Our regular columnist Molly Quell is writing her last column and using it to complain about how difficult being a columnist actually is. 

My initial plan for this last column was to claim that Dutch News’ billionaire owner was forcing me out because I wasn’t writing in defense of personal liberties and free markets but rather in defense of saunas and sunshine. That plan got nixed because it is fake news.

Or at least the billionaire owner part is.

I’ve been writing columns for Dutch News for nearly a decade. In 2019, I started writing them every month. That’s well over 50 ideas I have had to come up with. And, look, it’s just too many. Coming up with a new thing to say every month, even as I, a person with a lot to say, is a challenge.

I don’t understand how weekly columnists do it. Those people are a different breed.

Sometimes life throws stuff at you. You go to make stroopwafels in Amsterdam and you are confronted with the seedy underbelly of the tourism industry or you head home for a visit and realize how much you don’t fit in anymore.

But one can only go to so many stroopwafel making workshops and take so many vacations.

You can look at the calendar and get your inspiration from the world around you. Set up a stand on King’s Day and complain about it. On Valentine’s Day, complain that your husband doesn’t really love you. Complain about how people set their New Year’s Resolutions.

Then, when the next holiday rolls around you have to have a different take on it.

Complain that the new year has barely started before people start publishing weird tropes about the Dutch. Or you write about dry January. Lots of options.

There are, however, only so many ways you can take issue with the New Year or Christmas or summer. (I tried really hard to find them all, complaining about how the Dutch do enjoy the sun and complaining about how the Dutch don’t enjoy the sun and then complaining about too much sun.)

After the popularity of one sauna-related column, I doubled down and wrote not one but two more about integration and wet activities.

During the pandemic, just to feel something, I declared that the lockdown was great. That one got a lot of hate mail. So I demanded we bring back Covid queuing and then complained that the pandemic screwed up time.

I’ve complained about Dutch weddings, Dutch friendships, Dutch cycling (unsurprisingly this one went viral back when Twitter was cool and I got inundated with hatemail) and Dutch communication.

Oh and the Dutch not speaking enough English. Real heterodox takes.

To change things up then I complained about foreigners complaining about Dutch society, Dutch child rearing and Dutch communication.

Somehow I got away with this headline: Give me year-round kruidnoten or the terrorists win. And this headline: It’s democracy in action time, so go get water boarded. And this one: Part-time a problem? A 40-hour week was not ordained by god.

I confessed I refuse to use an umbrella, something I still get chided for.

I’ve given a lot for this column. Aside from subjecting myself to the nude, mixed gender sauna and risking it all to swim in a canal, I also ate a lot of kruidnoten and several borrelplankjes.

See? The life of a columnist is hard.