In 2013, I began this writing project to keep my mom’s memory alive and honor a promise between just the two of us. It was a question she asked in the waiting room of the Mass General Cancer Center that stuck with me, not only because of how she asked it — “Can we blog people?” — but because it was in that moment that I went from feeling helpless to feeling useful. My response was not only an emphatic yes, but an emphatic “F cancer.” “Cancer is not going to be your story, we’re going to write our own adventure instead.” We never got that chance. And so a few months after she passed I decided to write my way through her beloved playlist, as her music was clearly a portal. I called it Everlasting Playlist. This was to be a 131-day “project” — 131 songs in 131 days — from April 1-August 9, 2013. Except that by song 120 I had driven myself insane. I put the EP on the shelf at Violet Hill when it became too much and took up marathoning in her memory instead. Turns out marathoning is easier than writing.

I’ve run 14 marathons now, ten Boston Marathons. And a decade of marathoning has brought on an ineluctable feeling that it is time to resume what I began, but differently this time.

Cheers to the B-Side.

“I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise you it won’t be boring.”

—David Bowie