Skidding into 2025

Rain is forecast all day. I resisted the urge to leave home and go shopping. I avoided on-line shopping places as well. I’ve been reading more than usual and am developing a meal plan for the rest of 2024. I’ll be home alone a while longer as my sister-in-law gains confidence in post-surgery living. I look forward to the return of my spouse.

I feel pretty healthy today. That sentence is not always true.

Story ideas have been percolating. All of the new ones require research and developmental thought, so I started a blog post for each and pasted in relevant information. I don’t feel like finishing them. I expect a visit from the muses when it is time.

During the holiday trip I considered my next book. The working title is “Memoir in 25 stories,” although 25 seems like a low number. I want to cluster selected events in my life around specific places to be built out with historical information and memories. Those places include where we lived, significant work sites, and places we visited. For example, I call one place “The Calumet.” It is the land bordering the southern part of Lake Michigan in Illinois and Indiana. It will take some explaining to depict what I mean by the place name. In describing it, I set the scene.

Partly, the book is about what our family did. There are also major themes in which I have broad experience: breaking the unions beginning with the PATCO strike, the destruction of the post World War II society, and changes in workplace. It will also be a story of how people can be creative in a society that has limited interest in such work-product. I will focus on my writing, and partly on educating a child to be creative. I think there is a useful memoir in all this. Now I must revise the 62,000 written words to fit the new paradigm.

I attempt to stay positive as it rains. It is hard to do, so I work. The dishes are all done, the laundry is folded and put away, and the resonances of this difficult year vibrate my core. I may be living a life yet I feel I’m just skidding into 2025 while unable to gain traction on things that matter. I’m hoping and working toward a better year.