The 90,000 Word Challenge

Pen to paper, fingertips to keyboard, this is the season to counter destruction with creation

It’s iced shaken espresso and sit-your-ass-at-your-desk season.

I honestly don’t know what to make of the first part of 2025. Personally, it’s been a season of big, painful transitions accompanied by big, painful lessons (more on that drama in a future post). Culturally, it’s been a season of overwhelming moral injury. Most days, I’m at a loss for how to jump into the conversation. Is it enough to roundly condemn every illegal, immoral, disgusting headline? Should I denounce them one by one? Does it really matter? I honestly don’t know.

What I can say is that the lack of decency playing out on the public stage is too much to bear for those of us afflicted by empathy. Each day's events are a barrage on the soul, and it’s challenging to play the torchbearer of hope for young children when hope has become such a scarce resource (side note: if I were a child today, I’d be highly skeptical of the competence of adults).

So, I haven’t been here (i.e. Substack) as promised, and, for that, I am very sorry. Sometimes in life, you need a pause to get yourself right before you can be right for others, and that’s the space I’ve been occupying for the past two months.

I’ve spent some of that time thinking about how to counter the unwanted energy being absorbed by us human sponges - the focus of today’s post. How do we balance the pH scale of cruelty, ignorance, and destruction?

We seek their opposites.

The opposite of cruelty? Kindness.

The opposite of ignorance? Education.

The opposite of destruction? Creation.

In my last post, I wrote about service as a means of tolerating uncertainty. Today, I want to focus on creation. In a moment where so much feels outside our control, what we choose to bring into this world has the potential to alter its path and ours. Much has been written about the audacious and hopeful nature of creating. What some may view as a waste of time is a valuable form of resistance: beauty in the face of ugliness.

So, inspired by author Jami Attenberg and her popular 1,000 Word Challenge, I am embarking on a 90-day mission: 1,000 words daily for 3 months. Gulp. That’s a lot of words, 90,000 to be exact. Just about the length of a novel.

While Jami’s version of the 1,000 Word Challenge is a bit shorter (two weeks) and begins at the end of May (you can register by following her Substack), I am a woman whose life is tied inextricably to school calendars. I have the most access to time and creativity during the summer, so I’m taking full advantage of it this year. It will be hard (my husband literally had to use a code word to get me out of bed at 5AM this morning, and no, it wasn’t “loser” as per my request!). It will feel self-punishing at times. But it’s also a little light, tunneling me out of what has been a heavy dose of darkness recently.

Accountability being key, I promise to keep you updated on my Substack feed. I will accept all donations of caffeine and courage. And I invite you to join along in whatever form invites a little light into your life (if that involves knitting me a sweater, even better!).

90 days of making. 90 days of channeling love, hope, and creativity into a gift for our future selves. Let’s go.

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One Thing That Feeds My Soul

Waking up my daughter every morning with a song of the day. Yesterday, it was Montell Jordan’s “This is How We Do It.” Today, “These Are the Days” by 10,000 Maniacs.

One Show I Can’t Stop Watching

Seth Rogen, Catherine O’Hara, Ike Barinholtz, Kathryn Hahn, and Bryan Cranston. Need I say more?

One Book I Can’t Wait to Get My Hands On

Half-sisters who meet for the first time following their father’s death, set in my favorite place in the world. No book to get me more summer-ready than the newest by

Hannah Orenstein

, out now!