One of my few accomplishments during the quarantining last year (besides an epic four part poem about dust, and five poems about national park grief) involved creating a Halloween costume, buying all the parts, fitting it into a perfect storage container, and even labelling it.

Then I put it in my closet, the quarantine never let up, nobody invited me to a Zoom costume party, and Halloween passed me by.

I suppose you want to know what costume I made? Sorry, I’m keeping that secret until this year’s holiday. But this is what I was thinking about when I made it:

Anyway, brooding about that unused costume and about setting this year’s goals led to me deciding to just finish stuff and “put it out there.” I’m referring specifically to a number of posts you have yet to see because I got so caught up in perfecting them that I missed my deadline for them, lost my momentum, put them to the side, and (mostly) forgot about them.

This year I am cleaning out the old, making way for the new, and instead of thinking of them as “late” posts, I’m just going to call them “early drafts.”

I will be repurposing leftovers. Enjoy!

Sometimes we need to clear our plates by making the best with what we have and keep moving forward. For instance:

I know this is early, but just in case, Merry Halloween!