The very first blog post on danoshinsky.com went live this month, 13 years ago. I did some occasional posting over those early years, but the blog didn’t really get going, in its current form, until 2011, when I started writing more regularly. With the exception of 2014, I’ve written something for danoshinsky.com pretty much every week for an entire decade.
This started as a way for me to write — and write as much as possible. That’s all it was, really: An outlet for me to make sure that no matter what I was doing for work, I was always making time to write.
And even as the blog audience has grown, that’s really what it continues to be. The work is far more professional now than it was a decade ago, and I write fewer things here about my mother, but as I approach 950 posts on danoshinsky.com, this is really all I’m trying to do: Making time to write. Some of the posts are good, and many are not, but that’s OK. The important thing is that I make time to practice.
There was a time when “writer” was the first word I would’ve used to describe myself. That wouldn’t be the case today, and I’m not sure if there will ever be a time when it’ll be something I consider myself. But I know that I would hate — absolutely hate — to stop writing, and to wake up one day, years from now, only to find that I couldn’t do it anymore.
There are the things you do for your career, and there are the things you do, just for you. This is the latter. No matter where your career takes you, or how busy you get, you still have to make time for both.
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That’s a screenshot of this website from 2011. I wasn’t kidding about the “fewer stories about my mom” part.