I’m not posting about resolutions or goals – but rather a state of mind.

One of the things that got me through 2023’s ups and downs (and honestly several years of the ugly divorce) was daydreaming about what my ideal life would look like. Especially once I got to my house.

Newsflash: I’m in my house! Finally!

My ideal life is so close…

What do I want every single day to look like? How do I want to feel? What do I want to spend my time doing? That’s what I’m focusing on this year. I’m almost there already. Getting my house next to Dad’s and Molly’s was Phase I. If all goes according to plan, Phase II will wrap up by the end of 2025. Though I can’t say more about that yet.

So now that I’m here, living my ideal life as closely as possible, what do I want my days to look like? What can I control? What can I do to get closer every single day to Phase II?

While assessing where I am and what I accomplished in 2023, I realized that I’d fallen into some temporary thinking and habits. The house we lived in was temporary. Staying with Dad–temporary. Even before we moved out of Nixa, I was just waiting for the divorce to finalize so I could move on with my life. So those years of court limbo were also temporary.

Honestly, even many years of marriage were temporary. I was in survival mode. I shut down a lot of the things I wanted to do, even to the point of stifling who I was as a person. Just to survive another year.

Goddess willing, I’m not moving from this house until they bury me. This is permanent. NO MORE TEMPORARY THINKING ALLOWED. I’m not in survival mode now. I’m in THRIVE mode.

It’s time to get back to my permanent routines that maximize my time and health so I can do this writing gig for a very long time.

Way back about a million years–it seems–I used to write dark & early. I’d be up before anyone in the house and get at least one writing session done before anyone else was up. That way, no matter how shitty the day ended up being, at least I’d already written something.

I’m going to do my best to re-establish this kind of routine, though I must admit mornings are hard for me. This is going to take some time to adjust. One thing I learned from last year was that sometimes very simple rewards are enough to start a new routine. Thanks to the sticker reward, I stuck with my planner all of 2023 – except July/August got a little away from me while I was deep in the move.

My reward for getting up at the butt-crack of dawn is going to be tarot and this cute little stamp set I got. In addition to my Agendio that I reordered with some minor modifications, I added the Writual planner and acrylic stamp set to my morning routine.

I fell in love with the round tarot cards at the beginning of the divorce nightmare. I told this story in the Triune group, so I won’t get into the details here. But I had a memorable reading and immediately bought my own set of Motherpeace cards. I have many (several) other tarot sets I may use occasionally but I tend to come back to Motherpeace. They just fit too well into Shara’s mythos to NOT use.

My 2024 plan is to focus primarily on Shara, though inevitably I’m going to end up crossing over into Karmen and Helayna’s stories at some point. I really wanted to have those trilogies finished before I tackled Shara, but I’m just too far behind to keep waiting. At one point last week while I was prepping everything I had all three projects open at the same time. I may do that several times over the next few months!

The other project I’d really like to get back to is continuing The Vicious with Dig the Graves. But Shara will be my priority indefinitely. Of course I’d love to make progress (finally) with Blizzard Bound as well. We’ll see how that goes!

I don’t usually post word count goals either, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is going to be one of my biggest years yet. I’m shooting for 90k a quarter, 360k words for the year. We’ll see if I can do it.

What a crazy year!

I never imagined that it would take most of 2023 to build my modest house. Getting contractors to show up in the country was a constant challenge. Luckily, Dad seemed to enjoy hounding people until they finally came out to finish their work, and I was able to move in.

• LLS in July – the month I needed to move. We drove home as quickly as possible and the movers came the next day.
• Moved my youngest daughter out to her own apartment in July.
• Moved the rest of our stuff into storage, naively thinking it’d be a month or two. (hahahaha)
• Eldest moved out into her own apartment in October. Sorting through the storage unit was fun [insert sarcasm here].
• Finally moved my remaining stuff into the house Dec. 26th.

Since my kids were setting up house for the first time, I let them take whatever they wanted between the two of them. They cleaned me out pretty well, which is a good thing. That means I’m off to a brand new start in my home – where I’m now living alone for the FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE. I don’t have any furniture other than my bed and office equipment. I don’t have any kitchen items other than a few cast-iron skillets and stuff the kids didn’t want. So it’s “girl dinner” for me unless I go up the hill to Dad’s and eat with him (which I’ve been doing 98% of the time anyway).

Living with Dad for 5 months was an experience. I’ll never forget watching all the seasons of Alone with him, let alone countless hours of old black-and-white Westerns and the news (not Fox News thankfully). We took turns cooking and doing up dishes and for the most part had a great time–like an extended vacation. Molly often came up for dinner and we’d steal the TV to watch episodes of The Dead Files while Dad snored.

But living in someone else’s home isn’t the same as your home, you know? I tried to minimize MY disruptions to his life, especially the middle of the night work calls that had me up with the lights on trying to work. Or my dog wanting to go outside at O-dark-thirty. I struggled with carving out time to write, because I didn’t want to feel rude, locking myself up in the guest room rather than hanging out with him when I was the guest in his house.

And of course, I wasn’t prepared for how long I was without all my stuff. I took a single suitcase in July. I didn’t have any long-sleeved shirts. No coat. I didn’t take any of the birthday card stock, labels, etc. I didn’t have any of my shipping material or book stock. So that put a long hold on the business side. Bonus: I bought some new clothes until I could get my old stuff back.

All of this to say… my word count went down another 15% compared to last year (and if you go back and look at last year, you’ll see me whining about how little I wrote then too). I’m not whining this year because it was an incredibly stressful year of instability – and also a transition into my new life. A period of tightness and constraint in the chrysalis. A communal time of family that was much needed after the long miserable divorce and decades of marriage with a man who hated the rest of my family and never wanted me to see them.

Words for the year: 182,024. The lowest since I’ve been tracking in my spreadsheet (2021) but I’m sure you could find previous years here on the blog.

I still managed to republish a book, publish 4 new books, and participate in 3 anthologies with short stories.

I’ll do another post tomorrow with my plans for 2024.

Sorry, guys. I needed to bump the release a few more weeks so I can finish the best book possible.

I didn’t know it was going to be so hard to get into some semblance of a routine after moving in with my Dad the end of July.

My house still isn’t done. At this point, I’m hoping I can be in by Thanksgiving but that’s not guaranteed. The cabinet installer is coming the first week of November but I still have plumbing that needs to be done as well. He can’t come out until the cabinets are in–but it took him a month to come out last time. I have no heat in the house until he comes back and winter approaches. Everything has been delayed numerous times but I’m trying NOT to be stressed about it.

My eldest moved out into her own apartment (for the first time) beginning of October. That has been stressful but fun for both of us. My youngest lost another ferret this month, so I’ve been worried for her and making trips back and forth to the vet with her. RIP poor Felix. Our elderly dog KC – Kasey – got so sick last week that I was afraid I’d have to put her down. Luckily it wasn’t a stroke but vestibular syndrome. Some Dramamine and gabapentin got her through it and she’s 100% back to her sassy self. But all last week I was lucky to get more than 2 hours of sleep without her frantically pacing and crying because she got lost in the same guest room we’ve been in for months.

All of these little things that have conspired to keep me from hitting any kind of major momentum. Writing has been like pulling teeth all summer/fall. I really thought I’d have this book done EARLY and now I’ve had to bump it again. I’m trying to give myself grace, but I usually thrive under deadlines and pressure. The past year(s) have been difficult to hit my stride and roar through the book like I used to. Maybe I’m just getting too old for those late night, long hours. I used to love the thrill of a deadline breathing down my neck but I guess I have too much going on right now.

I don’t have stability. I don’t have my normal things with me. I’m sick to death of my suitcase of clothes. All of my winter clothes are packed in storage, buried in a mess. I’m behind on birthday and holiday cards, and kept hoping the house would get finished. Now I need to figure out a way to get them done in temporary housing without all my stuff that’s still in storage.

I’m about 65-70% finished with Monstrous Hunt. I really thought I could pull it out of the fire this weekend, but it’s just not going to happen. I will keep chipping away at it and finish it up as soon as I can!