This is the last post in the Writing 101 blog a day challenge. I did one a day for twenty days as required, though I posted on Saturdays instead of Tuesdays because I had to work on two of the Tuesdays. So, success! I never doubted I could find stuff to write about, as a matter of fact I think I only used two of the prompts suggested by Writing 101 posters.

So, thank you writing 101 for helping me to improve my writing, the more you do something, the better you get at it, no lie. I’ve learned that over and over again in life, though often once you get good at something you don’t have to do it anymore. That doesn’t hold with writing for me, I just can’t stop.

Most of my blog posts were work-themed, since that’s what I’m dealing with in my life right now, finding work; or at least a way to make a living. Hopefully that will mean writing eventually. Haven’t made any money at it yet. But I’m not in it for the money.

                                           My first trimmed hedge

The first post was THE MEXICAN GARDENER, which I wrote after being asked to do some garden work, something new to me. I was asked to do so after someone read one of my blog posts about being out of work.

Then I walked a square mile in THE SQUARE WALK.

DON’T TAKE CD’S FROM STRANGERS was prompted by watching a scammer on the street, which prompted TRANSIT TIPS FOR TOURISTS, who are the usual victims of street scammers.

I took a prompt, to write about a loss, and I wrote FIRST LOVE LOST. I carried it further, again a prompt suggestion to make it a three-parter, finishing the story with LOVE LOST parts II and III.

                                                                 Not the actual bed in FIRST LOVE LOST

Then I went back to work (literally) with THE BALL OF DUST.

I then got a haircut for work in GOOD DAY FOR A HAIRCUT, and a friend commented that she was amazed by my ability to take something as mundane as a haircut and make it interesting and entertaining. Thanks, Joan!

                                                     Before the haircut

I wrote about sports in BAD NEWS FOR THE RANGERS, and about love and hate (I love my wife but I hate the beach) in LOSE MY HEART ON THE BURNING SANDS.

I took another prompt, it said “write about where you lived at the age of 12,” which took me back to the Lafayette Gardens Housing projects in Brooklyn when I wrote GROWING UP L.G.

                                           My siblings in the Lafayette Gardens Projects when I was 12 

OK, OKAY! Was my response to watching a movie where people who don’t even speak English say OK all the time.

UP ON THE ROOF was a return to working in a tall building for 2 weeks, and working in that building on Avenue A prompted THE YUPPIFACATION OF AVE A. A lot of my East Village friends liked that one, rumination on what the East Village was in the 80’s.

TV OR NOT TV was prompted again buy my dwindling bank account, and the response to YUPPIFACATION got me to write more about the neighborhood in NIGHTBIRDS TO LABAMBA, again a short memoir of hanging out in the East Village in the 80’s.

                                              LaBamba now

I rounded out the month with THE MEXICAN GARDENER PART II, writing about going back up to that same garden to finish the work I started a month ago. How apropos.

Yesterday’s post, NOVICE TASK RABBIT is again about work and how to find it.

                                     My Task Rabbit T-Shirt

I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge, and the experience of writing about dealing with adversity.

People write blogs about very specific things, I have a friend who will only read cancer blogs. I think that’s pretty narrow-minded, but I guess there’s a call for it.

I write about what’s going on in my life, I guess I sort of learned that from my friend the late Maggie Estep.

                                               The Beautiful Maggie

Maggie was of course a published novelist and performer with many fans, and a friend of mine asked me “what’s so interesting about your life?”

Again, I realize it’s not so much what you write about, but HOW you write about it.

And I think I’ve accomplished that, seeing as how I have people from all over the world (33 different countries last month according to my stats) reading my blog, and most of them complete strangers. I don’t know anyone in San Marino; I don’t even know where it is, but someone there read my blog this month. I guess I’m going to have to look it up.