Seeing Signs and Portents?

My local coffee shops have these big chalkboards (blackboards) where they ask people to write something. Thursday evening at one of the shops the question was "What's your New Year's Resolution?" I don't normally make resolutions but I felt led to put one there: "Write a book."

Yesterday I walked into another one of the shops and their question was "What is something different you would like to do in the new year?" I didn't write anything on this one. But there was something there that stood out to me as a sign or omen or portent. "Time travel!" was highlighted by someone.

I had to laugh. That does connect with the "write a book" I put on the other chalkboard. You see I have been playing around with a story idea for about a year now. It's not enough to be a book, but it is something I would really like to write and finish this next year.

It's a time travel story. Which is all I will say about it right now. However, I have a hunch I have just found one of the things I am going to be working on over the next couple months and see how it goes.

After all, one of the reasons I have moved to the part-time, semi-retirement approach to my life over the next months prior to actual retirement is that I have wanted to really concentrate on writing. I don't think I have the makings of a novel anywhere right now, but a short story or three? Why not?

Which will also give me the discipline to be working on a memoir and doing some non-fiction essay writing. Sure, I hope to get published, and I am working on some of the ways and places to do that. For the time being, though, I am just going to start writing.

As to the semi-retirement, I have been at it for over three weeks now. So far- so good. No new insights yet. I am still playing with the idea and emotion of "retirement." It is clear that this way of planning and leading into it was a good way of working it. I still have enough connections with the job I have been doing that I don't feel "out in the cold." I will be working a little more than half-time in January, but never having to get up early and go into work first thing in the morning.

Onward I go.