Tag: Life

  • Starting Things Off Right

    You know, the first thing I have to do when I start writing at the beginning of the year is create a new folder to save my documents in. Hello file, 2024.

    This is also my last day of Winter Vacation. The kid goes back to school tomorrow, and though the wife started back at work today, we didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn, so it felt like we got to sleep in a little. Wednesday, we will all hit the road running; Making breakfast for the family, making the kid’s lunch, getting everyone dressed and out the door. Back to the grind.

    Speaking of grind; I gotta figure out what I want to do for this year. I have the standard stuff like cutting down on alcohol, working out more, more sleep, more reading, getting published in two journals this year. I do have some around the home projects that I need to take care of, and I would like to get better at the family budget and get our collective ass out of the final bit of our debt. (HA! We’ll never be out of debt…)

    I can say that I need to work on taking more time for the things I want to accomplish. I got a bit frustrated in the last three months of the year as I stopped working on my stuff. My writing production fell off sharply, and I know that I was to blame for it. But, I’m starting a new year, and it’s a new chance to correct old problems.

    Optimism can be a nice thing to have around.

  • Pretty Much My Last Blog Post of 2023

    I think that will be true. We are getting down to crunch time for the Holidays; the kid will be off from school, and soon the wife will be taking her Christmas vacation from work. Then we do have some traditions around the City we like to take part in, so the time to blog is growing short. And as such, this might be the last one I write for the year.

    Not that anyone is asking for this, and I am talking to the couple of you who stop by this blog, but I’ll post a Best of 2023, as well as some Holiday videos for Christmas and New Year’s. Once the kid and wife are back in school, I will resume the normal blogging schedule.

    As for 2023, it wasn’t a bad year…

    On the writing front, I submitted to 50+ magazines, and got accepted in one. I had planned on sending out to 100, and only then did I hope that maybe I’d get a bite. So, I’ll chalk that up as a win. I have three stories out there that I am waiting to hear on, so I guess there is still hope. The blog readership grew this year, which was unexpected to say the least. Most days, I feel like I am talking to myself in the dark, and lets be honest, that’s a rather true description. Yet, I averaged 5 readers a day in 2022, and in 2023 that grew to 20. I’m sure there are some Russian bots in those numbers, but some of you are real. Also, looking at the numbers, if you stop by this blog, you’re reading the Short Story Reviews, and not many of the other things I write about. (I don’t get any likes for my Tottenham posts, but I’m still going to write about my club.) I will say this about the reviews, which is that I have read more short stories this year than any other year of my life. I have discovered many new online lit journals which are great, and most importantly, I have read so many great new writers. I could do a better job about promoting these journals and writers, and perhaps that should be a goal for myself in 2024. I was hesitant in 2023 as I was writing and submitting myself, and I had this idea that it could be considered a conflict of interest. Then I reminded myself that no one knows who I am, no one cares, so I should just relax.

    On the other personal fronts; my wife is good, the kid is healthy and doing well in school, and life in the City isn’t too bad. There will always be things that I need to work on so I can be a better husband and father, and friend, and son, and brother. I’ll still be pulling for the Dallas Cowboys to win the Super Bowl this year, and I would be happy with Tottenham just qualifying for the Champions League. Cubs are the Cubs, so I’ll be happy with a winning season. It would be good if I got back to sketching more, and maybe I should complete a book or some art project in 2024. Who knows…

    But, in the end, I would like to say thank you to the 20 of you, if you are real, who look at this thing each day. You do validate my existence, and that’s a pretty nice thing to do for someone. Especially when it’s a middle-aged guy still trying to figure things out and expressing… opinions about stuff. Anyway, I appreciate it.

    Have a good Holidays and I’ll talk to you soon.

  • The 7 Habits of People Who Are Complete Failures, Or Who Stopped Eating Sugar

    So, I made a mistake recently by reading a click-bait story that was on my Google News feed about the 8 habits of successful people, or some shit. I know it was a listicle about habits of certain types of people because my news feed is now inundated with these types of articles…

    8 Habits of Caring Spouses

    10 Signs of Above Average Kids

    23 Annoying Things Super Rich People Never Do

    1001 Words Well Adjusted Emotionally Solvent Adults Always Say

    And then I began to notice that some of the good habits of happy and successful people happened to also be the bad habits of sad, lonely and failure people…

    Did you know that getting enough sleep is good, unless you sleep too much?

    Then it’s bad to stay up late, unless you are staying up late to read and do self-wellness shit.

    Taking the time to enjoy good food is a good habit, while enjoying food too much can be bad.

    Don’t get me started about the gym! On the whole, it’s good to go to the gym, unless you obsess about body image by going to the gym too much.

    And you know, they never site their sources for this information. Did the Mayo Clinic do a 20-year research study on the habits of people who always are positive in the morning? Is that where this information is coming from. Or is this just some dude (Or AI) coming up with click-bait to fill up their site with content?

    It’s content; I know it’s content.

  • Sick Again (Unedited)

    And I’m not talking about the Led Zeppelin song.

    No, I’m talking about the fact that I got sick over the weekend. I had written on Friday morning that I had a nostril that was clogged up, but I wasn’t feeling sick. Then around 6pm that night, oh lord, did I start feeling sick. I was running a low fever and I just crawled into bed, and didn’t come out.

    The one good thing about being sick this time around was that I got caught up on a bunch of tv shows that I had been putting off. The downside is pretty obvious; I felt like shit cuz I was sick.

    Starting Sunday, I began to feel better. I was able to watch Tottenham and the Cowboys win their respective games that day, so I was in a pretty good mood.

    But today was a working day, and I had to do my fatherly and husband duties, and it was pretty rough. I feel better than I did on Sunday, which means I am improving, but as of this moment, I just really want to go back to bed.

    But no. I am on the couch writing while the kid is doing her homework. I need to walk the dog soon, and then I need to make dinner. Nope, I gotta keep going and around 9:30pm is when I will have a chance to sit and relax and quickly fall asleep on the couch.

    I am a bit surprised that I got sick. I had a cold not too long ago, which meant that I hit my one cold a year quota. The kid hadn’t been sick, nor the wife, so I am a bit perplexed on how I was infected. See, I had a bit of time in bed on Saturday to think about how this could be the cold that kills, and I wanted to know how I acquired it; though they say you never hear the one with your name on it.

  • The Ebbs and Flow of Christmas Time (Unedited)

    Christmas time is here again, just in case you didn’t know.

     

    The year has flown by. The tree is up, and we are getting ready to start doing all of the Holiday stuff. You know, shopping, wrapping gift, baking cookies, seeing friends. The usual. And I do enjoy celebrating Christmas in New York City. For all the things this City is famous for, it really is a Holiday Town.

     

    It’s taken awhile for Christmas to start feeling fun again for me after the passing of my Ma. The absence of a parent during this time of year seems to hammer home the void that has been left. I think I have been doing a good job with trying to keep Christmas fun for the kid, and I do worry that my sorrow and mourning might affect her enjoyment of the Season. I think I have succeeded in this effort.

     

    I can also admit that slowly, year by year, the joy of Christmas has started to slowly return to me. It’s still not the same, and certain things, traditions, still don’t ring true as they used to. But now, I feel the kid’s excitement of this time of year, and that is a replenishing feeling that helps alleviate the experience of loss.

     

    And that is where I am now. I miss my mother, and I know that my Christmas will never feel the way they did when she was around, and that’s okay. My Christmas now is about my family, and making the kid have memories, and building something new on top of the love that was shared with me.