This is both the end and the beginning

Dan     life, resolutions, site news

For the month of October, I wanted to kickstart my creative side by writing a post every day. I’ll be very honest, I didn’t think I would finish. I’ve struggled with follow through for my entire life. It’s not that I don’t have a passion for creating– in fact, it’s probably the one single thing that has brought me the greatest amount of joy– but rather that I tend to be easily bored and am prone to distraction.

As I get older, I find that I have more of a desire to DO something… Something worthwhile, something lasting. Maybe this is just simply an acknowledgement of my eventual demise, a desire to make an impact before I fade away into the obscurity of history, whatever you want to call it. Labels aside, I’ve taken a little bit of time each day to write something, and now I’ll be branching out to other projects. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be working on my first book, as part of NaNoWriMo. I’ve been playing guitar more, reading more, listening to podcasts. Basically trying to stimulate my mind, maybe rousing some long-dormant neurons and spurring them to activity.

I set what I believed to be a modest goal: write at least 500 words every day, or roughly 15,000 for the month. I averaged over 700 words per day, ending up with just over 22,000 words written in the month of October. I want to more than double that goal in November. I want to take a moment and thank everyone for reading the things I wrote this month. The public and private comments I received were great motivation to continue. While I will be focusing on other creative pursuits, I will make sure to update my blog semi-consistently, instead of just once or twice each year.

Several posts seemed to gain traction, with hits coming in from links that I did not post. Thanks to the nameless people out there who thought that my posts were worth sharing. My most viewed posts over this past month, in order of popularity:

1. An open letter to Ann Coulter
2. I figured out what happened during the debate last night
3. My coming out day
4. Oh, Ohio
5. Open the eyes of my heart, lord

What I take from this is that there are plenty of people out there who are passionate about politics and religion, just like me. The name of my blog is “I Am Dan Marshall.” It doesn’t give much idea of content, or set any sort of theme that I am obligated to write about. I could write about anything I choose, and to some degree I have. In the future, you can expect to see more posts about politics, current events, and religion, with the occasional update about what’s going in my life, either personally or creatively. As always, I value your thoughts, suggestions, and feedback. You’re always welcome to leave a comment or send me an email. Thanks so much for reading. I hope you continue to do so.

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This has been Day 31 of my blog-a-day goal for the month of October. I made it!

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