One of my greatest successes (and failures) of 2017 was keeping up with the weekly vlog. It served as an excellent creative challenge, as it enabled me to explore a different discipline and exercise a different set of creative muscles. I haven’t yet decided how to proceed with the vlog this year, but that’s another discussion for another day. Probably on a Monday. As discussed in a vlog. But I digress.

As you may already know, I endeavored to post at least one thing on Instagram every day for all of 2017, using the #kwan365 hashtag to document the quest. Some days, I’d post about my life as a dad. Other days, I’d share some of my culinary adventures. It was a real grab gag and I managed to hit all 365 days without a hitch.

For 2018, I am attempting a different kind of creative challenge. Once a week, I’ll be sharing a little piece of poetry in a series I’m calling Hump Day Haikus. They’re haikus on Wednesdays. I’d say that’s pretty self-explanatory. Some may be more lighthearted than others; we’ll see how it goes and how I feel that week. I may even toss in a dad joke or six for good measure.

Hump Day Haikus won’t replace the What’s Up Wednesdays speedlink series on this blog, as aside from today’s post, I probably won’t be republishing my haikus on Beyond the Rhetoric anyhow. They’ll be fodder for social media, primarily on Instagram (and maybe Facebook or Twitter too).

I’m not going to use some fancy calligraphy to compose these haikus in a stylized moleskine notebook; I don’t think anyone wants to decipher my chicken scratch penmanship. (I’m either an erratic toddler or a respected family doctor, I can’t decide.) Instead, and this will come as little surprise to anyone, the Hump Day Haikus will be composed and published in digital format.

Here’s the first one, published shortly before this blog post went live.

To keep up with the weekly series, I encourage you to follow me on Instagram, if you aren’t already, or you can follow along via the #humpdayhaikus hashtag. I’m not the only one using that hashtag, so you’ll be presented with the work of some other Instagrammers too.

Have you set out on any creative challenges for 2018? Care to join me in writing a haiku (or 52)?