New Year’s | Breezy Books

Good grief, how time flies. With all my good intentions and optimism, I didn’t have a single blog post in 2023. How is that possible?

To be fair, 2023 was an unusual year.

My son was having a hard time adjusting to my absence as well as him having several difficult medical issues. I moved him in with me. He doesn’t tell people he lives with his mother. He says he has a roommate. As much as I like (love!) living on my own, I am glad he is here and that I can help him. It’s okay with me, too, he’s helping to pay the bills.

The hardest part of 2023 was Rich (the ex) being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He has no family left other than a brother-in-law, and I promised him I wouldn’t let him go through this alone. We had many early mornings and long drives to Cleveland Clinic for his treatments and doctor appointments. I won’t go into details, but he had ugly reactions to his chemo. I was always on deck to rush him to the hospital in the middle of the night when they seemed to present their worst.

I also spent a lot of time with him simply to occupy him and try to take his mind off all that was happening. We racked up a lot of hours playing Don’t Starve Together on the PlayStation. It’s almost stupid how much time we spent together this past year, but I do still view him as my best friend. He has had a Whipple surgery for his cancer, and it went well. We are now on the back end with another five months of chemo having just started. We can already see it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I do pray for a good outcome for him this year.

There was a month of trauma when I decided to no longer embrace my white hair. I went to a highly recommended salon and asked for light brown bordering on blonde with blonde highlights. I came out a full-blown brunette. I hated it and cried for three days. Isn’t it silly how the color of your hair can make you feel so bad? I had to wait a month before I could have it redone. My friends tried to be nice about it, but my family was not shy in telling me how much they didn’t like it. Gotta love honesty.

My friend Shelly on the left. Me on the right. I won’t show you the dark brown hair!

As for my book business … meh. I didn’t publish anything in 2023. I had bouts where I wrote like gangbusters, and I had droughts where I couldn’t put my butt in a chair and write to save my life. I didn’t have writer’s block; I simply had no motivation to write.

I finished the first book in my new cozy series set in fictional Appleseed, Ohio. This book is edited and proofread and has been sitting on my desk for months. I only need to format it and put it up, but I didn’t want to put book number one up without another book in the series coming along soon after, so I’ve been waiting. I’ve started book number two, and that is the book I’m currently working on. Book number ten in my Two Sisters and a Journalist series is about two-thirds finished. I hope to start 2024 off with a bang and publish all three of these books in the first quarter.

So … New Year’s resolutions. I generally don’t make any. They are usually broken quickly. However, I feel I want to make some this year:

Stop staying in bed until noon. Get up earlier and write in the morning instead of late at night. Plan small rewards for staying at my desk and writing for “x” number of hours each day. Treat writing more like a “going to work” job.
Stop letting Rich talk me into eating things I shouldn’t. Because of his cancer, he is encouraged to eat as much as he can handle to try to keep his weight up. Dragging me along with him while he searches for the best coney in three counties has not been good for my waistline. Nor have french fry runs in the evening.
Get back to intermittent fasting and healthy eating. Low carbs. Lean meats and vegetables.
I still haven’t crossed the 100# lost mark yet, but I will. I’m close. The goal is to cross the line by Valentine’s Day.
Exercise more. When the weather is nice, I’m out riding my bike a lot. But I can do sprints on my indoor bike this winter. If I do resolution number one, I should be able to do sprints on my stationary bike three times a day. Good for my legs and my heart.
Practice throwing darts more! Get better! We found my dart board in the basement up at the house. I thought it had been sold at a garage sale long ago. It’s now mounted in my living room.