Tonight we celebrate a 3 year, 36 month, 156 week, 1,095 day accomplishment. As of yesterday, that’s how many years, months, weeks, and days that I’ve been old house journaling (aka daily journaling each and every 24 hour cycle without excuse or exception) about Susan and my relationship with Rosslyn. That’s a long time! A whole lot longer than I aspired to at the outset. And yet, much as Rosslyn humbled us and turned our home renovation expectations upside down over the years, this challenge has proven far more unpredictable and far more impactful than I originally anticipated. Three years into the adventure I set out to accomplish in one year, I’m just now discovering the fundamentals, just now grappling with the dilemmas, just now beginning to let go.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Way ahead. Instead let’s start when I broke my silence about my original 1-year goal after keeping it close to the vest ever since August 1, 2022 when I initiated my quest.
[N.B. Today’s dispatch gathers excerpts from many previous posts with an eye to defining exactly where I am today, how I got here, and where I’m headed. Yes, it’s a bit of a slog. No, you don’t need to read it if you’re in a rush. Or bored. The long story short: I’ve written every day for three years. And despite the fact that it’s been three times my original timeline, I’m still not quite finished. I’ve chronicled much that’d happened over the last three years, and I’ve reached back in time again and again, usually to offer background for the present. But the deep dig? 2006 through 2009? Still mostly untold. The early years. The foundation. The reason we launched this whole adventure to begin with, and the dramatic ups and downs we experienced between signing the contract and finally moving in. So, buckle up for another year?!]
Yesterday marked ten weeks of old house journaling. Every. Single. Day. Two months and ten days back at the helm of this wayward, meandering, sometimes unruly experiment I call Rosslyn Redux. I emphasize the daily component of this benchmark because it’s been an important part of the goal I committed to at the end of July. Starting on August first I would resuscitate Rosslyn Redux.
[…]
And there’s something more. Old house journaling. Sure, I’ve effectively pinched and adapted the term from the magazine, so I humbly submit this post as a derivative inspired by the original, not an imposter, not a sanctioned partner, just poetic language borrowing. For the longest time I used the term “daily munge” to describe the daybook entries I was scribbling, typing, and dictating during the busiest years (2006 through 2009) of demolition, design, rebuilding, landscaping, etc.
I’ve riffed on the idea elsewhere, so I’ll crib my own words.
Daily Munge is a term I made up long enough ago that it’s no longer make-believe. It’s real.
Think of Daily Munge as a storyteller’s compost pile. Or a writer’s scrapbook. Or a voyeur’s over-the-shoulder glimpse at what’s on my mind…
Long before journals became weblogs became blogs, writers and storytellers kept fuzzy cornered, coffee stained notebooks and clutches of notes wrapped in string. Word people (my kind of word people, at least) are chronic collectors. We cling to our clutter because we are paranoid. Or maybe because we’re hoarders. We’ve learned that our best ideas may be yesterday’s mistakes. Notes become novels. Slapdash clouds of words becomes monumental poems. Not often, of course, but once is all it takes to convince us that we’d best hoard our verbal midden heaps. Just in case. My Daily Munge is my squalid midden heap. My compost pile. My scrapbook. And in some slightly esoteric way it is what made Rosslyn’s endless rehabilitation survivable, what kept me intrigued, note taking, documenting. After all, isn’t it possible that Odysseus’s almost endless homecoming might have had more to do with collecting and curating chronicles than obstacles? Possibly. (Source: Daily Munge Archives – Rosslyn Redux
I’ve explained this concept too many times to still think it’s a clever description. Nobody has a clue what I mean. And I can no longer locate the magazine article where I believe I borrowed the term “munge” as I use it. And in a recent effort to clarify, at least in the context or Rosslyn Redux, I stumbled upon “old house journaling” as a way to convert what I’m doing here. So maybe my newest push is also an effort to grow something from the munge-y old house journaling and scrapbooking and artifact hoarding and… (Source: Source: Old House Journaling)
Eureka! A year ago I set out on a personal quest to post an update each day without fail for one year, journaling deep into our Rosslyn story in the hopes of ascertaining what comes next. Today we celebrate 365 consecutive daily updates starting on August 1, 2022 and ending yesterday, July 31, 2023. What a year!
[…]
I’m still striving for transparency. For clarity as much as anything. The liminality I allude to isn’t a single, passing transition. It’s a swelling-almost-cresting wave of transformation. In so many respects, our entire Rosslyn experience, all 17 years of it, has been characterized by liminality. But recent years have revealed a shift, a seismic shift, and we — Susan and I — are navigating, at least *trying* to navigate this change with intentionality and self awareness and compassion. And yet we’re often adrift, buffeted by storms of passion, tossed among the frothy whitecaps, reactive when we’d hoped to be proactive.
And so I find myself today at once ebullient, proud of the accomplishment that I’ve earned over these last 365 days, but also angsty that I’be shied from the most difficult work. I’ve tiptoed up to the edge, looked into the daunting expanse, and penned platitudes when courageous anthems were needed. I’ve tended the garden when risky adventures would have served me better. (Source: One Year of Daily Journaling!)
—//—
Yesterday’s post marks the end of 18 months of daily old house journaling. That’s 549 posts in a row. It’s not a world record, but it’s a personal accomplishment.
On August 1, 2022 I set myself the goal of posting about our Rosslyn experience each day for one year. at the outset, the challenge felt so monumental that I didn’t even announce it. I needed to prove to myself that I could at least get started. Little by little my confidence grew as my daily practice improved. Momentum bolstered my focus and clarity. The daily reflection began to catalyze the sort of transitional decision-making I needed. And better yet? I loved the time I spent creating blog posts. So much so, in fact, that at the end of the year, I just kept going. (Source: Eighteen Months)
—//—
Tumbling toward two years of every-day “old house journaling” (and a 200% overshoot of the original challenge I set for myself at the beginning of August 2022) I’m abundantly aware of the rewards and the shortfalls of my daily discourse.
Now 20-1/2 months — 626 days of reflective, inquisitive, whimsical, experimental old house journaling — into my Rosslyn Redux reboot, let’s turn again to the underlying question: what’s my holy grail?
I should start with some of my observations half a year ago.
I dove deep into this sprawling exposition I call Rosslyn Redux… my multidisciplinary meditation on the *art of homing*… this exploration, this inside-out creative experiment, this quasi crowdsourced inquiry, and the resulting nexus of artifacts and stories and visuals and poems and all of the esoteric marginalia that has accreted… since Susan and I bought Rosslyn is meaningful. Heck, to be 100% candid, for me it’s not just meaningful; it’s vital.
… I’m aware that I have journeyed far… but not far enough. I’m confident now that if I can continue this questing inquiry a little longer, I will at last close in on the Holy Grail.(Source: Old Year’s Day & New Year’s Day)
There it is. And there it isn’t. A casual throwaway as if the reader knows what I’m referring to. As if I know what I’m referring to.
Here’s another fleeting glance.
… my daily deep dive has become habit; my inquiry has lead to unanticipated, sometimes surprising realizations; and I’m only just beginning to find my bearings and glimpse the holy grail.
What *IS* my holy grail in this inquisitive questthrough Rosslyn monuments and middens? Where am I going with this adventure? What am I hoping to achieve?
[…]
Daily analysis, meditation, introspection, experimentation, curation, hypothesis, and, yes, some belly button gazing too… wondering. Wandering. Every day. Asking questions. That lead to more questions. Trying to ascertain why and how Rosslyn, an historic property on the Adirondack Coast of Lake Champlain invited us into a relationship; allowed us to develop alongside her, with her, through her; enveloping us in a passionate, trusting, and transformative home… endeavoring, essaying, questing, exploring, experimenting,… But *WHAT* am I trying to achieve?(Source: Holy Grail?)
Where am I going? Where am I *TRYING* to go? What is my goal? What are my goals? What is the overarching achievement that inspires this day-after-day discursive journey? (Source: Holy Grail & Daily Discourse)
—//—
What an adventure it’s been since setting sail on a 12 month challenge to think and write about Rosslyn every day. Every single day. No skips. No excuses. No delays. And, as of today, it’s been 22 months. That’s 183% of my original goal on August 1, 2022. Today I’d like to commemorate this 22 month milestone with a commitment to two more months of daily deep-dives into my relationship with our home and a promise to announce big news on August 1, 2024.
Today’s 22 month milestone IS NOT an opportunity to inventory my odyssey so far, nor is it a chance to gloat. (But… in just two months it’ll have been 2 years… Wow!)
Today’s 22 month milestone IS an opportunity to thank you for joining me on this curious quest. I’m profoundly grateful for your curiosity and encouragement. I’ve been hesitant, sometimes guarded about my motivations and even my overarching aspiration because it’s proven more difficult to understand and to articulate my quest than I’d anticipated at the outset. But you have been patient, and you have pushed me forward. You have cultivated my slowly germinating comfort with risk and conviction. You have endured my experiments and weathered my course changes. You have gently but resolutely redirected and refocused me. And more recently you’ve begun curtailing my meandering meditation in order catalyze its conclusion. Enough dithering. Enough deliberation. It’s time for decisions. Thank you.
Today’s 22 month milestone IS an opportunity to recommit. To clarity. To conclusion. I’m prone to overthinking and inaction as Susan is quick to point out. She claims to be “the closer”. I’m “the opener”, the brainstormer, the broad strokes dreamer, the what-iffer, and the crazy ideas guy. A marriage of decision and indecision, she might say. Well, with 2 months to go before the 2 year anniversary of this introspective and retrospective inquiry, I’m committing to finish the task I set out upon. True I’ll have surpassed my timeline. But at 200%, that’s still progress from the 400% overshoot of our original Rosslyn rehab timeline! So, maybe we can call that progress? (Source: 22 Month Milestone)
—//—
More than magical metaphor, the pair of images in today’s post are meaningful for the location and the date. Rosslyn. Outside (above). And inside (below). Made on July 28, 2022 — exactly two years ago today — they foretold, both then and now, the dawn of a new chapter. Sunrise around the corner did not become a blog post then, but reviewed two years later, from the vantage of an immensely satisfying two years of daily Rosslyn blogging that began on August 1, 2022, augurs remarkably prescient.
Literally photographed around the southeast corner of our home — why? no idea! — and figuratively suggesting the very nearness of something significant about to happen, I can’t resist the temptation to see something symbolic in the fact that a few days later I would set out on an ambitious then yearlong goal to resuscitate Rosslyn Redux with the hope of coming to terms with my relationship with this handsome home. (Source: Sunrise Around the Corner)
—//—
Today marks my 731st consecutive Rosslyn Redux daily update. Two years. 24 months. 200% of my original goal. Blogging every single day. Deep-diving into my relationship (and sometimes *our* relationship) with Rosslyn.
[…]
As I reflect on my initial 365 day goal, my reluctance to curtail the quest after a year, and my decision to double down for a second year, I marvel at my confidence that this half-baked endeavor would render meaningful results.
An essay in the broadest and most inclusive sense. An attempt to explore through a process of daily writing practice my complex feelings about Rosslyn and our relationship with the property. A slow, persistent contemplation of Rosslyn past and future. Serial creative experimentation in the hopes of working through a nearly two-decade journey with the historic property on Lake Champlain that Susan and I purchased and rehabilitated. A celebration of the stories, relationships, and lifestyle that germinated through and because of Rosslyn. An inquiry into my deep connection to Rosslyn, more than just a home, a sanctuary that has nurtured us through personal losses and struggles like the COVID-19 pandemic.
My 1-year-turned-2-year exploration has proven considerably more rewarding and enjoyable than I anticipated at the outset. It’s helped me process our experiences, and it’s helped me decide on future plans.
More milestones than planned. And overshoot of monumental and still undetermined proportions.
Part of our original 2-4 year plan at the outset (back in 2006), we’ve periodically considered selling Rosslyn and building a new smaller, greener, less demanding lakeside retreat. But mixed emotions have repeatedly stalled our decision-making. Our attachment is strong.
I’ve grappled with the idea of “consciously uncoupling” from Rosslyn, passing the property on to new owners, and my writing process over the last 730 days has become an effective way to untangle my deep attachment to the property and to determine if/when I’m ready to move on. (Source: 24 Month Milestone)
—//—
Yes. We’re *really* selling Rosslyn. It’ll probably take a while to find the perfect match for this remarkable property, but we feel confident that the right family is out there searching for this opportunity as we were back in 2004-6.
Still not 100% confident that we’re *really* ready to be selling Rosslyn? Fair. We’ve deliberated plenty over the years — remember we only set out to own this property for 2-4 years at the outset! — and we’ve repeatedly postponed our decision, still too smitten to say goodbye. As for that May 16, 2011 post, “Rosslyn for Sale“, it wasn’t a “test balloon” but a prematurely abbreviated recollection of Susan and my second visit to Rosslyn with our realtor way back in 2004 or 2005 when we were first daydreaming about this property. Perhaps that’s a little confusing, if you stumbled upon it, but now it should make a little more sense? Likewise with “Hyde Gate For Sale“, a post that showcased an April 1910 offering looong before we even owned Rosslyn (aka Hyde Gate, The Sherwood Inn, etc.).
But this time we’ve definitely come to a decision with which Susan and I are comfortable. Heck, I’ve been blogging every single day for over two years, often explicitly working through this decision! Remember this?
[I was] attempting to grapple substantively with beginning to imagine our lives post Rosslyn… Be brave. Court courage. Leap! But… my post drifted into a milk toast muddle more intent on understanding the backstory than leaping boldly into a new adventure. And so today I revisit the original impetus. Untethering… Again. And again. In order to, soon if I’m successful, convince myself that I’m ready, that we, Susan and I, are ready to untether from our home of seventeen and half years in order to start fresh. (Source: Untethering Revisited)
Bring on the adventure. We’re ready and committed to selling Rosslyn when she finds her perfect match. (Source: Selling Rosslyn?!)
—//—
As of today I’ve posted 900 daily updates in a row. Uninterrupted. No breaks. No excuses.
My daily journaling challenge about our old-house-new-home escapades started out as a 1-year challenge. That became two years. And that now is on target to reach a revised 1,000 day goal right around my birthday.
Thank you for sticking with me, encouraging me, and helping motivate this marathon. If my 900th post is your first, I hope you’ll join us for the rest of the adventure! (Source: Skinny Snow)
—//—
Today I celebrate a 30 month milestone in this protean pursuit I’ve called daily old house journaling… 30 months is many months, many days, to quest toward an uncertain and elusive end. Two and a half solar orbits. Too many, perhaps. 250% of my original goal…
A retreating finish line replaced my original objective of one year. 365 days of daily blogging about our home. Us and our home. Open book. To the world. No pretense of perfection. No apologies. Frequent fumbles. Digging in and holding myself to account. Publicly. Inside out. Outside in. Honesty, humility, and sometimes self-conscious discomfort. Curiosity uncloaked. Plein air experimentation.
But my original year timeline wasn’t sufficient. I failed to find what I was looking for. So I doubled down. I stretched my horizon further out, another year.
[…]
Yesterday’s daily dispatch marked the completion of another half year. Still no closure. No conclusion. But with 30 months under my belt, the clouds have cleared, have been replaced with sun-soaked clarity. A realistic horizon has become visible.
Three more months will make 1,000 days. This finish line coincides with my birthday. Hopefully a propitious omen. (Source: 30 Month Milestone!)
—//—
Tomorrow I will concurrently observe two notable milestones: my 1,000th consecutive daily dose of old house journaling AND my 53rd birthday. A coincidence worth celebrating! And a few days later I’ll mark 33 months publishing a new blog post every single day laying bare — or at least *essaying* to lay bare — our Rosslyn adventures (and misadventures). And that, my friends, means 999 daily updates as of right now. Today. (Source: 999 Daily Updates)
As I round the corner of another year (and add the 1,000th hash mark to my daily old house journaling quest), I’m ready to own and share a wise Mae West adage that I first read on a T-shirt worn by a fellow vacationer in Antigua. (Source: You Only Live Once)
I realize that today’s update is more collage than original germination. But it makes sense to me that gathering the various diverse strands of this story makes sense, braiding them together rather than rewording into a redundant and diluted digest. So I return once more to my penultimate post in the quest to 1,000 uninterrupted daily updates because it does some of the work I now endeavor to accomplish. Of course, it too draws upon a previous post, and so it goes. And so it goes.
[NB: The following section is excerpted from “999 Daily Updates” as previously published on April 25, 2025.]
Deep in the DNA of my Rosslyn rumination, transformation and transition are defining through-threads that define this tapestry of tales. Originally episodic and more recently day-to-day, this storytelling experiment is all about new beginnings. For Rosslyn. For Susan. For me.
So 999 daily updates seems to strike a chord. Sometimes the universe rhymes!
And exploring this 999 symbolism a little further, I’m struck by the fact that I’ve repeatedly extended my original 365 day quest when I failed to achieve my objectives. It was an ambitious ask for a year, but at the time it seemed totally doable. When that first year came to an end, I realized that I still had lots of work to do. Here are some thoughts from that post. 
I’m still striving for transparency. For clarity as much as anything. The liminality I allude to isn’t a single, passing transition. It’s a swelling-almost-cresting wave of transformation. In so many respects, our entire Rosslyn experience, all 17 years of it, has been characterized by liminality. But recent years have revealed a shift, a seismic shift, and we — Susan and I — are navigating, at least *trying* to navigate this change with intentionality and self awareness and compassion. And yet we’re often adrift, buffeted by storms of passion, tossed among the frothy whitecaps, reactive when we’d hoped to be proactive.
And so I find myself today at once ebullient, proud of the accomplishment that I’ve earned over these last 365 days, but also angsty that I’be shied from the most difficult work. I’ve tiptoed up to the edge, looked into the daunting expanse, and penned platitudes when courageous anthems were needed. I’ve tended the garden when risky adventures would have served me better.
[…]
365 posts into this quest I realize that I am still flagellating between between a conflicted outlook and the conviction I’m hoping to discover. I have not revealed the clarity I set out to uncover. Instead of cutting the umbilical cord with Rosslyn, I’ve doubled down with the icehouserehab, finally realizing (actually only *almost* realizing, at this point) my long held pipe dream of a workspace in one of our old barns. I’ve ruminated and wrestled, but I’ve not yet emerged confidently victorious. If not uncoupled from Rosslyn despite the fact that our relationship has outlived its most ambitious aspirations by more than 400%. In fact, in many respects I’m more smitten than ever. And I suspect that finalizing my move into the icehouse this week will further burnish my love for her…
So where from here? One mission accomplished. One mission still unresolved.
Today, is the first day of the rest of my quest. I’ve come up victorious on the yearlong daily practice, committing to habit reflecting on and writing about our home, our oasis, and our relationship with Rosslyn. I’ve proven that I am stay the course. I am confident that I can continue.
But I must now essay to untangle this almost two decade, poignantly entwined threesome. I will double down, redirecting the discipline I’ve brought to daily dispatches into the real work. Dear Rosslyn, my venture begins anew tonight. I’ll talk with you soon! (Source: One Year of Daily Journaling!)
While progress aplenty has been made, I’m well aware that once again the Holy Grail has vanished like a dancing mirage.
If I take 999 daily updates as a meaningful milestone, then it makes sense to me that it represent a new phase in my journey. If the ethos of 999 invites untethering from the past, and optimistically embracing this period of change, that rings right in so many respects. We’ve offered Rosslyn for sale in hopes of identifying a new family to connect with this remarkable oasis. We’ve begun the transformation of ADK Oasis Lakeside into our future home. And I’ve resuscitated my creative writing practice with 999 days of mostly disciplined exploration and experimentation.
The work of letting go is still to be done, of course. And I’ve come to realize that the catalyst is only partly within my grasp. Writing and creating, deep digging and curating, art and artifacts, emotional and psychology exercise,… All this I have done. All this I am doing. But the final untethering, that’s not up to me. It’s up to Rosslyn. When she finds the perfect match, loving stewards for her abundance, then it’ll be time for the final phase in our transition. Until then, I will write in my icehouse loft as the sun rises on a new day. And I will savor. Every. Moment. (Source: 999 Daily Updates)
—//—
The palpability of Rosslyn’s new stewards (an inevitable reality accentuated by several compelling candidates) provokes a sense of urgency that is beginning to well up within me. I realize each morning as I stand at my desk looking out at the Linden tree, the lake, the morning marching into midday, that my days creating and dreaming, writing and revising, gardening and boating and cycling and everything that has been so rewarding at Rosslyn might soon be drawing to a close. Or, at the very least, might change monumentally. This urgency inspires my current thinking. “Where from here?”
But there’s another energy at work as well. A less logical, more, hhhmmm… lyrical maybe, or creative, that supplements my wonder. The summer of 2026 will mark our twentieth anniversary at Rosslyn. Two decades. Five times longer than our wildest expectations at the outset. (Are you sensing a recurring theme yet?) And it somehow seems that this tidy timeline lends itself to my sense of balance and Rosslyn’s sense of symmetry. The singing underneath.
Obviously I have no real certainty or control over when Rosslyn will cease to be our home to begin anew with her next family. (And a good thing too, as I’d be tempted to sabotage the whole proceeding!) And yet, the summer of 2026 feels probable. Sometimes the universe rhymes, and two decades seems like pretty good poetry to me.
Untethering is our aspiration, letting go, moving one, but it’s easier said than done. The big work of finding Rosslyn’s perfect steward to succeed us and then starting a new adventure at ADK Oasis is underway. And the biggest reward of all brings me back to my early dream of moving up to the North Country where I hoped to finally write full time — poetry, as I’ve done since the 1980s, and a novel that I’d been working on for four or five years — and now I’m doing it. Day after day. Month after month. My “daily munge” writing practice has perhaps been Rosslyn’s final act of rehabilitation for me!
And where from here? Forward. And backward. I’m building a barn at ADK Oasis in anticipation of the day when I will migrate tractor and tools to our new home. And I’m wading into the words I wrote (and dictated) in our early years at Rosslyn. Rediscovering the ups and downs of our Rosslyn adventure back when we sincerely didn’t know if we’d succeed in bringing the property back to life ( or whether or not our marriage would withstand the test!) And rekindling the creative and collaborative sparks at ADK Oasis to reimagine our vacation rentals as our future home.
So much more in store!
What do you think?