Preface: 52 Weeks of Writing

I made a discovery about myself in 2021—I can follow through. To my surprise, I was able to stick with a weekly activity for an entire year. Each week, I participated in a 52 Weeks of Cooking challenge hosted on Reddit. Did I submit every entry on time? Were all my recipes big hits? Absolutely not. But in my year—the same year that I lived in three different states, cooked in four different kitchens, and worked two different jobs—I managed to bring each theme to life.

Even now, in the last month of the year, I’m energized about taking on another 52-week challenge.

I spent the past few days thinking over what skills I want to expand upon or improve. I considered baking, but that seemed dangerous. I haven’t lost my pandemic weight and really miss fitting in my jeans. So that idea is out.

Next I looked into photography. I’m handy with a camera, but over the last two years, my skills have lacked practice. I nixed that idea when I started to think about the amount of work and planning required to pull that off on a weekly basis. Eating is part of living, and that made cooking a somewhat easy challenge.

And here is where I land. Writing. I’ve been a working woman for ten years, and aside from a year and a half stint at an ad agency working working in account management, writing has been central to most of my work. I am finally, openly admitting that writing is a part of my living.

I’ve written my own songs (very few I’ve ever made public) since I was in high school. I went through a major poetry phase in college. After college, I got into blogging for a while. Once I began my career in marketing and communications, writing became one of my strengths.

I say all of this with an almost unbearable degree of imposter syndrome clouding my intentions here. Simply put, my spelling will never win me any bees. I’ve seen myself make so many ridiculous spelling errors in text messages and emails that I’m constantly terrified that maybe I’ve lost it.

In my career, I’ve been bound to AP style and active voice, and no offense to my AP-loving friends, but it makes me feel deprived of creativity and expression. It makes me miss the girl that waxed her truth and personality through her keyboard all those years ago. I’d like to see her again.

Weekly challenges worked for me in 2021. So I’m carrying that forward into 2022 with 52 Weeks of Writing. I have curated a list of writing prompts. Most of these poured from my brain, but I also found some fun prompts via the following resources: 52 Writing Prompts to Inspire Your Next Blog Post, Reedsy Prompts, and 52 Weeks of Self-Discovery Prompts for Your Bullet Journal.

I invite literally anyone to follow along on this writing journey with me and/or seek to find or relocate your own voice.