Christmas Potpourri

Some scattered and random musings from my sleep-deprived brain...

Good morning, threes of fans, and happy Christmas Eve!

I am still struggling with the concept that 2024 is almost over. It's been quite an eventful year, and I'm still adjusting to a whole lot of "new normals" in my life. And as per usual when thoughts are pinballing all over the place in my brain, I'm going to process them here in random fashion, which is actually one thing about me that hasn't changed much this year... Call it an "old normal," I guess.

Weirdest. December. Ever.

December 2024 has been one for the record books for me, though I'm not sure what kind of records I'm keeping about random Decembers...

First, it has been so freaking quiet this month.

Aside from our youngest daughter visiting for a week, we have had no visitors--no kids home from college, no parents making the trek up here (not that we expected that). And because it's winter in North Idaho, we didn't make any travel plans. Unless we have to go more than a couple of time zones away, we tend to drive, and it's tough to plan road trips in winter. Plus, we did just have two long trips--our Arizona trip and our short Thanksgiving weekend trip. The first couple of winters we were up here, I drove down to see family in Oregon, and I didn't do that this year, so that's weird.

The icing on the weirdness cake is that WE STILL HAVEN'T HAD SIGNIFICANT SNOWFALL.

There is snow in the hills, and I've heard that the ski season is going well in general up here, but why the heck am I still looking at grass in my yard instead of several inches of snow??

Don't get me wrong--the high 30s and low 40s are nice for getting out for a run, and the lack of deep snow and frigid temps is a lot easier on my sweet old pup Sirius Black, who is starting to get a bit arthritic and doesn't much care for the cold snow on his backside when he's doing his business.

But it's confusing, y'all. I'd like to see a bit of snow.

Re-Feathering the Empty Nest

The nice part about a quiet December, I suppose, is that we've finally started working on some house projects. We spent this past weekend prepping and starting to paint my daughter's old bedroom. Later this week, we plan to pick up more paint, a new bed and mattresses, and some odds and ends to finish that room. This will be the guest/hobby room that I mentioned several weeks ago, and I'm excited that it should be done within a couple of weeks.

Thus begins a year or more of home improvement. I guess I've finally decided that I'm going to live here for a while, so it's time to, like, hang pictures and paint stuff.

We're starting out with the bedrooms, because all three need makeovers, but there are other projects, too. Some windows need replacing. The upstairs bathroom needs some TLC; the fixtures are fine, but it's a huge room with a lot of unused space and a rather spartan look, so I want to make it prettier and more useful. We want to do something in our kitchen--maybe paint the cabinets?--and maybe have the exterior of the house painted and spruced up.

For years, The Man and I have talked about buying land and building our dream house, but the older we get, the less I'm convinced that will happen. So until the Real Estate Gods drop the perfect piece of property onto our doorstep, I'm going to work on re-feathering my empty nest to my liking and make this house my "dream house."

And speaking of plans for next year...

Plans, Habits, and Goals for 2025

As usual, there are basically two buckets for plans and goals for next year. Bucket Number One is all the personal stuff, and I gotta tell ya--it's going to look different in 2025 than it has for the last several years.

I have hit that phase of life where my hormones are basically Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Over the course of 2024, I have dealt with anemia, surgery, recovery, massive sleep disruptions, brain fog, and more muscle and joint aches than I care to talk about. Through it all, I have been maintaining some level of physical activity, but mostly just enough to keep from ballooning back up to my highest weight. All year, I have felt like I have been holding back the ocean with a broom, just trying to do damage control on this aging body.

Only it turns out, the ocean was a tsunami.

Soooo.... 2025 is going to involve a kinder, gentler approach.

I remember thinking with pregnancy and tiny babies that a whole lot of it was about surrender. My body was going to do what it had to do to grow those little munchkins, and there wasn't a lot I could do about any of it except eat what sounded good and try to sleep as much as possible. It was kind of the same during the first few months of their lives, and I remember a lot of my pregnancy books talking about the "4th trimester"--that foggy period when you're just kind of feeding and changing and snuggling a baby and sleeping when you can.

I find myself in that position again--not entirely surrendered to what my body is going to do, but understanding that this is not the same body I had a few years ago and I don't have the same level of control I used to have. Yes, there are things I can do to promote good health and wellbeing, but at a certain point, it's out of my hands.

So as far as personal goals and plans for 2025... They involve a lot more gentle self-care than in previous years.

I plan to walk more and integrate yoga. I'm still going to lift heavy weights and jog or run when I feel like it, but I'm going to pay more attention to the recovery time my Garmin suggests. I'm going to tweak my diet, probably add some supplements, and talk to my doctor a lot more until things settle down.

In the meantime, I'm going to knit and crochet a lot, read more, and work on the home improvement projects.

And that's about it.

On the personal side, anyway.

On the writing side...

Writing Plans for 2025

After looking at my current client list and work load, I decided to just hold steady this year. I'm not going to push my marketing efforts in 2025. For one thing, I feel like I have enough to manage between my own wellbeing and my scattered family's needs without adding more clients or commercial work.

But there's a second reason I'm going to hold steady on all that in 2025: I'm going to put more focus back on my fiction.

There is the writing side for sure. I am going to make a concerted effort to finish and release Soultainted in 2025, and I'd like to write and release a new Ian Mac Roy story as well. If things go well, it would be great to at least start a draft of Wisdomkept, book five of The Taurin Chronicles, but we'll see how things go.

The bigger focus for me in 2025 will be the marketing and promotion side. I'm not going to dive headlong into social media again--trying that before almost killed me, and it did absolutely nothing to help sell my books.

Instead, I'm thinking through some other approaches--things that might actually get my books out there more, things I might actually enjoy, things that connect me with more people who enjoy my peculiar brand of fantasy.

I'm not really quite ready to share specific plans and ideas just yet, but I do have quite a few of them in the mental crockpot. I will be sharing them very soon.

With that, I think it's time for me to get a little bit of gentle exercise, order some yarn, and write some words.

Wherever you are and whatever you're up to this Christmas, I wish you all the peace and joy of the season.

See you all next week!