We all want to climb mountains from the top.

It’s the easy path after all, and you can already picture yourself grazing against the stars, may those be the old static ones or the newest kind, quick and blinking with electrical brightness.

But if you ever want to know how it feels to reach the top, you do have to start from the bottom.

Reaching this goal, standing at the top of 367 pieces of narrative published in one year, each of them at least 1000 words long, and published every day for a year, might be the best hike I have ever done in my whole life.

From here air is strong and pure, and it feels like I can take a look at other peaks, some nearby, others as far off as the blanket of the night.

Coming here took a lot of training. I can say I began my training seven years ago, when I first started to give thought about writing as work (something quite different from a job, to be fair), which needed to be approached with seriousness.

In time, my efforts made me understand how putting work in, at best, can make you a better conduit for a current of creativity that has started long before me, and which will end long before my own finish line.

If ever.

And I think, being here with the clear wind in my face as bouts of snow spirals in the air, this last year read like climbing the glass hill in the rhyme The Black Bull of Norroway.

And the Muse did turn to look at me, to look at us, time and time again.

I feel like our relationship has improved. I don’t feel her gnawing at my chest now – I know she’s going to be there, and she knows I’m going to give her the space she deserves.

So here we are.

I am not sure where we will go from here – but there is always a longer way to go, and I will be keen to start exploring it with you… starting maybe in a few days from now.

I think I’m going to take a long weekend off.

As always, thanks to everyone who followed, to everyone who commented, to everyone who put a like.

To everyone who read.

And to you.