Merry Christmas

Hello everyone. I hope that you’re finding a way to stay cheerful and bright during what for us in the northern hemisphere is the darkest time of year.

One of the things that I realized probably later in life than I should have is that the lights we put up on to decorate the outsides of our homes at this time of year aren’t for us – they’re for our neighbours, our community – they are our way of offering a bit of our light to the world – and that’s a pretty amazing thing so many of us do, without, perhaps, really realizing it. We help to light the path home for the people who live near us – some of them may always be strangers, but still we let them share this offering of ours into the night.

And yes, they’re also fun for us to look at too.

And yes, we hope that we’re not the only ones on the street putting up lights, because the magic works best when everyone who can gets in on it.

I type this Christmas message – as I type most of my blog posts – ahead of the time that it will be published. As of this moment, I am about 70% through the creation of the first draft of my Box 13 cookbook-and-episode-guide. I am expecting to have the first draft done by the time that you read this message, I “only” need to edit in a dozen or so more recipes and write the introduction before the first draft is complete.

Wow, do I ever feel like I’ve said that before.

There have been moments over the past few months, when I have come close to despair and seriously questioned the wisdom of continuing along the path of this project – pondering if I am persisting simply because of the sunk cost fallacy – and perhaps that really is the reason, but when I am in a better (perhaps more delusional) mood, I think no, I’m keeping on with it, despite it’s almost complete lack of audience – because it is my way of trying to offer a bit of what has helped light my days to others, and that is always worthwhile.

I am quite seriously considering making the cookbook, when completed, for free or minimal cost, as a digital download. I am, at least at this moment, fairly confident that I will actually be able to have it completed sometime in 2025.

Or I might take another five years at it and decide to try and get $100 per copy, nothing has been decided yet. (And $100 Canadian will work out to about $10 American by that time, anyway, given the way things are going.)

Looking back over the past year, I remain grateful for the time I spent with Orca, and I am also happy to say that I have created a chapbook of poetry, which I, although I admit I am certainly biased, think is not terrible. I am currently seeking publication for that collection.

I am also, of course, happy that I was published twice this year, and I am expecting a little poem of mine (not in my chapbook) to be published early in the new year.

In 2025, I am setting my writing goals high – I hope to enter six contests, be published six times, and to write twelve stories.

Mostly, though, I hope to write some things that are good, and that might perhaps shine a little, for however a brief a time, in the dark.

What are your ways to shine? What are your hopes for the new year?

Wishing you the best as the world continues it’s wobbly orbit about the sun,

– Kilmeny M.