Accepting the Limits of My Passion for Writing

Hello All, seven weeks have passed since I posted about the Minnesota four-season porch I was missing here in Missouri. Since that time, I’ve twice posted a short note about my health and tiredness. Today, I’m “getting back in the saddle” and beginning my regular Sunday postings again.

To sum up the past seven weeks: I had problems with Meniere’s disease, with an arthritic flare-up, and with a virus. Also, I went on vacation to Idaho and enjoyed eight days with the four children who call me “Grandma Dee” ever since their Mom adopted me as her grandmother.

During those days, we drove to Yellowstone—my first time there. I so enjoyed seeing the painted pots, the geysers, and the wild life. A bison, leisurely rambling on the road amidst a long line of cars, stroll right pass the driver’s window of the car we were in. I now know what “up close and personal” means with regard to bisons.

I came home from Idaho exhausted. Engaging in conversations with young people—8, 10, 14, and 16—as well as two adults is fun-filled, but also tiring. The evidence is all in now: I am officially a recluse.

Having returned home weary, I decided to take the rest of August off. I’d worked hard on my writing for five months: March=getting the memoir published; April, May, June, and July= completing the novel The Reluctant Spy by polishing a final draft and copyediting/reading it for mechanical errors. I’m not going to self-publish that novel until next spring, but I had to finish it—it felt sort of like “washing my hands of it”—so as to write the second book in the Bastet-Net Cat Fantasy series.

I hope to publish the first book in the Bastet-Net trilogy this November; the second book will be published in November of 2019; and the third and final book in November of 2020.  That is, of course, if my health permits. I live in expectation!

For the next three months—September through November—I hope to complete books 2 and 3 of the trilogy. If all goes well with the writing and my health remains harmonious, I’ll then take the month of December off to enjoy Advent and the holidays.

All this planning comes out of this vacation month of August. I’m finally—at age 82—accepting that I simply can’t do what I used to do with my writing. I’m letting go of the image I have of myself as a “steamroller” that just keeps smoothing out all the bumps in the road ahead. Maybe it’s that I’m no longer the little engine that could. Instead I’ve become the little engine on the level track of a child’s playground.

So my hope, now that I’ve realistically considered what I’d like to write and self-publish and what my energy level now permits, is to write three months and then take the fourth month off to recoup. And to do that as many years as possible during this decade of my eighties.

That would deeply content me. It would motivate me to exercise and do yoga; get at least eight hours of sleep a night; and eat nutritiously because only if I take care of my body will I be able to embrace my passion of writing. I need to be healthy to sit at the computer and write.

I so hope that my eyesight will permit me to follow my bliss. I trust that “all shall be well. And all shall be well. And all manner of things shall be exceedingly well” as Julian of Norwich said.

Just as I trust that writing this blog and keeping in touch with all of you and your lives will enrich my own and keep me centered. Thank you.

Peace.

Photograph from Wikipedia.