Happy New Year! I don’t know about you guys, but 2023 seemed to just poof by. Is it me or is it a thing that as we get older we feel time passing faster? Or, is time really passing faster?

I’m usually a fairly organized person, but it seems this past year I couldn’t focus my attention on any serious book writing. The muse refused to participate. I usually know what I have planned for my new writing year, but I still don’t. I just keep myself busy, and accountable at the gym with the various classes I take weekly. Maybe my lack of ambition to write is because of the gym schedule I follow strictly. I’ve been feeling more like enjoying gabbing with the girls after classes and workouts and making myself healthier, rather than asserting myself to concentrate. But I think because I was in mostly seclusion since 2020 – first with Covid seclusion then taking care of my dying husband, the aftermath, and the grief seclusion, my need for human interaction took precedence. I still don’t know my goals for 2024, but I have ideas floating around and lots of jots in my notebook, so who knows what I may fill pages with.

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For New Year’s Eve, it was friendship night, three single gals, margaritas and wine, lots of food and laughter took place at my home. My third new year as a solo. It never lightens – the weight of love that resides in my heart, living in the form of grief. But being with friends is good for the soul – a respite from the weight that is my constant companion, often, a good diversion from me getting lost in too many thoughts.

We had many chuckles about the fact that the three of us stall out when it comes to remembering some names, lol. As we watched the Rockin’ New Year’s Eve shows, flicking back and forth to avoid commercial ads and gossiped about celebrity news and trivia, we laughed at the fact that all three of us kept ‘umming’ when we tried to remember and say the name of someone. We all knew what and who we meant, but for some reason, our tongues weren’t cooperating with what our minds wanted to say. But, together we learned that we could piece together a name with clues and collaboration amongst each other, and when we couldn’t, one of us would shout out, ‘Google it!’ LOL, sometimes I worry about this blank name thing that I’ve noticed many of my friends my age, in early seniordom seem to have developed the, ‘I can’t think of the name’, or, ‘I forgot what I was saying’ mid sentence. We joke about it, but secretly, I don’t mind saying that it sometimes scares me if it’s a precursor of memory issues to come. But since it seems I am not alone in these momentary lapses of names, I’m not going dwell on the blank moments.

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On the Goodreads Reading challenge 2023 I read 48 out of my projected 40 books I pledged to read. A few less than the previous year, but I know the two reasons for that: I read less books on last winter vacation because my social life was nonstop, and the summer here is when I get some good reading done out at the sundeck – except there was barely any sun as most of the summer skies were grey and laden with smoke from our northern fires. I will try to do better for 2024.

Checkout my Goodreads Challenge read books: https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/39065930

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What’s on tap for 2024?

To be honest, I’m still deciding what I will come out with this year, but there are a few for sures: I will be putting out blogs and book reviews throughout January – taking my annual blogging break through February and March, and return to blogging in April, I will be starting a new series at Sally Cronin’s Smorgasbord Blog Magazine in the spring – topic still to be decided, and I will get working on a new book, and of course, read many books. I cannot force myself to begin revisions and edits for the grief book I thought I might have finished writing and publishing in 2023. Grief is a funny animal and I’m not over the hump yet, so I’ve learned by several attempts to go back to my writing that I am far from ready to begin rereading and reliving that part of my life yet. But on another note, I ‘feel’ a new book coming on after my winter getaway next month. Coming on, you ask?

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Mexico! Yes, after much deliberation and decision and searching for a place in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, it finally came together for me. Like everything else in this world, the prices for vacation have gone up exponentially crazy – condo rentals, hotels and airlines all in sync with high prices. I can no longer afford the luxury beach condo I’d been renting in for the last eight years so I kept brushing the ‘where am I going?’ aside and allowed the chips to fall and the universe to answer me when there was a good solution. In December of 2023, it all came together for me.

I have managed to put together another Puerto Vallarta trip for just under a month. My agent in Mexico messaged me asking if I’d like to rent a condo he’d just sold to someone on short notice for high season. At this point, my wonderful friend Brenda from Manitoba had called me and invited me to stay with her and her hubby at the beachfront property I’d always stayed at – at the beginning of March for two weeks. Their two-bedroom condo has been booked up with family until then and she wanted me to stay with them for their last two weeks in March. My Mexican agent came up with this condo offer just in time so I could add on a few weeks stay to the almost two weeks more when I’ll be staying at Brenda’s rented property. The condo I will be renting for two weeks, is ironically, in the building that my husband and I were thinking of buying in while it was going up in 2020. It’s across the street from the beach in a beautiful neighborhood. Even so, I didn’t feel like staying there for a month on my own, so I and my agent agreed on the two weeks from mid February. And for more added surprise, my very dear friend Mahvash called me shortly after I booked and had previously asked her if she wanted to go to Mexico with me, to tell me she will come and share the condo with me in February. I am so excited to be going away with my good friend and I just feel like after this very different trip it will be and different than I’ve been used to for eight years, it’s going to give me lots of fodder for a new book! I know this, because all I do is laugh with Mahvash and Brenda, so I feel that I will be writing a more lighthearted and humorous book before I can tackle the big grief book – maybe next year.

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And so there you have it. January is ‘cleanup’ month for me as far as paperwork, projects left on back burners and of course, getting started on the dreaded tax season so I don’t have to ruin my vacation buzz upon my return. February will be all about ‘the packing’, lol. And so, what are your plans? 😍

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©DGKaye2024