Sometimes I write things here that I consider to my self profound — consistent thoughts that have been pressing in my mind for some time, or even conversations I have been having in my head over the course of some days. This is not one of those entries.

You don’t know it, but this project has for a long time been mostly an extension of my daily writing, basically a digest of another ongoing stream of thought. So, because of its nature as sort of a living summary, since 52Weeks has been under my direction it has been a meta-journal useful for monitoring the things I think about — which is funny because I’ve always thought of it the other way around. Instead, it has turned into an insight sink so, at least for me, it has a lot to teach:

For the most part my daily writings are often a review of old thoughts and memories, a few of which recently revealed to me that I know less about my origin as a person than I thought I did. Without conveying all the details here, suffice it to say that I grew up knowing only my mom until I was around thirty. All my recent attempts at recalling the memories about her and my dad lead me back to only a few distinct instances of standing in the front seat of our little car, watching her cry while she recounted more of her recent divorce than she probably should have to a five year-old. For some reason I thought I knew more about him and what happened between them, but I now I realize I remember our talk not for its volume, but only because of its power.

There was a time when I felt badly about what happened to her, but life alone with her was my reality back then. That most of my friends when I was growing up had two parents probably played a bigger role in my want for dad than anything real. I didn’t really know him, so now I’m unsure what I was missing then.

I don’t feel much about the person I used to be because he has been gone for a long time. I’m comfortable with that. But today I realize this project and all its basis writing has given me insight into the person I became from whatever circumstances existed over forty years ago. Regardless what that means in reality, at least I’m aware that mom and I together endured a character-enhancing destitution, along with just enough pragmatic guidance from a few key people — and I’m okay that it took over forty-five years and a ton of thinking to reach that conclusion.

Insights like these come and go, just like my interest in these projects. Hell, maybe the relationship between the two flows is closer than I think. Regardless, these creative outlets have paid back way more than the energy I have put into them, which is important to keep in mind during the frequent creative droughts and stress I feel about publishing here. It is what it is, just like life, and there is no point avoiding it.