After publishing my NaNoWriMo 2022 “wrap up” journal post on the 7th of last month, I thought it would would be fun to put together “wrap up” journal posts about what’s been happening in my life – a series of “time capsules” of sorts. While perusing my “Holler Happenings” notebooks (where I keep all of my various lists and notes), I noticed that everything fell into one of three categories:
• Holler,
• Personal, and, of course,
• Writing.
Therefore, each of my “7th of the month” journal posts will focus on each of the above-mentioned topics – probably in that order, too. Here goes…
Holler Happenings:
I spent the majority of “the month” (from 7 December 2022 to 6 January 2023, which will be the typical time period for each of these journal posts) doing a lot of brainstorming – to come up with a list of projects that I want to accomplish around the holler. All of these projects revolve around making improvements to both the holler house and the holler itself. In addition to these improvements, I also brainstormed a list of projects related to my “kitchen garden” – since I’m still determined to actually harvest something one of these years.
Personal Events:
For 2023, I decided to do something that I’d heard about during discussions regarding New Year’s resolutions. Instead of creating such resolutions, several people recommended coming up with a “word of the year” – a word that will help one stay focused on goals throughout the year. Since I gave up setting New Year’s resolutions quite a while ago – in favor of creating goals that I’d work on throughout the year (my birth year instead of the usual calendar year), I found the “word of the year” idea intriguing. So…
After a great deal of thought, I’ve settled on a single word (which was definitely tougher than it first sounded) and my 2023 “word of the year” is…
ACCOMPLISHING
I selected this word since I want to (finally) accomplish LOTS of projects during this brand-new year!
The biggest news this month was the “winter blast” that hit the holler – and most of the country – right around Christmas. I didn’t really mind the “winter blast” at all since winter is one of my two favorite seasons, AND it may have initiated a new Christmas tradition: something I’ll be calling my “winter blast staycation”. Because the “winter blast” weather prevented me from leaving the holler, I decided to do things at home that I’ve always wanted to do – but never took the time to do. The three main things that I wanted to do during my (first) “winter blast staycation” were as follows:
• make a gingerbread house (from scratch);
• make a Yule Log (something I’ve been wanting to do since my high school french classes);
• watch LOTS of holiday movies (complete with candy and popcorn).
Sadly, I wasn’t able to do the first two things – primarily because I was afraid to make the royal icing needed to keep the house together, AND I didn’t have a jelly roll pan. I’m still not sure about that icing, but I’ve since ordered a jelly roll pan. From the look of it, though, I’m not sure how effective it’ll be. However, I’m going to attempt to make both of these things (as part of an upcoming holiday celebration), so I’ll be ready for this year’s “winter blast staycation”!
No “Personal” discussion about me would be complete (especially at this time of year) without a mention of one of my two favorite sports: UK Basketball! I’ve been a big fan of the University of Kentucky (UK) men’s basketball for a VERY long time – since BEFORE I relocated to the Commonwealth of Kentucky seven years ago! Back when I lived in California, I listened to UK games – thanks to the wonder of the Internet (specifically, iHeart radio), and even though I’ve had the ability to watch UK games on television, I still listen to their games – mostly because I like the play-by-play calls, something that the TV announcers don’t do! Like my other favorite sports team (Portsmouth Football Club), I’ve followed the University of Kentucky Wildcats through their “ups” (winning national championships) AND their “downs” (not even making it into the NCAA tournament). I’m happy to report that after a rough start to the season, this year’s team has gradually started improving! Go, Cats!!
Writing:
As above, no discussion about me would be complete without mentioning my writing. By the time I managed to “win” NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) last year, I was (as usual) VERY stressed and ready to throw Zenny (my current laptop computer) out the window. So… I “took a break” from writing in December – though I do try to write every day: a “Pages” entry (my equivalent of Julia Cameron’s “Morning Pages” since I’m not much of a “morning person”), a “free writing” entry, a “meeting my quota” (with a quota of one page) entry, and a “Gratitude” journal entry. In the first three entries, I discussed things such as how I thought NaNoWriMo went and what projects I want to work on for the next year’s NaNoWriMo events – two camps and the main one in November. In the last type of entry, I create lists of things for which I’m grateful. As I mentioned, I try to write every day, but on the days I’m not, for whatever reason, able to write, I’ll write what I call “catch up” entries – which is nothing more that the next day’s regular entry with a “catch up” date entry such as this: Monday – Tuesday, 12-13 December 2022. This indicates that I didn’t write on Monday.
As far as what projects I’ll be working on in 2023 is concerned, I will continue to work on “The McGrath Family Chronicles” series, something that started out as a single contest entry (a story called “A Gangster’s Love Affair”) and morphed into a four-story series (a story for each of the McGrath Family members). This series sparked my interest in New Netherland, the Dutch colony out of which New York City grew, so I’ll be continuing to research the history of New Netherland and other Dutch colonies for the purpose of setting stories in these locations as well. If, for whatever reason, I lose interest in these projects, I’ve got LOTS of other story ideas to pursue. So many ideas, so little time… as they say, so I’ve got to be as efficient – and productive – as I can when it comes to my writing. To this end, one of the other things I want to work on – and accomplish – this year is to come up with a “work flow” that will take me from story idea to finished manuscript ready to submit for publication. If y’all have any ideas and/or suggestions regarding “work flow” for writers, I’d love to hear about it!
Well… I think I’d better close this, my very first “7th of the month” post before it becomes any longer than it already is! In future posts, I hope to add pictures to these posts, but I have to figure out how to do so first. Shouldn’t be too difficult to do since I’ve already managed to add a couple of NaNoWriMo banners to previous posts. In addition, I’ll have to go through my multitude of pics to decide which ones would be appropriate. Anyway… Thanks for sticking with me to the end of this post! Please leave me a comment to let me know what you thought of the type of post. Hope to hear from ya soon!