One of my favourite shows ever is the rock musical, Rent, which premiered on Broadway in 1996. Based on Puccini's opera La Bohème (1896), Rent portrays a year in the life of a group of starving young artists living in an apartment block in Manhattan’s East Village in the 1980s. At the crux of the story is the AIDS epidemic the friends must navigate, along with the challenges of pursuing their dreams while struggling to pay their rent.

The show features a song called ‘Seasons of Love’, sung by the entire cast. In the stage production, it opens the second act - but in the 2005 film adaptation, it marks the start. Written and composed by Jonathan Larson, the song is catchy, mainly due to its repeated, numerical line - ‘Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes’ - which prompts the philosophical question: ‘How do you measure a year in the life?’.

This week, I measure a year in 53 blog posts - one written and published every Wednesday for the past year of my life. CRAFT | POLISH is a project I have long wanted to nurture and grow, and one year of weekly blogging is the goal I crafted for myself in 2020 - one I was absolutely determined to meet. It developed new forms of discipline and creativity I never knew I had, making it the measure of a pretty good year in the life.