A few days ago, I posted a blog in which I whined horribly about petty grievances.

I announced, quite pathetically, that I was going to take my ball and go home.

Over the next few days, I received about three dozen comments, PMs, and emails. They were almost universally encouraging and sympathetic. Some rightly called me out for the shortcomings I displayed.

Embarrassingly, I can’t even claim that I had acted out of passion, because I wrote the blog and let it sit for a number of days before posting it.

I have four children, ages 30 through 45. When they’ve come to me with personal problems over the years I’ve had a mantra.

Are you getting enough sleep? Are you eating right? Are you getting enough exercise? Are you drinking alcohol moderately?

I’ve told them that most “issues” are driven by our physical and mental state rather than the facts of the issue itself.

Too bad I wasn’t around to give myself my own lecture before I posted my blog.

I rarely drink more than half a beer at a sitting, but sleep has been erratic these last several months. I have a fairly bland but healthy diet. Since covid struck, I’ve stopped taking walks and allowed dust to settle on my exercise bike.

My plan going forward is this:

1.) Immediately establish and follow a daily exercise program.
2.) Turn off all devices and TVs two hours before bedtime and go to bed at a decent hour every night.
3.) Cut back on commenting, blogging, and story reading for the near future. I need to clear my head.
4.) I’ve unpublished all of my BC free stories. In doing so, I ran across some little gems even I had forgotten. I’ll leave all stories unpublished. Over the next many months, I’ll go through them one by one, give them a thorough edit (or rewrite) and then republish (one at a time) -- asking Erin to allow them to flow through the front page, again.
5.) Start on a new novel. For the last few months, I’ve been somewhat blocked -- wondering how to deal with covid impact. That’s just an excuse. I need to buckle down and use all the anger I have toward our politicians to generate good stories.
6.) Thank everyone for being so kind and compassionate.
7.) Apologize for being too publicly human.

Jill