I was reading an article in the Washington Post about people who set out to do something every day for a year – one woman builds a tiny chair every day out of various objects and materials, one man eats a taco every day (which doesn’t seem like much of a challenge), another woman braids hair in a different way each day. This got me thinking about what my goals for 2016 would be and what I wanted to achieve.

The idea of writing 366 poems in 2016, one poem every single day is extremely daunting. And since it’s a leap year there’s an extra day, and an extra poem, in there. It’s also a bit exciting and more than a little terrifying. In 2015 I set a goal of keeping poetry alive in my life. I did a good job of meeting this goal – I took a poetry workshop with Megan Falley, my favorite poet. I participated in Postcard Poetry Fest. I took an online poetry workshop. I published and did readings and sent off submissions. I attended workshops and events and readings. I read 38 poetry books in 2015. I wrote and edited and scribbled and scrawled. I really did a great job of keeping poetry an important part of my life. But I want to keep pushing myself and pushing my writing which means looking for the next challenge, and if the idea of writing a poem every single day for an entire year isn’t a challenge I don’t know what is. And so every though it scares the hell out of me I’m going to do it. Because really, that’s what life is all about.