2023 in Reflection

I suppose I should be reflecting on 2023 but frankly, it's been a painful year. The love of my life has been afflicted so I've become the caregiver. I would do it for a thousand years if necessary but that doesn't mean that either of us has to like it. Most of 2023 has been getting through the days for both of us. Doctors and medications and tests, oh my! Fortunately, there may be some light at the end of the tunnel but it's too early to tell. There is however, always hope...

I've been drinking more and as a result, gaining a bit of weight. Not a lot of weight but it's threatening parts of my wardrobe that it hasn't outright kicked. You could call parts of my youth "food insecure" to be polite but the benefit is that I learned at an early age to ignore hunger so, I just don't eat much. That being said, I know that when I start gaining weight it's because I've changed something. Once it was the result of regularly adding cream to my coffee. This time I know the cause.

Writing has been a bit of a bright spot. In one sense, I'm no closer to publishing. In another, I've developed my processes far beyond where they've ever been. A few story tests have been done at around 12k words each and 3 of them are quite promising with a fourth needing more character development but I think it shows early promise. I've converted two to outlines and scenes which I'm using as the basis of my rewrites. The realization came that I need to track the complicated parts before I'm hip deep in them. Seriously, that took two +50k stories to figure out.

If you ask me what I'm thankful for in 2023 you may think I'll tell you that I'm glad writing has been a bit of a bright spot. In truth, what I'm really thankful for is another year with the love of my life. I'll be honest, I didn't expect 2023 to be worse than 2020 yet here I am wishing 2020 had been the worst of it.

For 2024 I want the love of my life to have more life restored. I think that goes without saying though. There is a helpless fear that I'll leave but its not my fear. I'll never leave. If I am to be the caretaker then I shall be the caretaker for all of eternity if needed. I do need to be more careful not to let it all twist me too much as evidenced by my increased drinking. I need to do better so that the irrational fear of my leaving is calmed. It's oddly difficult to avoid being dramatic.

I intend to have something ready to publish in 2024. I can't know if anything I have will be accepted for publishing but I can get it through editing. I have two in mind.

One is the story of a very young woman who inherits a magical house. The ancient house which was once a forest and before that, a grassland, had become a refuge for any creature the house likes including a magical creature with dangerous enemies determined to enslave its power to their will even if it destroys the house and everything within.

The second is the story of a poor wizards apprentice and a member of the team of assasins which kill both the wizard and apprentice. The apprentice survives, finding himself in a far future world where each death sends him to another world. The assasin sees through the lie that the assasins hunted dark wizards when she sees them kill her childhood friend, someone who took the beatings for the littler kids back in the her days in the workhouses.

Pretty terrible descriptions if I do say so myself, and I do. I never know how much is too much to give away. I guess it could be worse for an "off the top of my head" blurb. Clearly I need to work on it but that's ok, I plan to anyways ;-)

In summary, 2023 overall sucked and 2024 is gonna be a challenge but I made it through 2023, 2020 & 2016 and even learned a bit on the ride so I can do this.

To note, I am still recklessly running without spellcheck. Not elsewhere though, just here. I'm not crazy...