Dear reader, 

Every once in a while, I venture deep into the back-end of this website. I scroll past the add new story tab; I don’t even bother to flash a glance at pending. In fact, I avoid the draft section all together. 

I click through until I find my personal story views. I can see how many people, how many sets of eyes, have glazed over each of my stories, how many fingertips have clicked on my name; I can see how many of you have read the words I so delicately chose to share. 

It’s sort of a morbid pastime for me: watching the numbers grow as I do, or tensely holding my breath as they drop when I sway. Each story varies slightly, but all are being read. 

I used to be someone who would turn a story in and let it sit there. I pretended my articles were gathering dust somewhere. In fact, I hoped they remained untouched. Of course, I knew that was a tall tale I told myself to keep my frail emotions in tact, but it worked nonetheless.

Now, however, it’s not exactly that I want the numbers to increase as the capacity of my stories do, it’s just that if they happen to, I don’t mind. I don’t watch the numbers ebb and flow to taunt or compare myself to the other writer, I do it to remind myself of how far I’ve come. 

I know, and as a reader you may also know, that I have come far, for we remember rock bottom. When a new writer complains they’ve run out of ideas on what to write about. When they plead for another story type or beg you to unlock a new facet of their imagination, anyone on staff can tell you that our perfectly timed response would be, “write about how you don’t know what to write about.” 

We say it partially as a joke; we hope that it will make them sit down and at least try to type something out, but what happens after you write that story? You’ve already written about your last resort, and now you still have another year ahead of you. Well, that was me last year, as my brain had been stripped of all article-worthy emotions, my hands were almost as tired as the keys they clicked on my computer, and the flow had stopped. 

However, that’s not exactly how life works, and that’s certainly not how TCT works. I still have deadlines to meet and readers to talk to. My ideas are viewers now, and sometimes, the emotions prefer to stay in hiding, but even with the new complications, each year brings, somehow I still manage to write. 

Dear reader, this is my 200th story being published on The Central Trend. I look forward to watching as you read. Enjoy.