Julie's Web Journal

Yes, I'll thank my friends. You guys stuck with me through this lousy year. 

But it was still a lousy year, and not due to macro forces like the economy or any political party. Stuff happened, and the only saving grace is that I can honestly look at the bad things that happened and say that most of them were out of my control. And even then, I was starting to get the things under my control back in line by the end of the year, so there is that.

This is the first year I've had no writing income, and that may be the one thing that was (mostly) under my control. My writing time this year has been spent mostly in research. I was expecting a contract and publication of a short  this year, but the publisher and editor seem to have vanished off the face of the planet. That part is out of my control, though I'm trying to decide if I should withdraw the story and find another home for it. 

I've also been putzing around with getting some of my backlist published. Every time I'm ready to do so, Amazon drops another turd on self-published authors and I curl up in a virtual corner. That's wrong, and it something I have control over. Well, the other thing holding me up is cover art. Just haven't had the time or inclination to sit down and do cover art.

I hate making resolutions, but I do have one major life goal, which is to quit being the one to take up unfinished tasks. When I get involved with a project, I want to see it be a success, and that does mean taking up the slack when someone has to back out. Well, over the years it's gone from stepping in to help when someone has an emergency to the situation I'm in now. People know Julie will step in and take the slack, so why bother? And apparently it's a lot more fun to string her along until the last minute so she's juggling six critical tasks at once. One of the things that's happened over the past few years is that I've gotten so underwater in dealing with things that other people should have been doing that I've had no time to deal with the things I need to do to earn a living, much less taking time to relax once in a while. This will stop, and I've taken the first steps in that direction. 

Now that the year-end books are as finished as they can be (hey, there's still one more day in the year!), my plan is to do a whole lot of nothing for a few days, provided the other thing out of my control takes care of itself. Ah, yes. The car is in the shop. There were a couple of recalls, an inspection, a check engine light that comes and goes, and my trunk latch is a bit on the wonky side. All but the inspection are covered under warranty. They've had a heck of a time tracking down the error, and finally got it replicated this afternoon. We should have the car back tomorrow. But I took it in this week precisely because we were planning to do a whole lot of nothing and could do without a car. I love it when a plan comes together.