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Usually the week between Christmas and New Year is a liminal time for me. It floats not quite part of the year I’ve just been through, but also not belonging to the year that hasn’t yet started. I often use this week to create my annual collection of blog entries and journal entries into a book. Creating that book becomes a year-in-review and feels pivotal to me figuring out my focus and priorities for the year to come.
This year is different. My focus for 2025 showed up whole before I ever had a chance to review anything. And this week feels very much like a preparatory space for 2025 when things will change. My word for 2024 was bloom. It was a gift year when I got to inhabit my writer self more fully than I have in any other period of my life. I got to teach. I got to run crowdfunding for Structuring Life to Support Creativity. I got to focus and write my book. It was also a year of running frantically from project to project, trying to stretch myself to cover everything and trying to make the financial ends meet. I am so grateful for the blooming I got to do. I am exhausted by the running. 2025 brings a big shift. That shift is reflected in the priorities I have for this year (you can contrast with my 2024 priorities here.)

In 2025 I will:

Entrench. This is a combat word. I wish I didn’t need a combat word. I will be building fortifications to protect my self, my creative projects, and my precious people. I need to be part of creating places of safety and part of reinforcing important institutions. The most personally impactful part of this priority is that I need to go find a job that will give me a reliable paycheck. I’m not sure which job or on what time schedule, but this huge shift in the pattern of my life is coming and it is necessary. I need to be personally and financially stable enough to build sheltered places that can protect my second priority.

Grow. I need to grow creatively. I need to be able to explore new thoughts and new ways of expressing those thoughts. I need to plant the seeds of new projects and nurture them to see what they might become. I need to make sure that I am growing connections with people and communities and participating in the growth of others as well as myself.

Complete. I need to follow through on promises I’ve made and projects that are in process. I have mentoring which I’m enjoying and want to see through. I have SLSC that needs to come out in print and audio. I have commitments to teach, Schlock books to finish, and contracts still in process. I want to honor all of these things and not leave any of them dangling.

The year that is coming is going to be a year of work. I’m spending the last few days of 2024 preparing for it.

I’m trying to find words to talk about Christmas because I did a lot of complex emotional sorting across the holiday, but I don’t want to give the impression that the holiday was bleak or sad even though it had sadness threaded through it. I’m put in mind of an art term: chiaroscuro. In a painting it is the contrasted light and shadow on objects in the image that are created by light falling unevenly. The dark is necessary to see and appreciate the brightness. This Christmas I step back and see the whole picture of a beautiful holiday where I gathered with friends in multiple events, where I gathered with family in both expected and serendipitous ways. Then the heart of the holiday where my children and grandchild gathered in my house to exchange gifts. Around those bright moments are the shadows, the health, financial, and future concerns. I want to honor both the bright and the shadow. I want to explain how the shadows weigh on me, color my moods, and tug my attention off the bright. I want to hold the bright moments in my hands and show them to everyone “See how wonderful this is? Let me hold it over here against the shadow and adjust the light so you can see better.”

Every day of the holiday required adaptations for energy and for food. Howard is our primary cook because he has taken it as his personal mission to make sure that I have delicious things to eat despite my medically necessary elimination diet. Every day Howard pays attention to what we have in the fridge, whether I can eat it, how to make what I can eat be delicious. This interacts with Howard’s chronic fatigue and randomly appearing long covid issues. Standing in the kitchen can be exhausting for him. Cooking for me uses energy that he then doesn’t have available for other things. Most days I step in and act as sous chef, chopping, fetching, assisting. This practiced kitchen dance is joy and grief. Food is a delight and it is hard. Some days we are sad about what I can’t eat and what Howard can’t do. All of this is brought to the fore by the kindness of friends, colleagues, and neighbors who gift us delicious foods. A highlight was the gift basket sent by our book printer. Howard and I stood across the counter as I unwound, un-taped and released each food item from it’s display wrapping. I’d then read the ingredients and if I couldn’t have it I would push it across the counter to Howard instead. Howard accumulated a pile of crackers, cheeses, chocolates, and candies. The only item that stayed with me was a single-serving pouch of pickled asparagus. We laughed about it, finding the joke to ease the sting. Each gift of food was an act of love from people who have no way to know what I can and can’t eat. I am warmed and filled by the love, and each thing I can’t eat reminds me of the medical road I have ahead of me. Bright and shadow.

We didn’t do Christmas morning surprises this year, letting go of a tradition that our family has held for more than twenty-five years. Those surprises were a central focus and joy for Christmas for a long time. Howard and I planned them together, strategizing what to purchase and how to display them. Then we’d march the kids into the room on Christmas morning for the big reveal. Yet for the past few years the reveal has felt vaguely disappointing for everyone. I spent anxious energy trying to figure out how to make the reveal work. For the past few years, the kids (now adults) were good sports about trooping down the stairs to look at the display, but it was vaguely disappointing. I broached the idea of skipping the surprises carefully just after Thanksgiving. Checking to see if anyone would feel like the lack of them ruined Christmas. They all shrugged, and I was relieved. It was a logistical, financial, and emotional burden lifted. One less thing to organize. A relief. Then on Christmas morning there was no structure, no focus, no gathering. No line up, no march. People ate as they woke up and found quiet activities to keep themselves occupied until the planned gift exchange in the afternoon. It felt… empty? uncentered? And I was sad. It was not a sadness to be fixed, it was a final letting go of a role I held for a long time. My children are grown. Our holiday traditions are no longer about the management of over-excitement or teaching kindness and consideration, instead our holiday is a quieter event that focuses more on the individual connections and gathering.

Each year as I’m thinking about gift giving, I always watch for the gift that is a little bit silly, but will make everyone laugh. Shared laughter is an important component of the holiday. This year I found a $10 game at Walmart called “Let’s Hit Each Other with Fake Swords” since sword collecting is an interest for several of my kids, this was perfect. It was received exactly as I’d hoped. Much laughing.

In our discussion of ending Christmas Morning Surprises, Howard mentioned the stockings that go along with them. Mostly our stockings were filled with snack and treat food. I kind of wanted to continue giving treats, but I didn’t love the stockings themselves. Shoving boxes into a stretchy sock was never my preferred way to spend an hour. Howard nodded and said “we’re not really stocking people, we’re more loot crate people” and from there it was just a task of finding the right “crates.” We found collapsible boxes that can be used year after year. I got to fill them with small items and snacks. Everyone got socks and a logic or puzzle book. The loot crates were the final opening of the day and they were joyful. Each box had contents that made the recipient feel seen and loved. This includes Howard and me. I learned long ago to make sure that I also get to have silly, fun items that are just for fun.

My jigsaw puzzle table made an appearance on Christmas Eve and everyone had to step around it for our Nativity celebration that night and for Christmas dinner the next day. Having that puzzle gave me a pleasant thing to do while I was thinking thoughts of shifting traditions on Christmas morning. The complexity of my thoughts were brightened by the way that our nativity gathering the night before had followed our long-held tradition nearly exactly. They were darkened by the fact that coming years may change this tradition too. I don’t know what that quiet half hour with candles means to my kids, particularly the ones who have stepped away from the religion I still hold. For this year we sat in the dark around a wooden nativity pyramid with candles that make it spin. The grand baby watched with bright eyes from his high chair. Bright and dark. Continuity and change. Traditions are shaped to our needs, and we are shaped by holding them or letting them go.

Here I am now, on Boxing Day, looking at the remnants of the holiday, things which must be cleaned up and sorted. The launch of our holiday was disrupted by attending Dragonsteel Con and many of the decorations simply didn’t get put into place. The tree went up, but we never put ornaments on it. I look at it now, dark and bare wondering if that represents anything or if it is just a thing to put away and do differently next year. I’m not going to plan that “differently” yet. The coming year feels like it is going to create a lot of changes in our lives large and small. I can’t plan how traditions will play out next year until I’m settled into those changes.

The greatest gift for me in this holiday season was the grieving threaded through it and woven into it. I needed to be sad about the way some of my things currently are. I’ve been so busy I haven’t taken much time to sit with my sadness about what I don’t get to eat anymore. Howard and I both carry sadness about the days when he can’t do as much as he wants to. I needed to let go of long-held tradition so that in the process I could let go of assumptions about what my family needs. This is a thing I may need to do on a much larger scale, fundamentally changing how we approach our business and the assumed patterns for how our life goes. This holiday I needed to let myself be sad for the roles, patterns, and life that my family no longer has, because until I pass through that grief, and let it go, I will not be able to be joyful about what comes next.

I don’t know what comes next and that is scary. But whether it is bright, or dark, or both I want to be ready to find joy in it.

This week I hosted a family party in my home. Doing this always brings into full view the flaws in my home configuration and management. I long for a large space where cooking, eating, and sitting comfortably are simultaneously possible. This is not the space I have. My house is optimized for daily living rather than for group entertaining. Further, it is set up for the particular mix of individual people who live in my house and their adaptive needs. We have harsh bright lights for those who need bright light to see. We have multiple fridges for those who need separation to keep track of food. Things which most people hide neatly in drawers are instead hung on hooks. It is a house of compromises. It is also a house in transition. There are planned changes which will help make the house easier to switch into entertaining mode while also making it simpler for daily living. Most of those changes are waiting on time and resources that I don’t currently have.

It is so easy to be dissatisfied with my house. We had a party anyway. It was fine. If you don’t have the perfect container for the thing you want to hold, you use the container that will do the job. My house was good enough to hold this party. Food was supplied. A folding table was deployed. None of the people who had to say “excuse me” and slide around each other complained about it. Games and puzzles happened. Connections were renewed and gifts were exchanged.

My house is not what I wish it were, but it does the job well enough.

Today I planted milkweed seeds. They were sent to me by a local group that is trying to create native habitat for monarch butterflies. I had plans to prepare the ground, create a special bed, lay things out for beautiful growth. Instead I stole twenty minutes from the middle of the work day to scrape holes in the dirt between weeds. In my tromping to odd corners of my yard I saw how much work needs to be done to make my garden more beautiful. Work that I want to do, but today anxiety drove me inside because I need the income that working at my computer will bring.

I read a beautiful thread on Bluesky yesterday where Ace Tilton Ratcliff shared their day working in their Florida yard. It is a lyrical examination of hyper-local work to build the world we want to live in. It reminded me of important work that I have ahead of me, most of which is also necessarily local. The outcome of the recent election has made me even more uncertain about my finances and my future. It increases the urgency to improve and stabilize my income streams. It means I will need to pay attention and step up in support of others. I will need to expend energy advocating. Energy I can’t easily spare. I don’t know what is coming politically, financially, or socially and that frightens me.

But I know that spring will come. And some of the seeds that I scraped into the earth will sprout. And maybe next summer a butterfly will find a home where no space existed for it before.

It is an act of faith in the future to plant a seed. So I planted some seeds today.

All of September and October passed without a single blog post from me. That’s unprecedented in all the twenty years I’ve been writing this blog. Usually I get at least one or two posts per month. The big difference is that all of my available writing cycles are being spent on revisions to Structuring Life to Support Creativity. I have looming deadlines for sending the book to print and I have to work efficiently to make that happen. When I’m not revising SLSC, my time is pretty evenly split between the tasks of daily life, emotional support for my people, fretting over the looming US election, fretting over finances, and finally remodeling portions of my kitchen.

So far we’ve replaced one cabinet. I forgot to take a picture before we removed the existing cabinet, but here you can see the bare wall freshly painted.

Then we put up the new cabinets.

The doors are off because the way we have to lean over the counter to reach things means that the doors where hitting people in the face as we reached. We’ll need to buy hinges that open wider. Also the plan is to cut off that peninsula and turn it into an island. We’re months away from being able to do that. The next piece is removing and replacing the corner cabinet and moving the pot rack so that it hangs over the sink instead of dangling from the ceiling.

Remodel progress is slow and keeps being paused for other things. Blogging progress is slow because I’m writing a book as fast as I can. Yet slowing all the projects are moving forward.

This was published to my newsletter, but I wanted to put it here as well.

Dear Readers,

I am writing this to you halfway through my road trip to return from Gen Con. Any large event like this is one that is full of stress and anxiety, but I am emerging immensely glad that I went. I am tired, but happy.

This time last week, as I was headed into the show, one of my largest fears was illness. I worried that we would get sick. Since it is a long show (2 days of set up, 4 days of show) I am keenly aware that catching something early on might force one or more of us into quarantine thus requiring us to miss part of the show. I really wanted to get to teach all my classes, have all the conversations, connect with all the people, and illness could snatch all of that away from me. This was made even more real when our booth partner arrived in town only to test positive for Covid and turn around to return home rather than infect anyone else. Our other booth partner had a non-infectious heath issue that meant he had to beg off from the time he meant to spend in our booth. So we ran with a skeleton crew the whole show. The anxiety of “what if someone else gets sick” was loud. Very loud.

Anxiety is a thief. I realized that if I let it run rampant the anxiety would color every experience, every conversation, every moment, every memory. So I deployed one of my anxiety coping strategies. I moved through the event collecting moments as treasures, much like a person on a shore collecting pretty pebbles. Every moment I got to have, I held tight because sickness could not take it away from me even if it managed to steal everything else. So I became a hoarder of moments. Putting memories in my pockets. I would like to share a few of those pebbles with you.

Pebble: I sat with dear friends and hold space with them for other dear friends who are gone. We reminisced, cried, laughed, and hugged. Mourning with those who mourn has a surprising amount of laughter in it, at least with the friends that I have. That space we created was made sacred by what we brought into it, what we shared, and by the absent ones who were less gone while we sat together.  When we went our separate ways, we each took a piece of that shared space with us.

Pebble: One of my anxieties was that I had over-booked myself. That I was carrying too many roles. I forgot small things that I usually would not forget. I wondered why I had committed to teaching classes on top of running the booth. But then I stood in front of fellow writers and I spoke from my head and heart. I love that moment when I see someone’s face change in response to information I’ve shared. To witness and participate in transformation is always an honor. And I always hope that the other person is able to catch their pebble and keep it.

Pebble: There was a panel on poetry that I hesitated to volunteer for, but I’ve been reaching out to poetry and wanted to participate in a conversation about it with people who are more experienced with it than I am. So I claimed a space. Then during the panel a question was asked and I realized my best answer was to read aloud a short poem fragment that I’d written back in April. This one:

Once you start loving poetry
it accumulates
gathered in eddies
volumes of verse waiting to be read
a line scribbled on a napkin
that may someday find a home

I worried about reading a poem in front of people, particularly poets. But, in the moment I finished, they gave me such a gift. They snapped approval and said “lovely” in a voice I believed. I need to seek out more poets, the shared joy in words was glorious and I’d like to feel that again.

Pebble: My last event was a presentation called the Caregivers Guide to Creative Spark. I’d gone through the whole thing and was at the moment when I need to find something to say that the listeners could carry with them out the door. That concluding moment is always shaped by what has transpired during the session, what questions were asked, what tangent stories I told. I looked at all of their faces and I was so impressed that there were so many people who are willing to sacrifice the creative work they’re passionate about in order to do the creative work of caregiving. Caregivers are true heroes, so I spoke my thanks to them for all that they do. Again, honored that I got to be with them in that room where we’d shared knowledge of how difficult caregiving can be.

Pebble: Howard’s health and energy levels was another concern going into the show. A valid concern. Pain management was something we had to do on a daily basis. But, on the final day I watched him standing and talking with animation. That was not something he could accomplish last year. The comparison was very evident to me. He is beginning to bubble over with ideas again instead of them being drown in the struggles of existing under daily fatigue. I begin to have a sliver of hope that he might get to have better health than he’s had these past few years. That we might get to tackle exciting new projects both together and separately. I’m wary of hope, but I’m collecting it into my pockets anyway.

I have so many more pebbles than these. So many beautiful moments I get to keep. I haven’t even touched on the new friendships, the friendships deepened, the art I bought, exhaustion of tear down, the phone we thought was lost but wasn’t… I could go on (and on, and on). With each pebble collected, anxiety backed off until Saturday and Sunday were full of happiness and not anxiety.

Tomorrow we drive again. In fact I’m up later than I should be the night between a thirteen hour drive and a ten hour drive. Then we are home and I will immediately pivot to all of the tasks that I set down in order to be able to attend this show. There are packages to ship, a shipment of books that is finally arriving, I’ve got SLSC to edit, and Mandatory Failure to finish.

I’m excited for all of this work. So many good things are ahead of me. And yes, possibly some hard stuff too, but I’m not going to let fear of the hard stuff steal the moment I’m in. I’m collecting pebbles.

What ever is going on in your life, I hope that you too are able to collect pebbles. In fact if you want a (completely optional) assignment, collect one moment today. You can collect it however you wish: in writing, with a photograph, by telling it, picking up (or making) a physical object. Just notice it in a way that lets you be glad you had it.
All the best,
Sandra
 

I was writing a letter to a dear friend yesterday and I described to her the urge I have to make sure that I cover all of my news and updates efficiently so as to not waste her time. Such an odd impulse when the very point of the correspondence is to share stories about our lives and remain connected. Surely a long-form letter is not the place to try to be efficient. Particularly when the letter is sent electronically and so I have an infinite canvas on which to write. I managed to expand my story telling way from efficiency and more into a ramble. Of course even the rambled version can’t possible cover all the aspects of my life in any sort of comprehensive fashion. It is like a winding path through the forest which gives one a sense of the forest while still leaving vast swaths of forest unseen. I would like to take a similar approach here where I have been largely absent because crowdfunding and event preparation consumed all of my energy and attention. Rather than working chronologically to explain my arrival at today, I’m going to start where I am and work outward.

Today I wrote an update for Structuring Life to Support Creativity setting out the plan for the next several months so that I can deliver a book into the hands of the people who have already paid for it. The plan was very business-y with lists and dates all divided into easily consumable chunks. The post which catches the emotion that I feel about the project was this one thanking my backers. I still feel all those grateful things, but it is now time to roll up sleeves and get to work. I’ve got chapters to write and I’m excited to do it.

Speaking of excited to work, I’m going to be political for a moment here. I was resigned to Biden as the candidate I would vote for. I was expecting all of my political conversations to be telling people to look past the candidates and to the administration they bring with them. Biden stepped down yesterday and endorsed VP Kamala Harris as his replacement. When I saw that, it was as if air fully filled my lungs for the first time in months. Now I can have conversations about a candidate I’m excited to support. There is so much terrain between now and November. So much to discuss and examine. So many ways this can go wrong. November might be crushingly disappointing. But today I feel hope. I am so glad for this hope today no matter what comes next. And yes I plan to put in actual work and money to try to help Harris become president. Not sure yet about the shape of that, but I’ll do it.

Political work can’t ramp up yet, because this week is the pivot to full focus on Gen Con preparations. We won’t have a new Schlock book for the event. This is the first time that has ever happened. Howard feels terrible about it. My teaching at Gen Con is not going to cover the income gap because ticket purchasing has been low. So I have gotten a few sample notebooks from a new vendor to check the quality on them. I’m also printing up another run of Strohl Munitions Coloring Books that we’ll have at the show. Howard also has plans for sketch cards. We may even run some sort of online sale to try to make up the income. The actual trip I expect to be a joy. I’m going to get to see friends! I get to teach! I’ll travel cross country with Howard and one of my kids! We’ll see how many gyms we can leave Pokemon on as we travel!

Travel has definitely been a theme for this summer. In June I had two trips. July had one. August has Gen Con. The trips each bring their gifts and their strains. Here at home I can see the things that are languishing a bit while I’ve been distracted. The other day my neighbor came and knocked on my door to ask if I knew I had a pond in my side yard. I didn’t. A sprinkler pipe had burst around the corner of the house where I never go. The resulting pond was a-swim with mosquito larvae and algae. Fortunately the sprinkler company was able to come and fix it, so a normal amount of water is restored. Someday I would like to have a water feature. Something that would attract birds and frogs without breeding mosquitoes. That project is behind a very long line of other house projects.

Which brings me back to today and all of the projects I have on my list. There is so much to pack for this trip both physical and emotional, which is made a bit more complicated by all the stuff that isn’t fully unpacked from the trips and projects that came before. Someday I hope for my house and schedule to have tidy project spaces that are contained instead of spilling all over everything else. Right now I just have to work my way through the mess. Thus ends today’s ramble. Hopefully it won’t be another month before I ramble here again.

My book project went live yesterday morning and funded in less than a day. (You can see the project here!) That first day of crowdfunding is always a flurry of hope and fear. I felt anxious all day yesterday as I watched the numbers increment. I worried that I would lose heart if I had to spend a month trying to convince people to buy it. Instead I am sitting here with the tremendous gift of knowing that people trust enough in what I have to say that they’ll buy my book based only on my name, a summary, and a pretty cover. I am humbled and grateful even further by how many people spoke up and vouched for me that I’m worth listening to. I feel the weight of that trust, like a deeply comforting weighted blanket that calms my anxiety and lets me feel at peace for the first time in months. I get to make my book and people want to read it. I am so fortunate to get to have this experience, one that not every writer gets to have.

Of course, anxiety will absolutely return, especially as I work through my final revision and copy editing passes. There will be ample opportunities for imposter syndrome to make me doubt the power of my own words. When that happens, I hope I can remember the feeling of today. In the meantime, I still have lots of work to do, both to help this project reach stretch goals and to make sure I can deliver on the trust I’ve been given.

The birds outside my window are not the ones I am accustomed to hearing. The regular drizzle of all-day rain is unlike the storm bursts that come and go in my high desert home. The ticks are certainly not at all a familiar hazard. I’ve come to Minnesota to be with other writers, to talk, to think, to create words. Yet when I’m alone with my thoughts I am distracted by difference that my brain wants to notice, evaluate, understand. I don’t mind. I’ve learned that for me writing retreats are rarely my most productive moments if you’re measuring in word count. I’m too drawn to the newness of being outside my regular patterns, to the oddity of only consulting my own schedule rather than considering the entwining net of habit and obligation that holds me fast at home. I always accomplish things, but they’re rarely what I expected to accomplish when I packed for the trip. I’ve learned not to judge myself for that. And I’ve gone on retreats often enough that this is a familiar flavor of unfamiliarity. I know how to approach it and when to retreat into the comforts I brought with me.

This retreat is in Minnesota at a location with miles of walking trails and a small marshland lake. I’m on staff in a supporting role that hasn’t been particularly heavy because everyone is taking care of each other. This means I can sit off to the side and observe as our little pop-up community connects and coalesces. I love when they self-organize around activities, some of them playing games that they packed along, others gathering in groups to read aloud to each other. I am not the only one pulled out of her usual context. We all have the opportunity to experience something different, to collect new thoughts, new connections, and new ways to interact with the world around us.

Yesterday I spent sunset hour at the marsh sitting on a bench. I’d doused myself in mosquito spray, but my seat on a floating dock was in full sunshine and the mosquitoes weren’t a bother there. It is not often in my life that I take an entire hour to just watch birds and the changing light on water. I listened to frogs drumming and even was surprised by a raccoon who got within five feet of me before either of us noticed the other. Once we did, the racoon immediately decided to have business elsewhere. I was impressed with how healthy and fuzzy the critter looked without the harried and desperate look that I see in city wildlife.

This evening I plan to go in search of fireflies. I’ve seen a few, but I went out too late in the evening to see their full show. Today I’ve set an alarm and I know where to go. I’ll spray against mosquitoes, defending against one bug while deliberately seeking another one. I have two and a half days left to experience new, then I return to familiar.

Writing a book requires force of will. I’m feeling that as I push forward on the work necessary to bring Structuring Life to Support Creativity into being. I have to believe enough or care enough to push past all the speed bumps and road blocks. I’ve had many on this project. The most recent being when a freelance editor turned the project down and within 24 hours I had researched and sent out a contact to a different one. One of the questions that lives in my brain is “why now?” Why am I so confident and persistent for this project when my writing career was back burner for so long?

 Some of it is clearly necessity. This is the project I believe has an audience that will show up for it, an audience I have within my reach. An audience that will buy the book so that it can be self funding and potentially also fund some of my life expenses as well. This is the project that builds a platform which can boost other opportunities in my creative life. I definitely have financial and career urgency that is helping me keep going in the face of obstacles.

But there is something beyond that. Because writing a book is definitely not the simplest or lowest stress path to financial stability. A job with a paycheck would be much more guaranteed to provide that.

There are people who need this book. I know that because every time I give a presentation around one of the concepts in the book, I have audience members come and thank me. More impressively there are the people who come to talk to me years later and tell me how something I taught was transformative for them. Those moments aren’t about me.  I was merely the conduit for a piece of information that sparked change inside that person. They then put in the work and organization to turn that spark into transformation. In that moment I bear witness to the change, the work, the transformation and I’m always honored that people choose to let me see. To participate in helping others grow is a wonderful work that I want to do more of, and a book can reach much farther than an in person presentation. It persists in the way that a class doesn’t unless it is recorded.

In addition to participating in the growth of others, I’ve grown myself. In the past five years I’ve learned how to step forward and claim space rather than simply occupying whatever space was left available. I’ve learned to own my accumulated expertise even though most of it doesn’t come with official certifications or degrees. I’ve learned to value myself and my work, which has allowed me to put that work into the center of my daily schedules instead of allowing it to be pushed aside by other things. Centering my work in my life is how I have a completed book draft that is ready for funding and editing. The existence of the completed book is evidence of those daily centering decisions.

Joy is the last reason for “why now.” I’m going to get to have a book. I’ve got a cover that I love. I’m going to get to work with an editor to make the book better. Depending on funding, I might get to work with an illustrator for interior. Then I’ll get to have my book on the table when I run a booth at conventions. All of these are joyful experiences that I get to have as part of making this project happen. In the flurry and stress of the project it is easy to lose track of the joy. I’m so happy that that I get to make this book.