Welcome to 2020

Good evening. I suppose you're wondering why I've called you here today. We have unfinished business which has been overlooked for far too long.

When last I posted, it was May in the year 2019. I posted an assortment of material based on April being National Poetry Month. Apologies for verse which was, shall we say, not exactly the worst but not quite the best. Some were from the vast world of Twitter where there are strict limits on what a poet might do.

After that post, I had the best of intentions. I planned to continue the effort more or less on a three posts per month average schedule. However, I quickly became busy with personal matters. Besides, it was summer by then and I usually have taken a month off, anyway.

But summer went on and on, especially since I did not go to China to teach a summer class as in past summers. I was left with time on my hands. And I didn't know what to do. Unfortunately, more blogging never occurred to me. I decided to travel. I can share more of that adventure in upcoming posts.

At the end of the summer, I became stricken by a strange illness I later attributed to ineffective treatment of the hurricane-stricken interiors of the hotel in which I stayed. The coastal town had been battered and the hotel suffered damage. Alas, the hotel appeared completely rebuilt so I gave them my business. Upon departure, I noticed the first of what would become a long list of awful symptoms. First, I had to suffer through a week of horrible misery worse than anything I've ever imparted on any protagonist I've written.

The experience of weeks of recovery derailed again my desire to blog like there was no tomorrow. That is my story and I believe I shall stick with it. Or, in the alternative, I kept thinking I should get back to blogging but, like so many other blog attempts, I feared something would happen - meaning a tragic event - so it seemed inappropriate to post.

I missed my chance to blog again in 2019. Now I am about to miss my last opportunity to start blogging again with the first month of the new year. But as this is the Year of the Rat (or Mouse, if you prefer), I should get started again because . . . because there's probably some link between blogging and this particular mammal. It's in some ancient Chinese text somewhere. 

Therefore, you find yourself reading this post - unless you have already bailed out. If you have chosen to endure, kudos to you! 

For 2020, I shall commit to posting once a month. More often if the mood hits me or you start begging for more. Besides, I have a new novel coming out soon so it makes sense for me to get the ol' blog-a-thon rolling again. The usual suspects will likely appear: writing, my writing, amusing anecdotes, extreme diatribes, rants on the nature of nurturing, and a bit of alliteration. It is possible I may post something of interest to you at random.

U P D A T E - KC CHIEFS HAVE WON SUPER BOWL LIV 31-20. 

One of the first items on my agenda is the Kansas City Chiefs' appearance in Super Bowl 54, a mere 50 years after winning Super Bowl 4 against the Minnesota Vikings. This coming Sunday everything will be decided once more. I predict a victory for the Chiefs vs the San Francisco 49ers by a score of 38 to 24.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2020 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.