Pivoting is the Opposite of Failing

In January 2026, I promised myself I would post here once a month. I didn’t want to do what I’d done in 2025, which was drop a series of nine love bombs over the course of 90 days, and then ghost the site for the next nine months.

(You can read more about that in Hey World, Look What I Made!)

Instead, I wanted to consistently show up once a month over the course of the full year. In February, I also decided I’d upload my work on the last Saturday of every month, an approach I believed would help me gauge my success.

The good news is I’ve followed through with my intentions for the past six months:

• My January post, Hey World, Look What I Made!, dropped on January 22, and gave folks an overview of what my writing life looked like after I went silent in 2025. That month, I also added an About page to the site which provided insight into my passion for writing.
• On February 22, I published The Art of Personal Myth-Making which explored how the stories we tell about our life can give it meaning.
• On March 28, I added The Power of Our Personal Stories to Shape Our Habits. This post discussed how the stories we tell ourselves can either help or hinder our ability to change our habits. It also provided readers with a glimpse into my previous work as a consulting hypnotist.
• My Smoking Story, which dropped on April 25, showcased the internal story that kept me chained to my smoking habit for over 30 years.
• Finally, on May 30, I posted Taking Breaks Can Help You Change Your Habits, a story about how not quitting cigarettes and alcohol helped me kick both habits to the curb for good.

The bad news is I’m not satisfied with the content I shared

Although I’ve attained my goal so far—if you’re reading this post you’ll know I posted in June as well—I’m not sure the content of the writings reflect the overall vision I initially had for this website.

What I’ve wanted since I created it is to provide readers with a coherent view of who I am as an author. My original thought was to post a series of new, polished pieces that could do that. However, I think over the past few months, and maybe even from the start, several of the posts did not accurately represent who I was or what I was writing in the moment.

I must admit generating new content is a challenge for me. I’m very slow at revising. A piece that may take only a few minutes for you to read, may have taken me a month or more to craft. The Power of Our Personal Stories to Shape Our Habits is a good example. I began writing it in late January, intending to publish it on the last Saturday of February. Because it took me two months to write, however, I had to find something else to post that month. To meet the deadline, I dusted off The Art of Personal Myth-Making, a story I had written several years before. I did the same in May with Taking Breaks Can Help You Change Your Habits which I wrote in 2020 to help market a course I had created at that time.

Another challenge I face is that I’m often juggling several projects at the same time. While I wrote The Power of Our Personal Stories to Shape Our Habits, I also began drafting my third novel. From the beginning of February till the end of April, I wrote and polished two chapters. Then, from the end of April till the beginning of June, I took a six week Lyric Essay writing class. I’m still in the middle of revising the essay I started writing during that course.

As well, throughout that past few months, I’ve also written and polished a few new poems and a flash fiction story that I’ve submitted to various literary journals in hopes of getting them published.

All in all, I just don’t see myself continuing to attempt to write and publish new essays and articles each month. It’s simply not sustainable, and sets me up for failure every time.

According to Steve Pemberton, “Pivoting does not mean changing your goal, but rather changing your strategy to realize that goal.”

So where does that leave me? Easy. I’m still aiming to post on a monthly basis, but what I’ll publish may look more like Hey World, Look What I Made! and the post you’re reading right now, although you may still see the occasional essay or article. I will NOT, however, hold to the idea of publishing on the last Saturday of every month. I figure I’ll just surprise you instead.

I hope that’s okay with you. 🙂

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