Tag: year end

Year End: Moving Stuff

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One thing I’ve been meaning to do for a while now is get out my personal file box and clean it out some. It’s been a few years and I’m sure there are quite a few hold-for-seven-years papers in there that can be shredded. I initially put it off because of the move, but it’s been a few months now, and it still needs doing, especially considering my filing cabinet here in the office is getting a bit overfull.

I’d also like to head down to the garage and get my writings in a better semblance of order than ‘a few plastic bins and several boxes on the bottom storage shelves’. I’ll admit I sort-of-hastily stuffed them in those things in the final weeks of moving house, with the knowledge that they were at least safely stored off the floor. I don’t need to bring them up to the office, but I should at least make the bins easy to navigate.

That’s not to say that I’m already falling into a bad habit of not keeping things clean in our new home. I’m usually pretty good at putting my things away and tossing/recycling/shredding when needed. Just that I could probably utilize the new spaces a little better. The black bookshelf next to my desk, for instance, is an odd array of CD box sets, office supplies, and other odds and ends, and the bottom shelf is underused as temporary storage of…stuff. And my little under-the-desk caddy has gotten a bit of a shakeup en route to the new digs so that too probably needs straightening.

I usually like doing this kind of cleaning at the end of the year anyway, that way I can start fresh and keep up the orderliness I already have.

Now, my Dropbox folders, on the other hand…those are definitely going to need a lot of time and patience. They’re not in chaos, thankfully, but I really should organize them a lot better than they are. Over the last year or so I got a little lazy and the File This Later pile has been expanding exponentially. I’ll take my time on that, however. No need to worry about the digital just yet!

Book Sale: FREE E-BOOKS!

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OH HEY IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN!

Come one, come all for some free e-books! Smashwords and Draft2Digital are having their End of Year Sale! 

ALL SEVEN of my books are here for free until 1 January! You know you want ’em!

Yes, this includes:
—A Division of Souls (The Bridgetown Trilogy, Book 1) [2015/2025] [Now available in its remastered edition!]
—The Persistence of Memories (The Bridgetown Trilogy, Book 2) [2016]
—The Balance of Light (The Bridgetown Trilogy, Book 3) [2017]
—Meet the Lidwells! A Rock ‘n’ Roll Family Memoir [2018]
—In My Blue World [2019]
—Diwa & Kaffi [2023]
—Queen Ophelia’s War [2024]

[The above links open to each book’s main download page for your convenience.]

—Do you love an epic metaphysical sci-fi adventure? Try the Bridgetown Trilogy!
—A big fan of music memoirs? Meet the Lidwells is a fictional nod to one of my favorite genres!
—Enjoy magical girls and time travel fantasy? Try out In My Blue World!
—In the mood for a nice Ghibli-esque hopepunk story about best friends? You’ll love Diwa & Kaffi!
—Looking for a fantasy story about self-discovery? Queen Ophelia’s War is for you!

Thank you for reading!!

Year End: Moving On

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Sure, I could use the classic phrase I’m too old for this sh*t in regards to some of the more frustrating things that have happened over the past year. But really, I’m not nearly as cynical as that. Despite being firmly Gen-X, I never completely slid into full-on cynicism because I always felt it was an easy way out: writing something off by saying it was never good in the first place. It just didn’t ring true to me.

It’s true, I’ve had a few frustrating things happen here and there this year, and yes, I may have overreacted to some degree. But I’m not writing any of that off, far from it. I’m just choosing to acknowledge it and move on. Not every single event in my life needs to be a conflict that needs to be faced or resolved. Sometimes it just is what it is, and I have to adjust accordingly. I might have to make some changes, but they will be changes made my way and not out of frustration or necessity.

If anything comes with age for me, I think it’s that I’ve refined how I utilize my sense of patience. Back in my 20s I used to semi-joke I was cursed with a tremendous amount of it, primarily because it was the only reaction I could have most of the time, whether due to finances, emotional reaction, or just the situation I found myself in. Some years later I learned how to voice those frustrations, and at times I could be too vocal about it. It took me a while to find a level that wasn’t pathetic or reactionary.

It was all about balance, really. And that’s how I’ve been living since then.

Right now I know there are some things I can fix, and other things I can’t. But I know I am not chained to the places or situations I find myself in these days. It’s a matter of being able to think outside the box instead, and figuring out how to sidestep that particular obstacle and still move forward. It’s true, much of this I’ve inserted into the various characters in Theadia; many of them are just tired of doing it the old way and failing every time, and are looking for alternate ways to resolve their various conflicts. Thus their repeated mantra: if you could…would you do the right thing?

I think in 2026, this is how I’m going to try to think about my writing. While I still have a few things on the backburner waiting to be started, I’m feeling as though I’ve kept a lot of them there not out of a severe case of the Don’t Wannas, but more out of a rational sense that they may not be worth working on at this time. They might be good stories, just that I’m just not feeling the excitement about them. I’m pretty sure I’ll be finally trunking them for good pretty soon.

It’s time to move on.

Year End: Moving

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On any given day at work, I’ll walk at least two miles during my shift. Some days I’ll even walk closer to five if it’s busy. You’d think I don’t do much walking considering the hours I spend at the front end registers, but I do a lot more than just checking some days. I might be shopping for online customers. I might have to head to the receiving dock (in which I need to walk to the rear of the store, down a very long hallway, around a corner and past several shelves of backstock) for one thing or another. Or I may just be the lucky courtesy clerk that needs to head outside and round up the carts. Even on the days when I’m a bookkeeper, I certainly get my steps in. And I’ve been doing a LOT of walking at work.

If anything, I’m glad I’m nowhere near as sedentary as I was with the Former Day Job. Sitting on my duff for eight hours certainly gave me poor sitting posture and lazy-itis, that’s for sure. Here, I can expect to get at least some passive exercise in during an eight-hour shift. It makes up for the lack of time we used to have when we’d go for walks around the neighborhood after logging off for the day. Not that we don’t do that anymore, just that our walking tends to be on the weekends these days. Added to that, we let our YMCA membership lapse sometime ago.

I’ve been thinking, though, that I still need to get in better shape. I might be moving around, but I’m also a victim of lazy-itis on my days off. I’m not eating nearly as much junk food as I used to (though this triple whammy holiday season is certainly causing me to snack more!), but I’m not exactly burning enough calories, either. I’m getting older, so I’m not as flexible or as spry as I used to be, and certain parts are beginning to ache.

So what does this have to do with a writing blog? The obvious answer is that yes, I will definitely make it a point to move around more in 2026. Whether it’s a walk around the neighborhood or to our plot at the community garden, or making sure I do my daily stretches to keep me limber, I need to make time for it alongside my writing sessions. I don’t mind not exercising on a particularly busy work day where I’m going to be getting those steps in, but I should at least make stretching a daily priority, even if it is just for a few minutes a day.

Besides, a day where I’m moving physically is always a good day, because it usually gets my mind moving as well.

Year End: Moving House

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All told, the hardest part of moving to a new place was getting Cali into one of the carriers.

Finding a new place we liked? Actually kind of enjoyable. Our agent was super helpful and easy to work with. Banking? A bit chaotic with a few frustrating delays and dead-ends, but it got done eventually. Paperwork? There was certainly a hell of a lot of it, but in time all the t’s were crossed and i’s were dotted, and I made it a point to save every homeowner copy and pdf sent our way for future reference. Waiting for moving day? We planned it out so there was a bit of an overlap, so we had access to our new place while still emptying out the old one, and moved several things ahead of time to make it easier. Packing? Thankfully we prepared at least a good few months ahead of time, slowly boxing everything up. I must have made seven visits to the local Goodwill to donate the stuff we no longer wanted, each trip with six or more boxes of stuff. Setting up a mover? Easy-peasy, and the team I hired did an excellent and extremely quick job. Updating all the mailing addresses? Easy, though of course we’d forgotten a few post-move as is normal. Even the unpacking was quicker than expected, considering how detailed we’d been in packing in the first place. Certain items went straight down to the garage storage, while others went into specific rooms. All told, everything went as smooth as we’d hoped it would with minimal issue.

As for the cats, Jules didn’t fight too much. She got a bit cranky but she kind of understood what was happening, considering various pieces of furniture were suddenly disappearing along with the curious mountains of boxes they’d been climbing all over the previous month or two. She might be the more vocal of the two any other time, but she’s also very quiet when things get tense or confusing.

Cali, on the other hand? She turned into a full-on chaos goblin. It took three of us to get a hold of her, wrap her in a towel, deposit her in the cat carrier while she flailed and clawed, then zip it up before she could jump out for the fourth time. Our friend C was laughing the entire time, it was so comical. And Cali was not happy and made sure I knew about her displeasure until I took them both over and set them loose in the office for a day or two until everything settled and we put more boxes away.

All told, it only took them maybe a day or two to get used to the new place, and they love it here. More windows, more things to explore, more birds outside to watch, and even a stairway to run up and down. And they love skittering and drifting across the floor instead of digging into carpet. Life is good for our two silly cats.

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On a more personal note, it feels good to start fresh on that ‘clean slate’ level. I’m still feeling my way around figuring out what habits and processes I’d like to return to and which ones I’d like to change, but for the most part it’s been a lot easier than before, when I still had my creative past all around me. I hadn’t realized how much of an issue that had been, given our minimal storage space in the last two places we’d lived in. Back in my Belfry days, I could store a lot of my old stuff in filing cabinets or in the boiler room, but over the last several years I only had plastic bins and IKEA storage boxes that had to be shoved under the bed or in the deep recesses of what little closet space we had. In our new place, those bins and boxes are on the lower shelves of a unit I set up in the garage. Well out of the way but still easy to access if necessary. [I suppose I should eventually spend some time getting all of it in a better order, but there’s no rush right now. Maybe in the new year.]

This, in a roundabout way, has helped me focus more on the mental and emotional clarity I’d been working on over the last few years. There are still a few bumps in the road here and there, but I’m doing pretty well right now considering. I’m realizing that there are still a few self-built obstacles to work through, but those are much easier to face these days. Perhaps it comes with age that I’ve learned not to be so emotionally reactive to it all. I’ve learned what to work on and what to let go. I’ve learned when to keep fighting and when to move on.

It’s true, moving house did assist somewhat in all of that, partly because I’d chosen the ‘clean slate’ route. It inspired me to remain on top of it all and not get overly distracted. It offered more clarity going forward, making my path easier to navigate. Older thoughts and ideas cast aside, paving the way for new ones to form without all the clutter.

Sure, this might be another one of my patented year-end Best Laid Plans rambles, but I’d like to think that despite that happening, I have a much better chance of seeing it through than in the past. And I’d like to think that’s something worth looking forward to.

Year End Review – Resolutions

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First things first: END OF YEAR BOOK SALE!

Want some free e-books? My novels are currently available as ‘name your price’ (yes, even free if you want!) over at Smashwords until the end of the year! That’s all three books in the Bridgetown Trilogy, Meet the Lidwells!, In My Blue World, and my newest, Diwa & Kaffi, available in all formats. Go on, you know you want them!

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Anyway! Resolutions.

I’ve looked at a few of my year-end posts from the last couple of Decembers, and I’d like to think that I’ve made good on quite a few of them over the last year or so. I’ve shaken off a lot of the lingering fears, fixed a lot of bad habits, and given myself a much healthier outlook mentally and emotionally. It was a long time in coming, but I’m glad I’ve finally gotten to where I wanted and needed to be.

Because this means I can move forward with a lot less fear and distraction now.

So what do I have planned for 2024?

Well, writingwise I plan to return to cons! I’ll be at BayCon in Santa Clara on July 4-7 and I hope to be on a few panels and maybe even a few readings. It’s been a good few years since I’ve put myself out there — partly for obvious health reasons, what with Covid and all — but mask in hand and multiple vaccinations, I’ll be ready for it.

I have one, maybe two novels I’d like to release as well, Queen Ophelia’s War and Theadia. Depending on which one gets done and ready first, I will let you all know as soon as they’re ready. And I have one or two entirely new projects I’d like to work on as well. It feels great to be working on projects again after the various delays and hiatuses, to be honest.

But what about the everyday, nonwriting stuff? Well, some of that will remain offline I suppose. I’m making a concerted effort not to be so terminally online via social media, as that’s been the biggest time-suck over the last several years. Most of 2023 was spent relearning how to balance my life both on and offline to a level I’m comfortable with. [It also helps that a certain social media site has been deteriorating at an increasingly rapid pace over the last several months. I’ll be locking down my feed there at the end of the month and hanging out mostly at BlueSky and Threads come 1 January.]

Anything else? Well, I still have a few more days to go before the end of the month here at Welcome to Bridgetown, so I’m sure I’ll be talking about it more soon enough.

Year’s End View I

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Image courtesy of Makoto Shinkai, of course

I’ve tried to avoid falling into the trap of ’20xx has been a shitshow’ over the years because, frankly, I’ve already played that cynical game for several years in the 90s and it didn’t do a damn thing to make my life any better at the time other than make me feel even worse. A lot of things have happened in the last couple of years, some it well within my control and some of it not, and the most I can do is keep going despite it all. Life around us has definitely changed in one way or another.

In a way it’s kind of felt like an enforced renewal, if that makes sense…like it was far past time to purge some of the poisons we’d fed ourselves over the last several decades, plucked us out of a race we’d been trying so hard to keep up with despite our exhaustion, recalibrated our speed to more acceptable and mentally healthier levels, and gave us a chance to start fresh. It’s changed our viewpoints somewhat.

I understand how terrifying that can be for some people, especially when you’ve been trained to run that pre-mapped race at corporate-enforced speeds. Believe me, I know…so many of my jobs in my life demanded that I stay in constant motion lest I be seen as not actually working, and that nearly always breeds a special brand of guilt when you slow down out of physical or mental exhaustion. When you’re given the ability to take that break guilt-free, it’s hard to accept. Somewhere in the back of your mind you feel guilty anyway, even if no one else cares. You get that itchy feeling that you need to do something every minute. And that feeling gets harder to purge the longer you’re kept from that downtime.

Now that we seem to be (hopefully) approaching the back end of a pandemic era with its lesser variants, rising vaccinations and healthier habits, it almost feels like things might actually get a bit sunnier in the near future. Not to ignore the terrible things that are still out there, of course…those are an unfortunate constant no matter what era. But I really want to feel as though we’ve been given the opportunity to rethink the way we approach those things, and I want to embrace that. Reacting to every negative event with a reactionary emotional drama has never been a healthy approach at all for me, and yet it’s all I’d known for years, and I felt it was time for me to change that. [Side note, come to find out lowering my blood pressure with medication helped here. Whodathunkit?]

So I’ve been spending most of 2021 recalibrating…emotionally, mentally, physically, and creatively. And apparently it paid off, as the last time I spoke with my parents, my mother told me I sounded a lot happier and healthier as of late. It weirdly felt like vindication, come to think of it…like I had to go against the grain to find that happiness, but taking the alternate journey was so worth it.

4: On Keeping Busy

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Four more entries to go in 2018, so I thought I’d do a bit of an overview of things I’ve been doing or thinking about over the course of the year, building up to my new writing plans for 2019. 

It’s been a hell of a busy year. I did that by design, to be honest, and I’m glad I went through with it. It proved a lot of different things:

–I can multitask. I wrote two novels in tandem this year, using two different sign-ons at 750Words. One during work breaks and one in the evening. Both are roughly 75k words, which is actually quite economic for me, and I think a better word count goal. Out of this I learned to be more concise with my writing.

–I self-published a completely new novel that had nothing to do with any years-long project, proving that I can reach a quick deadline and turnaround.

–Writing four blog entries a week, with only the occasional fly-by or short hiatus. Some days it was hard to come up with a subject to write about, but I think I pulled it off for the most part.

–Writing some new(ish) melodies on my guitar and recording demos for them for future Drunken Owl projects. Continuing to expand my guitar playing by learning new styles and reaching for different moods.

–Taking better care of myself healthwise. I’ve lost a bit of weight, especially over the last few months since I’ve started doing morning exercises, and being or proactive about heading to the gym a few days a week, or going for walks in the neighborhood. Eating healthier, cutting down on the snacking and the junk food.

…and all of this while still holding down a Day Job. There’s been a bit of temporary shake-up there as well as a ridiculously long stretch of time dealing with unnaturally heavy volume of work, which only recently has started to decrease.

I don’t feel exhausted, far from it. I’ll have my days where I just want to say hell with it, log off and take a nap, sure, but for the most part, I’m impressed that I got through it all with only one or two sick days the entire time. I actually like to keep busy with multiple things going on, as it keeps me occupied, preoccupied, and creative. (It’s only when it’s too busy that I start getting cranky and sloppy.)

Which is partly why I’ve decided to take 2019 a little bit easier, at least for the first six months. Cut back on the multiple projects, finish off the ones I’m working on, and give myself some time to enjoy nonwriting endeavors like art and music. I’ll go into a bit more on those future plans for the last post of the year, but for now I’m just glad to say I’m proud of all the work I did this year, and I’m definitely looking forward to giving myself a break from it!

Year In Review, Year Ahead

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Source: Say Anything (1989)

This has been quite a long year, hasn’t it?  So many things going on in the world.  Half the time I’m trying to keep a sane distance so I can process it all clearly and intelligently, and half the time I realize I’m doing all I can to keep my head above water.

But I’ve been trying to stay positive.  Even when we have people in “charge” (I say this lightly) doing all they can to obliterate the rules and exclude a portion of their constituents out of legal existence, I’ve been trying to be a positive anchor, even if it’s just for myself.  Someone’s got to be.

BUT!  It’s been an interesting and quite creative year here in Spare Oom.  I had quite the productive 2018, which was unexpected but pleasing.  I made good on my plan of releasing one e-book a year, with Meet the Lidwells! dropping in early March.  I wrote and completed not one but TWO books this year (In My Blue World and the Apartment Complex project) that will be dropping in 2019.  I recorded at least twenty partial demos of songs for my Drunken Owl project, and hope to work on more next year.  And I made more of an effort to write more lyrics and poetry again.  And I’ve been quite verbose in the personal journal this year.  I stayed pretty consistent with my daily words over at 750Words.  Lastly, I had quite a consistent run both here at Welcome to Bridgetown and over at Walk in Silence.  So yeah, a hell of a lot of writing this year.  I’m stupidly proud of myself for that.

So what’s on tap for 2019?  I’ve hinted here multiple times that I’m going to make some big changes across the board, both personally and creatively.  After years of having Best Laid Plans that I couldn’t always follow through with, I find that I’m now in a good place to make a lot of them finally happen.  A few personal events helped force me to look at them in a different, more serious and better planned light.  Will they fall through or will they come to fruition?  Who knows, but I can only hope it’s the latter.  I’m already taking steps to ensure they work.  Let’s just say that when they come to fruition, I will update accordingly, heh.

Overall, 2018 has been one hell of a roller coaster and I’m glad it’s winding down (sort of).  Here’s to hoping 2019 provides a little more sanity!

Source: World Order, “Singularity” video

An overview of 2017

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img_20171221_1548508657809012133565527.jpg
The Bridgetown Trilogy — finally DONE.

It’s been an interesting year, I’ll say that much.  Personally we’ve all had one hell of a bumpy ride.  I’ve certainly had my highs and lows.  And somehow I persevered.

Anyway, looking back over the past twelve months, I’m proud to say I went a hell of a lot further in my writing career than I ever thought I would.  A project that I started in all seriousness twenty years ago was finally signed off as complete.  I started not one but two completely new projects and sowed the seed for even more ideas.  I kept a solid blogging schedule.  I took part in panels on two different local science fiction conventions.  All while still holding a Day Job.

—The Balance of Light e-book and trade release, and completing a long-term project.  That was the toughest of the three to revise, so it took me most of 2016 and early 2017 to finish.  Even the cover was a bear to get right.  But at the same time, overcoming the hurdles I faced on this one made me an even better writer; it taught me to take all the time I needed to get it right before I released it upon the world.  It was worth the wait, as that book went from the Troublemaker for a good few years to a novel I’m proud of.  And added to that, it truly did feel like a weight lifted off my shoulders when I realized I did not need to work on that project any longer.  I still miss it, of course, but I’m definitely glad it’s done.  Most importantly, I saw a very long-standing goal to its conclusion and I couldn’t be happier.

–Daily words at 750words.com.  I’ve been quite consistent with this as well, much more so than previous years.  I trained myself to use this site as a place for playing around with ideas instead of trying to force myself to use prompts (suggested or otherwise).  I just went with whatever popped into mind.  In 2015 and 2016 I used it to write an extremely rough and incomplete draft of Meet the Lidwells, and in 2017 I used it to plot out most of the project after that.  I’ve taken this month off from it for various reasons, but I’ll be picking it up again come January.

—Meet the Lidwells!  This one surpassed all of my expectations, to be honest…so much so that I spent the first half of the project questioning whether or not I was doing it right!  This project hit a lot of goals: writing a complete outline ahead of time, writing a shorter novel, writing a story that had a personal connection (music), and writing in a minimal amount of time.  Because of this I have a minimal amount of post-writing work to do: some minor revision, shooting the cover picture, and prepping it for self-publication.  Quite possibly the shortest novel project I’ve had to date.

–Untitled ‘Apartment Complex’ story.  Having written out a few key scenes and plot ideas for this story using 750Words, I’m now working on the outline in the same manner that I did MtL.  That way when MtL drops, I can immediately focus on writing this one. This too has goals: to see if I can pull off ‘writing econo’ again.  I’m using the same process as the previous project, to the extent that I’ll play around with ideas on the project after this one for my daily words.

–Consistent blogging.  I wrote two different blogs twice a week for nearly the whole year, with very few lapses.  There were moments when it was tough, given that I always wanted to write something of interest and/or purpose, and did my best to avoid the fly-by entries as much as I could.  I also wanted to avoid repeating myself whenever possible; I’ll totally cop to writing the same damn nostalgia piece over and over, and I’m doing my best to break out of that rut.  And in the process, I’m learning how to expand my palette by expanding my interests.

–Participating in Convention Panels.  This was another big one for me.  I’ve gone to a number of cons over the years but always as an audience member, but never as a participant.  After releasing my books I knew that this would be a great way for me to get connected to the non-writing part of the business.  [Mind you, my very first panel was a reading, which went over well but I think could have been better.  Once I got past that first one, the jitters were no longer there.]  In 2018 I’ll be attending three more cons, and I’ve signed up as a participant at all three.

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All told, I’m ecstatic with what I achieved as a writer in 2017.  It was an extremely productive and fruitful beginning to my career as a professional self-publisher.  There are some goals I wish I’d have hit, but I’m not going to let that bother me.  I’m definitely looking forward to reaching those plus many new ones.