I wrote hard last year. In fact, I did everything hard last year. I put myself about, as the British say. I flung myself against every wall to see if I’d stick.

I think there are something like 200 essays if you scrape them all into one pile. There are maybe 75 podcasts. I chased most of my ideas and tried to make something of them.

I ran two ultra-marathons and some other races. I trained a lot. I rode bikes. I hiked and skied. I read a lot of books that stirred the p(l)ot, and talked to my friends everyday about what it means to go outside and explore the world and your own mind.

I’m not sure, if I’m honest with you, what I was trying to accomplish. I suppose I was happy just to have all those words come out. The quality was variable, as it is bound to be, but I took a lot of satisfaction in doing the work.

Secondarily though, I was trying to put together a following, a group of readers who would come along with me. I don’t know how many people I hoped to snare in my net, maybe a thousand. But that’s not what happened. That’s ok. Competing in the hurl and burl of the internet, of a billion points of light calling for your attention and hoping to hold people’s interest is a bit like wading into the cold ocean’s waves, pissing slowly through your swimsuit, and hoping to turn the whole thing warm.

As 2021 ended, I began asking myself more sharply what it is I needed to be doing. Making money, maybe. Taking all those words and trying to get them to sustain me in more ways than one. And so, I’ve been hurling most of the effluent at The Cycling Independent, which is, at least on its face, set up to earn a living. Whether it will ever do that remains to be seen.

It’s 2022 now, which is a year from a science fiction novel if you’re old enough. I’m not sure what DSS will be going forward. Maybe, after I’ve lain fallow for a stretch, I’ll plow myself into it again, or maybe it’s a project that ran its course.