End of 2024 Review

The year 2024 has been a year of regrets, I regret to say. Regrets for things I didn't do; for things I did do but perhaps shouldn't have; for things I said and failed to say; for looking back far too much; for not getting that time machine built.

This has been one of the most difficult years I've had since my toddler years when much was not actually my fault. A lot happened. Some good, some not so good. I'll try to keep it light for the holiday season.

I began the year in the dark weeks of winter by deciding to move to a new residence out of spite for the changes the management made during the previous year (after I signed the lease). My new place was more in-town, a mere 3 miles south of the old place, was of a more traditional style. So far, it has been comfortable - but my neighbors changed and now I have loud talkers below me. I don't complain much because at least they are not loud music buffs.

I settled in and returned to working on whatever the latest book was, putting off unpacking for when the muses insisted on napping. Spring came over the land and I noticed. Didn't do anything, but I noticed. Had thoughts of this summer's road trip. Studied maps. 

Next I helped my daughter move. That is: sell a big house and buy a small house. Then the truck and the lifting and the carrying. You know the drill. That stressed me enough that I had to be checked out by my newest doctors. I say newest because I had moved here two years earlier upon retirement and had to switch from doctors in the old location in another state. Plus the hassle of setting up various government programs designed to keep paying taxes for as long as possible. So far, so good as I arrived at the summer. I was put back together and sent on my way. No road trip.

I decided to take it easy the rest of the year, relax and let the world come to me. I've actually accomplished that goal. In fact, I still have not finished unpacking since I moved in to this new home. I think about it. Instead, I get up, do some writing, check the socials, run errands as needed, take a nap, get up and watch TV, get dinner, watch YouTube videos or a movie or write more, then read and go to bed. An easy schedule. A simple life.

Next I shall elaborate on my writing during the year. If you've read about this topic in previous blog posts, that's fine. Thanks. I still urge you to read on; the grammar is better this time.

Professionally (if I may use the term for a non-paid vocation), I managed to complete Book 4 in my Flu Season series. I'd thought a trilogy was enough to hang my hat on - my third trilogy, achieving the trifecta! Yet another book idea kept pushing into my head until I had to write it in order to stop the noise. Book 4: THE BOOK OF DAD continues the misadventures of one of the family members as he suffers through the 'Ideal Society' of the capital after the pandemic years and civil war have passed. The theme is about truth, what it is and how it can be so easily corrupted - as he learns from Big Sister. Appropriately, THE BOOK OF DAD launched on Father's Day.

By that publication date, I had already started yet another book in the series, calling Book 4 a sequel to the trilogy. However, starting Book 5 forced me to see the continuing project as a new trilogy. This new book is narrated by the daughter of the main character of Book 4. It is a lighter story with an emphasis on music as a vital aspect of human experience, lost during the previous reconstruction era. In Book 5: THE GRANDDAUGHTER, a simple country girl living out west in this post-everything world decides to start a kids band in her little town. But she is noticed through some music events and rises to a full musical career. I often call this story a remake of the musical The Music Man but with a post-apocalyptic Western setting. THE GRANDDAUGHTER launched in September.

What does a pair of books need to become a trilogy? 

Yes, by then, I had started what I expect to be the final volume in the Flu Season Saga: THE GRANDSONS. As of this blog posting, this novel is, by my estimation, roughly half finished. It is a complex book using a frame story. We begin in the "present" of the story which is 15 years after the end of Book 5. Then we slip back in time to reveal what has been happening to the characters during that 15 year span. Finally, we arrive again at the book's present time and, having now learned all that happened, the concluding chapters are poignant and a fitting conclusion to the entire six-book series. When all is said and done, we are well into the future and on the way to connecting with my vampire series and my epic fantasy novel. Book 6: THE GRANDSONS should launch in fall 2025 if all goes well.

The end of the year is always a quiet time. I'm not much for lavish parties although I attend them sometimes. Not a fan of loud celebrations. Not much for the religious devotions yet still appreciate the music. That's just not me. Been that way most of my life. I prefer periods of quiet reflection. That often leads to a list of regrets. Thinking over what I've done, what I've witnessed through the year, and what could've been done better - not that I can go back and fix anything. I might be able to rewrite some things as fiction, a better version of the truth.

At this stage of my life, I make few plans. Other than finish the book mentioned above - and I have no plans to start another following it, although I have a couple manuscripts in unfinished condition I might take another look at - I will hopefully awaken each day and only then make a decision what to do. Then another decision as the day blossoms. Then another. Hard to say. It's something to do.

I wish you all the happiest of holidays now passed, and a better new year in 2025 than any past year!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2024 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.

Is this the year for you?

(I seriously doubt it's for me.)

2015. There. I said it.  (Actually, I wrote it.)

And so it begins: another year of the blogging virus. Will any of us survive?

On Saturday, I felt a pang in my side. A pang is non-descript, a physical sensation that has no physical cause. A chimera, a mystery, a riddle wrapped in flimsy flesh. But I felt it.

The pang expanded, filled my torso until I almost could not breathe. For a few precious moments I thought that was the end for me, the beginning of not-me, my doppelganger. I checked my daily nutritional consumption to investigate the nature of what may have prompted the pang. I considered events of recent days, dismissing each of them summarily as unlikely causes.

I thought it best to rest, so I laid down. (Grammarians need not be concerned, at this point, for I actually did open a bag of duck feathers and spread them around on the floor.) I was already near the floor, you see, so I took my leisure there, close to the undercarriage of society, and there did I nap.

A resurgent pang awoke me, however, called me to rise and rise I did, like the morning sun in the land of the morning calm. Suddenly, I knew the source of my pang. Regret. It's always about regret. Usually somewhere in the plural. Regrets. And there would be more: a year's worth of them, surely.

The little bird outside, robinesque in its twittering, clenching firmly the bending, bouncing twig, dared suggest that a new day had finally dawned, and so I yawned. Already it was year 2015 on the standard calendar. Such an artificial construct! And I wondered: how had I managed, despite myself, to have reached this date? 

I recalled sometime in year 1984 wondering how I could have possibly reached that date, given all I knew or had done (or not done). At the time, I felt as though I had been blessed by a fistful of free hamburger coupons. That exuberance had caused me to reflect deeply on 1975 and the severe dismay I had felt for so many of those months. Much worse than 1962 when all I worried about were toys. Then, in 1999, I again faced the dark abyss and considered whether or not I could make that leap of faith and land sure-footed on the good side of Y2K. (I did.)

And then year 2004 and year 2008 came and went with much hurrah and much sighing, like any good matinee down at the multiplex. Luck of the draw. Everything begins and ends, after all, and you hardly ever see the smoke and the mirrors behind the dog and pony show. You see what you want to see and you get what you pay for. What comes free is always of questionable vintage. The peanuts are free, of course. And the can of soda, too--unless you sit in Business class. There the wine is free.

In fact, this entire holiday period seems drawn from a deep dream. For reason which still remain hidden, I gathered myself into a long box and later awoke and climbed out of that box, rather vampire-like in my proclivities and mannerisms if not for my skin condition. That is not quite how I wished to be, you must understand, but there I was: an automaton driven forth through the streets of some large foreign city, perpetually lost, always on guard and mute, unclear as to my destination. It was a nightmare but without the horse.

It seemed as though I was taken to a temple high on a mountainside and for a brief moment I believed I would be given the opportunity to leap off the top and fly, fly, fly away home. But no, not that. It's never that simple. Instead, the sordid experiments began and for several days there was no technology allowed but for the glasses I always wore. No clothes or shoes, either, only a thin robe and straw sandals. And winter had come. The food was rice and cabbage, and boiled tofu if I was behaving myself. And tea. Lots of tea. But no Q & A. LOL was swiftly punished.

Thus I did not speak, only listened; nobody was saying anything anyway. The world was reduced to birdsong, wind, heartbeats, and the disconcerting creaks of tired timbers along the floor I traversed from morning chant to afternoon meditation to evening sleep. After a couple days, I thought I was imagining everything, as though it were all a dream within a dream within a fortune cookie within a snowball set somewhere safe yet sullen. I was a muffin without a paper wrapper. And coffee was far, far away.

Then the curse broke and I was flying--yes, at long last, like a scrawny, half-starved bird, wax wings holding tight, soaring high to the ancient castle on the top of another, better mountain. And there I was hooked by long talons and wrestled inside through a latticed portal, placed on a davenport of Naugahyde and made to chirp my cute English words as though I were an expert. Or someone's prized pet. Occasionally I would be given a tasty treat. Mostly, I listened, for there was much I did not understand.

Not sure what exactly happened--though fairly certain it was not quite a dream (surely not a sleeping one, that is), but I nevertheless hold out for the possibility that I could have been fully conscious yet simply unaware of what was unfolding and refolding around me, so Laundromat-like in its efficiency, as it were--I chose to accept all of it. Indeed, what else could I do? 

And now the waking dream comes to an end--as all realities must at the start of a new page, the first of many: pages filled line by line with regrets, or the occasional cross-out of things that surprisingly went well, day by day. The earth still turns, still bleeds, still crow-caws, and humor is a rare delicacy. But now the pillows have burst, the clocks have been smashed, and the ringing of the school bell awaits. I shun reality like fermented bean paste mixed through with whole dried minnows and a side of kimchi. Because I can. Because I must. Because there is pizza.

If I somehow make it to year 2016, it will be only because of you: my invisible, semi-fictitious, semi-delicious companions on the rocky road to somewhere muffin-warm and marshmallow-soft, sweet and sour like breaded chicken cubes, a rare respite akin to real retirement in the rustic inn along the narrow side of the road, just beneath that crooked, towering mountain covered with ice and snow, and the precariously poised stones tilting there, ready to fall from its heights. Yes, that one. 

We are all in it together. Let's make the most of our fresh set of downs!

BTW, FYI, Year of the Lamb!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2015 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.