Having revealed my blogging direction for the coming year, please allow me to fill in some of the background.

As we enter the Barn’s 14^th year, the merry-go-round concept continues, including Tendrils on Tuesdays and Kinisi on Sunday evenings. With our home renovation on pause, you’ll see fewer entries on that project, though one of its consequences will become the main focus over the year. To wit: As I posted last May, I need to downsize my possessions to fit into our new space, meaning collections, and my 200-some volumes of journaling have become a target. Frankly, I hadn’t opened most of those scribblings aka manuscripts in the past decade or two. Was I likely to do so in the next five years or so? Or would they continue to collect dust? As I was saying? Besides, do I want to burden my wife and daughters with one more burden to clean out when I’m no more? Heavens, no.

Setting forth five months after my New Year’s goal of culling those pages, I expected to find that the earliest volumes had been thoroughly mined in drafting my novels and poetry, and that what remained would be embarrassingly sophomoric. Well, many passages were. But there was enough other material I didn’t want to lose, which led to keyboarding those bits before ceremoniously burning the volumes themselves. More on that later in the season.

So far, I’ve gotten through the first decade after my graduation from college. Far more remained from what I had imagined.

As these appear here, perhaps they’ll work along the lines of Ned Rorem’s Paris Journals, though much less scandalously and thoroughly lacking celebrities. Who knows what morbid fascination you might engage.

I’ll try not to add too much context but rather let them pour forth largely unedited. You might feel something like an eavesdropper that way. Some of the identities may, however, be changed to protect the guilty.

With fewer photos here in the coming year, the Barn will be more word-driven, befitting a novelist and poet, but with a funky edge. As a “gentle reminder” I came across last year advised:

“Let life feel a little illegible sometimes. You’re not a quote. You’re not a theme. You’re a page with scribbles, rewrites, margin notes. Let it stay messy. That’s what makes it real.”

Thanks to YouBook Story at Instagram for that inspiration. Let’s see how it fits.

Onward, then!