lmost five years ago, I started writing on this site. My life had reached something of a cliffhanger. I was headed for South America, not sure what to expect or even want, and I hoped that writing online would make the experience of traveling alone feel less, well, lonely. I had other goals: to record my travels, to sharpen my writing, to become ridiculously famous, but mostly, I thought it would be like having a pleasant traveling companion, one who listened always and never interrupted. Maybe a German.

As someone who doublethinks everything--that German joke, for instance--it was also a good exercise in no-takebacks. I have never deleted anything from my site (on purpose, at least), and it is a verbose, at times cringe-inducing, record of the last five years. I like this. I am ridiculously nostalgic—hey, remember when I started this paragraph?—and having a public record of my life pleases me, makes me feel a little taller in the world. Before then, I had written plenty of stories on deadline, but my desk drawers were teeming with half-written plays, the first three pages of a short story, tearful diary entries, scenarios and phrases on crumpled slips of paper. That’s pretty much true of this site, too, except it isn’t stuck in a desk drawer. Which is pretty cool. My inability to actually finish anything was no longer an obstacle to getting published or, perhaps even more important, to getting praise.

Lately, though, I have felt like the girl doing wind sprints to train for the marathon. What I mean is: I have wanted, for many years now, to write a book. The closest I came was eighth grade, when I wrote 150 (dreadful) pages about a bipolar drug addict orphan who kills herself. Back then, I figured by the age of 31, I’d have written several books, not to mention film adaptations and TV series. But, as it turns out, I’m a little less ambitious than my adolescent self, and I require more coaxing than the rest of the class. (Ask my mom about the first day of kindergarten.) Over the years, several people who have read this site have kindly offered such coaxing. And that is much more than I got out of the stupid desk drawer.

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve guessed where this is headed: I’m shutting down the blog portion of my site. I hope to update the articles link frequently and, it should be added, I hope to figure out how to do that. I hope to figure out a lot of things—how to write a novel, how to cook, how to build complicated IKEA furniture, but mostly, how to make good on a few promises to myself. This will be like losing a traveling companion. Those moments when you turn your head, bristling to share a thought with the person beside you, only to discover no one is there. But I like that I am ending at another jumping-off point. A child of 80s episodic TV, I have always appreciated a cliffhanger. The problem with cliffhangers, of course, is that they require a proper resolution. Now I have to figure out what happens next.