One

I've been writing this blog for almost four years. When I first started, I was a grimy undergraduate student who could barely hold down a part-time job and once called the corner store to see if they would deliver me Coke Zero and soup because I had a sinus infection and it was snowing. Despite being 24 years old, I was basically a feral teenager. I lived in a apartment-cum-clubhouse, where my clothes were heaped in middens on my filthy carpet and I scrounged money out of the dryer to pay for dive-bar pints.

I was, in other words, a wreck.

In some ways, since it forced me to shape up, being a wreck was good for me. I did some heavy work and quit some bad habits. I slowly stopped staying in bed 17 hours a day, and started eating three meals a day. I graduated. I met a swell guy. For the first time in my life, my plants haven't died as soon as they crossed my threshold.

I leaned on my parents a lot in my financially lean times - unemployment is one of the scariest things going these days - and they provided with a generous bounty. I hated relying on my parents. I used to love getting an allowance when I was kid (two dollars a week, provided I had been diligent about not leaving my nightie on the bathroom floor for houseguests to chortle over when I got dressed in the morning), but when I was 27 and getting an allowance, I felt sick. So I shaped up even more. I got a job - a real, non-waitressing job, with benefits! Adulthood!

Something magical happened on the way: I kept writing. This blog is more than 300 entries deep now. Some entries are just insane: radioactive with self-loathing and working-out-the-emotions bilge. But most are decent little time capsules, and I'm immensely proud of myself for consistently putting out good writing, week after week, year after year.

Another magical thing happened, too. I started writing for other people. I now write for dandyhorse, and I blog for xoxoamore, and the Huffington Post's Canadian arm. And I work a full-time job. Plus, I have a boyfriend; we like to hang out. Oh, and friends, too. I have to water my plants, also. And while none of these are particularly well-paying jobs (except for my day job, which is actually totally well-paying), they're things that I need to maintain. They're the end result of a lot of hard work.

I'm not quitting this blog. I fucking love writing Hipsters Are Boring - it's some of the most me writing I've ever done. But I am going to bring it back to one post a week. I'll do my best to cross-post when I have other stuff going up in other places (something I should have been doing all this time), and I'll use this space for things that can't go other places. Rants about Rob Ford, a love letter to the movies, and a meditation on clothing swaps are some of the posts I have planned. I've put too much of myself into this goofy little project to quit it like some bad habit.

When I first started this blog, I needed to write to hear myself think. And four years later, I do.