I’ll begin here, prone with my knees up lying on the converted couch, in these last few waking moments of my birthday.

It has been a while. A long while. Last year for my birthday I had the same thought: my new years resolution is to write more, again. So I bought a new domain. Planned a new blog. And didn’t do anything.

It’s like this: writing is a sacred act. So sacred that one can’t just do it; you have to put aside all the profane work before you can come into the sacred space. Or so I felt.

For years my writing practice took place mostly in the coffee shop a mile and a half from my house. I would wake early on Saturday, take the dog around the block, then pack my backpack and walk down the hill, listening to a book or to the sounds of the cemetery sprinklers cycling on and off, and of birds. Once I saw a horse, rider-less, running down the street ahead of me. I’d get to the coffee shop, set myself up at the bar in the loft, and write then as if I was still walking, aimlessly, going down this street, then that one, getting lost in the city of thoughts and words, like a 24-hour layover in a ancient city.

It was its own form of church.

The thing about writing as a sacred act, to be done after every distraction is accomplished and done, is that when you have two kids there is no end to labor. Always dishes, always laundry, always the house to put back together at the end of the day. The work is never done. And Saturday mornings belong to them.

So I want to do this differently. I want to be called to prayer, stop what I am doing and roll out my mat, kneel–even though the dishes still soapy, and clothes are wrinkling in the cold dryer.

Or put another way, the writing must become a chore; just as the dishwashing, laundering, playing LEGOs, cooking hotdogs, wiping yogurt from the floor, have become spiritual acts.

I haven’t told anyone about my plan to write every day for a year. I’m going to try not to tell anyone for at least 6 months. I want to sit on it, I want it to be mine and mine alone.

I am writing this now in an email draft. Tomorrow I will set up a basic wordpress blog, and I will just write, something, every day. Slowly I will try to make the wordpress page more interesting in its design, but that can’t be the first thing. The first thing has to be the writing.

Until tomorrow.