2024. . .Looking Back and Ahead!

I have not written anything on this blog in a while and that was not my goal when I started this last year. My goal and thought was that I was going to constantly pushing out new posts and materials but because life is life that has proven to be a lot harder than I anticipated.

I still want to keep this blog going into 2024 though somewhat because more in more I want to consider myself as a writer. I write a lot from my own personal journal, notes about other interests and ideas, to continuing to write my short proses about smells. (I believe that I am currently up to thirty-one.) I have written two novels as you know and would like to write another one at some point. I say that I want to see myself as a writer because it is an important part of my life and is one of the most important things to me for my mental health. If I ever become a well-known or recognized writer that is not as important to me as what writing itself means to me.

Okay, moving on. . .I want to acknowledge a little health issue that I had over the winter break, specifically on Christmas Eve. We went down to Florida as usual for us over the break since my family all lives down there and the evening we got there I noticed that my stomach was starting to feel a bit sore. I woke up the next day (December 23rd) and my abs felt like I had just had a real hard ab day. Mind you, I was trying to start exercising again some more and had been doinig some ab work, but I wasn't really sure if it was enough to make my stomach feel like that. Then later that evening my brother, sister-in-law, nephew arrived and we went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. I did not order anything and did not feel good at all and that was the first time I really let on that my stomach was bothering me. My father wanted to take me somewhere after dinner, but I brushed it off and we went home and took some pepto. Well, that didn't really help, but I thought I was going to be okay and later went to bed. I woke up after about an hour and had to wake up and tell Zoe that my dad was going to have to take me to the ER. We got to the ER at about one o'clock and checked-in and reported my pain as a seven or eight on a ten point scale, so it was getting up there. After about two hours of waiting, I stood up at one point and then sat back down and started to vomit in the ER waiting room and then came the most intense pain I've ever had in my life. Partly due to the pain and because I have been known to be a bit dramatic, I started yelling, shouting, even crying a bit to get the attention of whomever there was around so we could get back to a room. Finally, after about thirty or forty-five minutes maybe I was pushed back to a room where I promptly reported my pain was now at an eleven out of ten and they finally gave me some morphine. They promised that it would do something almost immediately, well not quite, and I was like you have to give me more, which they did. I got a CT scan of my abdominal and they determined it was my appendix. Needless to say that around 9:40 AM on Christmas Eve, I was finally taken back for the laparoscopic surgery to remove my appendix that lasted approxmiately forty minutes. They removed it and said everything was normal except there was a lot of puss around it that they had to clean up and I would be on an antibiotic for a week. I had to spend one night in the hospital and was released Christmas morning and have been recovering ever since.

They told me that after two weeks that basically everything would be back to normal and it pretty much is as it is almost the two week mark. However, Zoe is not letting me really do any lifting, running, or exercise for another two weeks just to be safe. As much as I am ready to get back to it, I am going to heed her advice and take it easy for at least another two weeks. And yesterday, I found out that the pathology report came back and nothing was abnormal, it was just a normal appendicitis I guess, but boy did it hurt!

There was a lot of other things that happned over the break including my nephew's first birthday party, but for me the big story was and for everyone around me it was about making me take it easy and recover from the appendectomy.

Now we are back in Indiana and as cold as it is here, it did feel really good to get home. The semester starts next week and I am busy trying to get things planned and hoping for an engaging and interesting class using the novel Where the Red Fern Grows for the first time. I am designing some new assignments and even more student focused than I have done and I am excited, but it all depends on how the students perceive everything and if it is beneficial and engaging to them or just a lot of work and time that they don't want to spend on an English class. I can only do my best!

What am I reading? Well, over the break I finished a book called Dry by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman that is geared for young adults. It is a novel that depicts what happens in California when all the water is stopped and turned off and basically cut off and how that unfolds. (It is not all pretty and cheerful as you can imagine actaully quite the opposite.) It really makes you think about how precious water is and also how real this book could be and is in some parts of the world.

I am currently reading another young adult book called Borderless by Jennifer De Leon about the crisis in many Latin American countries with gangs and crime, and how this drives millions of people to risk their lives as migrants/refugees trying to get to the US. It gives a real story to this issue and a book that I think a lot of Americans and a lot of politicians need to read.

I know that there are a lot of books out there that discuss a lot of these issues, which solidifies the idea to me that if Americans read more or we were a country of readers of a variety of literature and non-fiction books that cover an array of perspectives and opinions, we would be a country with more empathy and a better place for all! We should not be a people seeking to ban everything that we don't agree with. I am not saying we should have elementary school children reading books full of sex and I do not believe that most people are advocating for this, but just for a wide spectrum of ideas and thoughts to be seen as is appropriate because that is how the United States looks. It is not just a country made up of white conservatives! Okay, I am going to get off my soapbox now.

But this fits into the TV show or mini-series that I am currently watching. I am currently watching Fellow Travelers. And I am not going to get into the details about it, but I can say what I expected or went into it thinking what it was going to be like does not match up with what it js actually about and like. It is very good! I will say that the things you might have seen or read about it like that it is intense and provocative are true, so you have to have a bit of an open mind going into it, but I think you will find it to be an emotional journey. In some ways, this is how I would want people to read my novel The Zumba Class, which I think could be described by some as pretty provocative and spicy (not sure if that is the word I am looking for), but at the same time beyond that is a story and an emotional one at that, which hopefully challenges the reader at times and makes them think.

Finally, also looking ahead to 2024, I have registered to run the Indianapolis Marathon in November, which will be my first. I tried to get into the Chicago Marathon, but was not selected in the draw. Maybe if I train hard enough, I can go for the qualifying time for the Chicago Marathon.

Cheers to everyone for a great 2024!

I will try to keep this updated as much as I can, that's a promise!