Hat on Top, Coat Below is one today. Before opening day there were the out of town tryouts, but it was one year ago that I went public. I meant to give it a present– a real design, say– but haven’t quite gotten around to carving out the time to find or make one. I’d really like these pages to be less generic, but it’s so hard to take the time to figure something like that out when there’s fabric to be cut and played during my creative moments. Oh well, it’s just a baby; the journal probably won’t notice if there’s no big celebration.

It’s been a pretty good year. Writing online added a new element to my life. I participated in some collaborative writing exercises. I went to JournalCon. I got nominated for a Diarist Award, and this quarter I’m on the panel. I’m already looking forward to this year’s JournalCon. Perhaps best of all, I’ve connected with some great people I wouldn’t have heard from if it weren’t for this site.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing this right. I have yet to be tempted to go on hiatus or take down my archives or give up. I have not had anyone in my offline life pitch a fit about something I’ve written (or if they have, they haven’t done it to me). I guess there’s just not a lot of drama in my life. Good. I get tired enough just dealing with the normal types of stuff, getting up and going to work and trying to keep the house from getting out of control and spending time with Mr. Karen and doing my own creative projects.

I just reupped with Diary-X, renewing my Plus! Subscription and springing for twice as much image storage space so I can keep posting quilt pictures and sharing my fashion mistakes from days of old and so on. I’m pretty confident I’ll still be writing a year from now, so making the decision to renew was easy. Next year at this time, I hope I’m still feeling good about writing online.