31 December 2023 ~ 7:00p.m. as I type. It’s strange to be sitting here with a ton of gratitude and good cheer while heavy with inertia. Maybe it was all the decorating/package sending/cookie making/letter writing/card addressing, stamping, and mailing after accomplishing 50,000 words written in NaNoWriMo and nearly managing a flash a day on top of that just the month before. I apologize there’s not as much effort as I’d like to put in here present, but as someone wrote, “If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing crappily.” I can’t remember where I heard that line – and I’m sure it was said with more elegance and grace – but it’s been an idea I’ve paired with St. Francis of Assisi’s “Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible,” only to find it led to doing impossibly stupid things, so that is tiring me out, too.

(Off topic: Every time I write a breathless paragraph, I think of Kathy Fish. Maybe that’s how angels get their wings now.)(And really, it wasn’t that off topic. It’s A Wonderful Life has been playing in a loop all month.)(Talk about loopy, my thoughts go in circles sometimes. Do yours?)(Where was I? Oh. Right.)

With overnight company over the holiday, I had the chance to pull furniture out of the library, clean, and rearrange it. I hit upon a new configuration. That lasted a day or two before the shortcomings of orientating the mat one way and the chair in another reemerged. I switched it all back the way I had it this afternoon and noticed I should touch up the paint on the walls.

Pedestrian and predictable, isn’t it? Ruts…yet I dare say I feel a hint of hope about the upcoming new year. Maybe it’s the scent of a business idea or a political run. I don’t know what will happen next and neither do you, so in the meantime let me once again say thank you to the amazing readers and editors at these places who were wonderful enough to enjoy my work enough to share it:

I’m grateful to a long list of IRL people who made the year amazing, and I hope you’ll forgive my not naming your name and linking your page but I want to finish a book (reading) before midnight if I can, and chances are, you know who you are, including the awesome ones behind this:

I know, I probably owe you a letter/critique response/present that didn’t get packed, but it’ll have to wait. The gorilla on the bookcase is ready for a rockin’ eve and I’m off to finish reading a paltry tenth book for 2023. See you in the new year if we’re all lucky that way. Thank you for your love, your support, your kind words and likes if you gave them. Thank you for existing. Thank you stopping by and for the read.