I took back roads to the printer in Coralville to pick up advance reader copies of A Working Life, the second part of my autobiography. Getting to this point was a high water mark in the struggle to write it that began in 2010. There is a story in this book, one I hope finds broader appeal. When I arrived at the desk for pick up, workers hadn’t finished binding the book. I waited.
My first advance reader is a retired teacher whose late husband was a poet. The second is a friend from Maine with whom I attended U.S. Army basic training and officer candidate school in 1976. I’ve read the text so many times, I’m not sure the most obvious typos and grammatical faux pas catch my attention. I will move forward with this work, so I’m looking for a couple of sets of eyes to catch mistakes missed by someone too invested in the story.
Nearing the finish line is clearing space for other projects. Mostly, though, my days are falling apart. The garden needs planting, the garage wants cleaning to make it more productive, and there is an endless list of home projects ahead. I also have to figure out how we will survive if the do-nothing Republicans don’t fix Social Security soon. I have taken up some of those, yet the main question is what will I write next, given the newly found void in my mornings?
Some things I know. There will be a cookbook to standardize and put all my inherited and locally developed recipes in one place. There will be a book of poetry for the 25 or so poems I found when researching my autobiography, along with new ones. I plan a different direction for this blog, along with a new title. I plan to take older posts off line and start fresh. All of these are big projects, and will likely be enough writing work for the near term. The main push will be to have a big project for winter 2026-2027.
I’m not sure how I will get my autobiography published after early readers provide feedback. I don’t have the money, so I am looking at some form of fund raising in the fall. I paid for volume one and distributed the books for free—there are not enough funds to do that again. I may serialize the book behind a paywall either on WordPress or Substack with a big push to get people subscribed at the front end. I gave early readers until Labor Day, so I can work through these ideas this summer. For now, though, I have to get a garden in.
Thursday was a lost day because I had my eyes dilated and it took the full 4-6 hours for them to recover. I had a discussion about cataract surgery with my optometrist who has been suggesting the procedure for years. I held that off another year. Doctor talked about adjusting to aging as I slow down. I don’t see myself slowing down any time soon.
It rained Thursday night, so I could get right into the garage after sunrise and get to work. The big push to Memorial Day is on. From the high ground of finishing the autobiography, it looks like there will be another crop from the garden… and writing. The remainder of 2026 looks to be good.
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