See You Next Year

The Intrepid Author in the Wild, CRF Time Traveling Authors 2022

So, it's a Dad Joke. See you next year - which is tomorrow. But today I wanted to talk about why that is all I will say, going forward. I hope that this may reach others with the same anxiety related unrest when this time rolls around every year.

I like to pretend that I like New Year's Eve. I mean, what's not to like? Excuse to party. Excuse to be very loud. Excuse to snog. What's not to like? 

Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen on CNN. Yes please. Jool Holland's Hootenanny. The top of my bucket list, Hogmany in Edinburgh. But those aren't all the things floating like Times Square confetti in my mind.

In all honesty, I really hate New Years Eve/Day.

I have a lot of trouble with change. I'm sure I have told the story already that my mother remembered about me (because she remembered everything about me) of how I would burst into tears at the end of TV shows and be done with my tears by the start of the next show. I didn't like the ending. I didn't like the change over to a new show.

Make that 30 minute sit-com into the end of 365 whole days and it is almost more than I can take. In looking back at my memories of past posts on social media, it isn't a coincidence how many times I've gotten sick on or just before New Year's Eve. Throw in two full years of uncertainty that came along with the pandemic and my anxiety has just moved in and started picking curtains.

But I'm aware of it, and I'm working on it...and, predictably I have a slight sore throat and even more slight fever today. Because of course I do.

So, if you have this same issue that I do...if you are more nervous than excited about the upcoming year...iI you'd rather the ball get stuck on it's way down just because you aren't sure you can handle what will happen when it hits the bottom, I'm here to remind you that it always has. It always will, and we are still here. Rather than looking ahead with resolutions that we all know will not stand, look back at 2022. Think about everything that happened, good and bad. Celebrate the good things and make a promise to do better with the bad things when they rear their heads...because you know they will. If you have to make a resolution, make one to be a better friend to yourself.

See you next year.

Music Monday: Start as you mean to go on, right?

Well, Happy New Year! I'm just going to leave this video here, for now, because as I was sitting here pretending to be a writer the other morning, I heard this line from the below song by Elbow and was...struck? Shook? Anyway, it is a yes from me.

"We protect our little fictions/Like it's all we are..."

Start as we mean to go on is much better than a ridiculous list of resolutions that will be left behind before you can hit submit on the post. Let's try that this year, and if they are little fictions or hard truths, we can take them as they come. Who's with me?

Little Fictions
Elbow

A muffled battle cry across the kitchen table
A baffling contretemps that shakes the day unstable
Confessions from the cab, a habit that I got from dad
The flurry of departure in a cyclone of cologne
Would often devastate the gate and hedge
And set our tiny teeth on edge
I see it in me now and pledge
To knock it on the head, that's what I'll do

A muffled battle cry across the kitchen table
Bridges up, portcullis down and round the Tower of Babel
I'm babbling in my dreams of blue berserkers coming at me
Eyes and tongues and rusty knives
And God almighty laughing at me
From a fat boy fishing chair
I wake to find you laughing there
It's nice to know how much you care
Decided I should spend my life with you

We protect our little fictions
Like it's all we are
Little wilderness mementos
But there's only you and me here

Fire breathing

Hold tight
Waiting for the original miracle

I'm trying to focus on the issues of the day please
Your paper's upside down, the radio's in Chinese
These little tremors that are ripping through our rituals
That friction up the interaction
Emanate from quite the greatest
Thing that ever happened to
A pair of boozy bowerbirds like me and you
In other words
The alligator pear inside of you

We protect our little fictions
When we bow to fear
Little wilderness mementos
But there's only you and me here
Fire breathing
Hold tight
Waiting for the original miracle

Fire breathing
Hold tight
Life is the original miracle

Let's get old
Dare you now
Mix blood with me
All in
Love is the original miracle

Let's get old
Dare you now
Mix blood with me
All in
Life is the original miracle

Love is the original miracle

Scorched and Clobbered on my way into 2019

Yeah, that's what I look like in my head - but less blonde.

Merry Christmas!

Happy New Year!

Yeah, so I'm a little behind, but no blog of mine would be worth its collective weight without a farewell to the old and promises I plan to keep break for the new around this time of year, right? Like here, two years and change ago, when I made the decision to go to grad school...again... Or here, where I acted like a big-time fancy pants writer and announced a book cover on the blog, promising to keep to a deadline. Y'all have met me, so stop laughing and keep reading.

This past year has been a different beast. I lost my dad in April. I lost my mind, more or less, in the summer. I lost my office around November. I lost the regular and pain-free use of my right elbow somewhere during the fall semester. For once, as I said in a very maudlin post on Facebook, I was not desperately clinging to the previous year on New Year's Eve and was ready to kick that biz to the curb. Roll on, 2019!

For the however long New Year's Eve took, I was standing between two realities, in a way. New year, new me, right? Sort of. I'm not making specific resolutions, save the generic ones like, "Enjoy life more and read more and so forth." I'm going to live my best life (so far) in 2019 because really, that's all we can do, right? That's all I have been doing, trying to live my best life - perhaps the resolution is to let less of the stuff of life get in my way.

Oh, and to the writerly stuff:  I will have a Clobberpaws book coming out in the spring/summer of this year and at least one Orana Chronicles novel out by May, if the scorching and clobbering process (that is writing and editing) doesn't kill me first, that is.

What a long strange...year...it's about to be.

Starry, Starry Blackberry Wallpaper

I'm not going to do my standard "Year in Review" post today.  I'm also not going to list resolutions for the new year that I will certainly break.  What I am going to do is tell you my plans for the year, so that this time 2014 I can look at this post again and see how close I got to getting it all right.

A short disclaimer:  This optimism is destined not to last, so enjoy it while it is here.  I'm sure I'll be back to my regular emo ray of sunshine self very, very soon.

This year is going to be very lucky for me and mine.  We have a house.  We will have a fence and a deck soon.  Our basement floor will return to normal.  We will get all our boxes from the overseas move unpacked before summer.  We will have guests from the UK and the US and Canada and wherever else we have friends to come stay with us. I will be having a Eurovision finals party at my house in May. Daisy and Clown will maintain, healthy and happy, as they are today.

Our family will grow.  We've gotten downright scientific about this whole process, and while we will definitely increase the canine population of the house with a larger and fuzzier newcomer, I am confident that we will also add to our family of humans.

I will get something published.  In the past, I have resolved to "make part of my living with my writing" and I've done that. Daisy's book and my others are still available on Lulu.com. This year, however, is when that takes a step up.  This is the year that all my nano-noveling and other pecking at my keyboard will be shared with the world, as well as the year that I truly start to believe that I have a story to tell that people want to read.

I will be doing more things in the name of self-care.  There will be yoga and meditation to quiet my mind as well as a dedicated effort to start running again while my knees will still allow me to do so.

There will be travel.  Watch this space, as I will be filling all five or six of you in on my travels in a more timely manner than I have in the past.  Along those lines, and in combination with the above publishing work, there will be a photo book in the works of our honeymoon trip.  We are fairly decent photogs, me and my Mister, and I want to share the incredible experience we had with others.

I am going to be a better listener and friend, and will spend more time doing and less time talking about doing.  Of course, this blog doesn't count...

Finally, I'm going to look back on this post on 1 Jan 2014 and smile at all I've accomplished this year.  Happy New Year, Lettuce Readers.  Live long and prosper, and all that jazz.

My but I'm violent this year...

In the year 2007 I resolve to: Slap stupid people in the head Get your resolution here.