An Overdue Update

Still older than Brahe and hope I’ll continue to advance in age for a few decades yet.

Fall term is over and I’m now eight months into graduate studies. Lots of other life events going on lately and so my writing has suffered a bit. A familiar refrain in recent years, I know. I have put in almost 60,000 words since the beginning of the term plus several thousand more that haven’t managed to get from paper to computer yet, but there have been big gaps and a little more than half of the total has come since December 1^st when my academic obligations for the term started to wind down. Over the winter break, I’m trying to relax a bit, just doing a little academic reading while I keep running research scripts to process raw data in the background and spending at least an hour a day, preferably two or more, on creative pursuits.

And Yule is coming, along with a couple of positive family events.

But writing-wise, up to the end of yesterday, I’ve put a bit more than 34,000 words into the computer, most of them on a non-fiction project that I seemed to desperately need to write (thoughts and my basic philosophies on martial arts after starting training at age 39 and having fifteen years of practice behind me). The first draft of that is complete now and while I have another non-fiction item I’d like to do a bit of catch up on, I’m sliding back over into fiction drafting and have spent some time editing shorts and flash fiction as well. December is probably going to wind up containing half of my writing for the year.

I’m hoping to hit the ground running in 2026 in spite of the fact that I expect the course work I’m going to be doing in the winter term will be the heaviest of this degree.

Time management will be key, but key to that will be things beyond my control cooperating a little more than in the last couple of years. Looked at objectively, 2025 was better than 2024 or 2023, but there were still a lot of things that sucked about it. I fell like I’m making progress and peace with things, but the period since Christmas 2022 hasn’t been mentally or emotionally easy.

However, any day I wake up at least starts on that positive note and has the potential to be built on from there. And most days right now, I’m managing to get my backside in the writing chair early enough in the day that at least two items on the goals list are checked off before it’s time for my Saint Bernard to go meet his friends for the morning walk.

More soon.

Be well, everyone.