Dear Reader

One year ago, I was shocked and disturbed to find that someone had clicked "subscribe" on my new website, Sasquatch Paw. I hadn't meant to publish anything readable, so it was a mystery why they opted in after reading the first offering of rambling and tortured pensmanship.

Even worse, after six months of weekly chaotic sputtering, the Paw was featured as a "favorite veterinary blog" of the year, which really took me by surprise (I hadn't actually realized it was a blog yet). I didn't know what I was doing, I was just forcing myself to come up with something each week. Anything. Just create it, then chuck it out into the universe. I was a creativity short order cook. The special? Uh, how about some moronic musings on psychological phenomenons? How about a rant on kid's birthday parties?

And yet, people kept clicking that damn subscribe button. I've never asked anyone to do it. Sure I've hinted, suggested, or intimated that I'm desperate for external validation, but I've never just come out and said it! It's unbearably intoxicating to have something that lived inside your brain burst out of the depths like a flamboyant penguin, and have it welcome on the social medes (#socialmedesIsaNeoligmIjustInvented).

But I'm not just doing it for the retweets on LinkedIn.¹ This is not a polished product. I'm not selling a lifestyle blog called Bumbling Through Your Potential: Sorta Pivoting From a Science-Driven Career to Your Artistic Passion. Not that I'm not for sale (I'm totally for sale, btw), but this blog was always supposed to be a pointless endeavor.

That doesn't mean pointlessness for pointlessness's sake, but it does mean keeping my incentives clean. Here's where I get to make what I want to make. All my little hopeful monsters get a little glass jar full of nutrient solution, some mutagenic radiation exposure (commonly known as "sunlight") and we see what happens together. Occasionally, something beautiful grows.

I hope you find something of value here, and I'm happy to gift it if so. I'll keep tossing the stones in. Your voices are the ripples that make it back to shore. Encouragement can do wonderful things, although it's put a tremendous amount of pressure on me. I don't want to let you down, and I don't want to stray from my truth! And I want to make it good! This is hard! Come to think of it, you're all a terrible emotional burden!!

Thanks a lot.

1. Seriously, LinkedIn is weird.