There's something about the winter solstice that always lends itself to reflection for me. It is dark and cold and the fleeting light mirrors the rapid dwindling of days at the end of the year. There hasn't been much light in this whole long, grinding year, that is for certain, but today, before the sun sets on this shortest day, I wanted to reflect not on the terrible bits (though there have been a lot) but instead on the one thing that has sustained me through them: Doing The Work.

For me, this year, The Work has largely been writing. I've written more words this year than I've written perhaps in any year before now. I wrote them for myself and for you, not for an ever-shrinking freelance check. I did it by setting a goal of writing 36 posts this calendar year, a number I'll hit exactly despite some of the tragedies and travel of the year meaning that I barely posted in June and August. It was an arbitrary goal, one that nobody was enforcing but myself. But, especially as things fell apart, it sustained me in a way that was a good reminder that The Work matters.

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