Whether it’s trite or a good sign of productivity, here I am.

I still barely know what day of the week it is (I spent three hours this morning thinking it was Wednesday), and getting back to a halfway usual schedule tomorrow will bring a sense of content, I’m sure. The past week and a half has been a full-blown, holiday whirlwind: Christmas prep, celebrating with family on Christmas Eve, baking and prep for the annual family ski trip to northern Michigan on the 26th, back home to celebrate my 50th on Sunday, New Year’s Eve, and now… finally… New Year’s Day.

Kicking off at least one resolution today–getting back to healthy eating–has me feeling decidedly more human. I feel like we’ve been surviving on a steady diet of coffee, sugar and carbs because WE HAVE BEEN. It’s fun at first, you know… when the first batch or two of holiday cookies & treats are made. “It’s the holidays!” you say, popping a warm, peanut butter kiss cookie into your mouth. But I’m here to tell you, after a week of that tomfoolery, the mere sight of the cookie platter left me feeling trapped and defeated. I wanted a cookie, and probably could’ve summoned the willpower to stay away, but then there was that little voice somewhere in my brain, reminding me that I’ve had zero willpower thus far, it’ll taste wonderful, and they’re little cookies anyway, so just eat the damn thing already. So I do. And the little voice is absolutely right on every count, including the part about them being small cookies, so I listen again when it tells me to take another. I’m not going to lie here — when I finally dumped that platter of decorated sugar cookies, snickerdoodles, and the pb kiss cookies this morning, I felt so incredibly liberated. It was awesome, and I may or may not have smirked as I heard that voice in my head shriek and begin to weep.

Not. Today. Satan.

With all that temptation behind me, I’m hoping to focus more on returning to the healthy lifestyle I left back in mid-December, as well as getting some fiction out for reading.

Tomorrow I’ll be posting the beginning of a rough draft, and I hope if you come by to read it, you’ll leave a comment. Tell me what you like, what you don’t like… what works and what doesn’t. One of my goals for 2019 is to get work out in front of readers’ eyes, and to develop a mutually-beneficial environment for feedback and constructive criticism. Similar to the way my physical self won’t improve without hard work, neither will my writing. And the only way I know what to work on, is to hear from those who read it.

Happy New Year to all!