It’s a new year and I find myself once again sitting in my car waiting outside the fingerprinting office on Seventh Avenue.

I submitted my teaching license renewal to be a substitute teacher again. Only this time I won’t be in Portland proper. I’ll be on both the east and west sides of town as I settle into a new routine of coaching and teaching.

It’s another year and I have a new daily story section. Last year, I really didn’t write all that much compared to the two years past. I didn’t have as much of a reason to. Even with publishing my first anthology and navigating return to Portland, I didn’t find many stories that I wanted to take beyond any of my notebooks.

I initially started my 365 story challenge to push myself creatively. It wasn’t about churning out. Highly refined works or even having stories that I thought would be imminently publishable. I wrote them because I needed something more. And I’m remembering that now as I have settled back in into Portland, and for all the friends and family, I find myself wanting more from myself.

I don’t know if this will be another go at trying to write and post something every single day. But I do believe this is the beginning of a stretch of time where I will be productive. In my eyes, I have two years ahead of me to, get my feet sorted for coaching and trying to push myself past self regulated limits for writing.

I have another anthology of stories that’s more or less ready to go. I need to edit them a little bit more and then release them with this new year. It’s little by little that dreams are realized the second anthology wouldn’t have come about without these daily stories or living so far from Portland.