A Little Review, a Few Wishes
A few days ago, my husband was talking about playing board games last New Year’s Eve, and I had no memory of it. He had to remind me that of course I had no memory of it because I was visiting family out of state last year. I hadn’t forgotten that trip, or the many I took the rest of the year, it’s just that time all runs together now without any demarcations.
I visited Boston many times in 2024, Toronto, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, and finally Sweden, after years of trying to get there. I finished the final drafts of all the books in my trilogy and published two more poetry books. Years ago, my reading goal would have been over 100 books, but since I hit my goal of “1000 books in 10 years” I cut back, realizing that I could read a lot or I could write a lot but I didn’t have time to do both. So I wrote. That drops my total books read in 2024 to 20. Right now, I’m in the middle of the Lady Sherlock books and they’re all I want to read.
Our household was plagued by illness and injury—so it goes with age, I’ve heard—for both humans and felines. We lost Boone a few weeks ago, his heart failure catching up to him twenty months after his initial diagnosis. Phoebe is in the middle of an eye problem that might need surgery, if her current therapy doesn’t cut it.
A thousand other things happened and I’m too tired to review any of them. Someone online said that it feels like everyone is limping toward the finish line of 2024 and that is unfortunately accurate.
I’d wish for a better 2025 but that kind of thinking hasn’t worked in over a decade. I’ll paint my wishes in broad strokes and maybe I’ll catch their edges: with my trilogy basically finished, I want to get covers and publish them. I have a dozen ideas for what to write next but haven’t started anything substantial, so that’s a big goal. I would love to get to Scotland, preferably in October (I know it’s cold, I like the cold, have you even met me?). Will visit family again for a milestone event as long as they figure out what they want to do for it.
End of list. Just a few things, the important ones, with smaller goals sprinkled in. The past few years has taught me to not dream as big, and I hate that. So let’s add that to the list, too: learn to dream big again.