’t imagine today.

Some questions and answers

  1. Who are you? I don’t think that is a terribly useful question to answer here. I hope you will come to know me through my writing. And if I change my mind once 2016 starts, I may fill up some notebook pages figuring out my answer to that question.
    But a bit of bare-bones biographical detail: My name is Kristin, and I will reach my fortieth birthday (if I write it like that, I don’t have to see the zero) next fall.
  2. What is this? This is a place where I will share whatever comes out of my A Page A Day New Year’s resolution.
  3. Where are you? I live with partner, cat, and bird, in southeastern Virginia. I am originally from Canada, in a town almost due north of the city I now live in.
  4. Why are you doing this? Because I have spent months meaning to be creative instead of being creative. Because I find ways to fritter away time which are unproductive and are less than how I want to be.
  5. How did day 1 go? I wrote a page. It was in a notebook that I had previously used (for an aborted NaNoWriMo attempt in 2014, more than a year ago). It was nothing worthy of sharing. But this isn’t about sharing this year. These pages are for my eyes. And, more importantly, for my reflexes. I want to (re)gain the habit of using pen on paper. I don’t want to shun the computer, but I want to use it for what it helps with and use other tools for things they may do better. And I’ve shifted so much to using my computer that I need something like this resolution to rediscover the joys of paper and pen.

So, no, day 1 was a reminder that this resolution will not change my world overnight. It won’t even be fun every day. But I still am holding out hope that it will be a good thing for me, even when I am sitting with pen in hand, cursing the emptiness of the page.