They Said, I Bet, They'll Never Make It, But Just Look At Us Holding On, We're Still Together, Still Going Strong

--"You're Still The One", Shania Twain

I'm not one to usually make resolutions. I don't believe in them and I probably never have. I don't much see the point of making a promise to yourself that is nigh impossible to fulfill, only to beat yourself up later about it. As I learned from Jim Carrey's Yes Man, "When you break a promise to yourself, things can get a little dicey." I never want to be put into that position. I want to, more or less, be able to say that I only make promises I believe I can make good on.

Granted, my track record for finishing endeavors I've begun in good faith isn't exactly exemplary. My novel is still three-fourths of the way from being completed. I never did take up those curling lessons I've always meant to do. And I still have yet to go on my cross country road trip. However, the one project I've always prided myself on keeping on schedule is this blog. I've always maintained that, if nothing else, I would continue to put effort into keeping this project going on a fairly consistent schedule. Whether it's getting off my butt and putting up a new post, or motivating the girls to keep up their end of the bargain, I've always kept resolute about maintaining california is a recipe for a black hole for as long as possible.

A good measure of my adhering to this vow was the pace at which new posts would be posted here. In the first few years we had an absolutely amazing pace. I believe that new posts were being written at a rate of four to five new posts a week. Indeed, in the first two years of existence we crossed the two hundred posts a year barrier quite easily. I don't know what it was--perhaps we had a plethora of stories to tell that y'all hadn't heard before. Or maybe it was just the initial excitement of a undertaking just getting off the ground. Whatever it was, I believe I speak for us all when I say it was just easier to hop onto my computer to jot a few paragraphs down. And occasionally, should the need arise, it was even easy to plop down a fifteen to twenty page story.

Eventually, though, that pace became slower and slower. Even with the addition of Marion to the rotation, around the third and fourth years we were only writing around four posts a week. While we still approached two hundred posts a year, I don't think we broke the barrier in either of those years. At least for Breanne and I, it became obvious that all our best stories had already been written up here. Personally, I'm a person who relies on letting people getting to know me with the same few dozen of anecdotes I'd stored up. With those already disseminated, I quite frankly did not have enough new anecdotes to relay here.

Besides, I never liked this becoming a blog that acted more like a diary than a journal. I'm a much bigger fan of writing my life in hindsight rather than as a current event.

Which brings me to the current era this site finds itself in. As you can probably tell, the posting here has become more and more sparse. Currently we are posting maybe three posts a week, if that. Again, I speak for all of us when I say that notion just makes me feel terrible. It's as if we all spent time raising this kid and then just neglected it in its formative years, just as it was beginning to come into its own. That's no way to nurture anything or anyone you supposedly love. Remaining true to anything or anyone requires more dedication than that, if history has taught me anything.

That being said, I had originally meant to write this announcement up yesterday, but found myself unavoidably occupied (yet again). What I wanted to say yesterday was that I was making my first resolution in years. More precisely, I was making a resolution for myself, Lucy, and Marion. I want to make 2011 the year we get back to writing five posts a week or, at the very least, four. I want this a place readers come to almost every day to find something new waiting for them.

Therefore, in best resolution format, I am making a resolution to see two hundred fifty new posts in the calendar year of 2011.

I don't care who does it. I don't even care the length or depth of them. I've never said any of our posts have to be a certain length or involve certain topics. I just want it back to the old days where we all wrote something every time we thought, "hey, that would make a good idea for a post." Instead of leaving it for later, I want the three of us to go back to that semblance of focus where we wrote our ideas and memories down as we were reflecting on them in real time.

As Barbara Kingsolver once wrote, "There is no perfect time to write. There's just now." Well, 2011 might not be the perfect year to write, but it is now. As of today, there have been 1,086 posts written here. By December 31st, 2011, it will read 1,336 if I have to fly down to Macon and South Bend myself to get those gals motivated... or, heaven forbid, they have to fly down to Long Beach to get me off my sorry ass. This site is too important to let it linger in apathy.

That's my resolution and I happen to think it's a good one.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers