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.
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