It used to be that conservatives understood my positions. But now, they’ve moved right, and that contributes to centrists like me gradually being left out of the discourse altogether.
I haven’t moved to the right. If it looks like I have on a particular issue, chances are good that I’ve always been there. The liberals, however, have moved to the left.
I had hoped to simply sit NaNoWriMo out for a few years until it got through its growing pains. But it’s become clear that it is no longer an organization that I can support at all.
If I had to give a one-sentence evaluation of my writing during August 2024, I think I’d say something along the lines of, “you win some, you lose some.” But it hasn’t been enough to discourage me; rather, it has given me a reason to keep my momentum going.
I felt horribly guilty for over a decade after my father died, which had reverberations for a significant part of my life. But I did not feel guilty after my mother’s death earlier this year. Neither of those means I’m doing it wrong.