End of Days! …for 2024, anyway…
Is it over yet?
I have been asking “is it over yet?” since at least 2016, but definitely since 2020, and yet…AND YET! I keep asking because hope springs eternal, and so on. Ending on the note of Jimmy Carter dying is just perfectly in tune with the whole year, innit? Bring on 2025, I’m rarin’ to go!
Post-Retreat Roundup
As you may (or may not) have noticed, I took a week off. To answer questions I always get about this:
No, I did not go anywhere. This was a “staycation style” retreat.
Yes, I uninstalled and signed out of ALL my social media apps/networks. Yes, all of them!
Yes, I put my phone on “do not disturb” for seven whole days straight.
Yes, I checked email and messages once a day, just in case of emergencies.
No, I did not answer phone calls, but honestly I never do anyway. 😁
Yes, I cooked all my own food and did not go out to eat or order delivery.
What do I do, anyway? Read, nap, meditate, go on long walks, clean/organize the house, journal, write, pet the dog, cook a lot of food.
It is meant as restorative but honestly this year it was not as mindful as I would have liked. By the third day in I was having generalized anxiety attacks, not too severe, but I think it was due to my brain decoupling from the stress, ironically. If I am not stressing out, then what am I supposed to do????? By the sixth day I was feeling better but honestly I could have used another week of just being present in the moment.
Something to look forward to next year.
Stuff That is Going On
Going on retreat did not mean nothing happened, although most of these things were in the hopper before I signed out:
A Claus Encounter: A short fiction piece I wrote as a holiday gift for as part of the Substack Fiction Gift Exchange 2025! It was a lot of fun and I hope this is the start of an annual tradition.
Escape from Ice Mountain is a wrap! The Epilogue to the first arc of Dragon’s Grail posted on Dec. 20th! Wow, that’s…wild to me. It’s a story that originally was meant to be a New Adult novella series back in 2017, but my heart was never in it. Aging up the characters and making it more about adventure and drama revived my own love of the story. Arc 2, “The Lost City,” is coming in mid-January!
The Skeptic’s Inspirational is launching tomorrow! It is a daily motivational guide I’ve had in my back pocket for over 10 years, and it is finally coming to fruition.
The Bastards of Yumeng continues with Chapter 39 and over 70k words!!!!!. I’ve drafted it up to chapter 61 and likely this will top out at 200k words down the line. Whoa. This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī – Mòxiāng Tóngxiù fandom.
By Order of Prince Jing Himself is another gift!fic, this time for the Nirvana in Fire Exchange 2024! This is an annual event I have participated in since…2019, I think? It’s a lot of fun, and this year I wrote a humorous short story about Consort Jing for Umbralpilot.
It’s a Keely-Boo World
Keely continues to thrive, despite everything! We finished out the antibiotics over two weeks ago, but while there is no blood in her urine, she’s still incontinent. We’re going through a lot of doggy diapers, alas.
So, she’s going back to the vet in a couple of weeks for x-rays, to check and see if this is just “old girl dog incontinence” or “dreaded bladder stones incontinence.” But in the meantime, she’s barking for snacks and giving me the evil eye when I don’t provide:
Thanks for reading Keely’s Way!
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