Wow, my first and only blog post this year. I want to say I’ll make a renewed effort to write here more often next year, but I already know I won’t.

That’s not to say I haven’t been writing, or won’t be in the near future. This year, I wrote more than ever. I wrote an entire novel! It is 81,000 words long, 265 pages of a double-spaced Word document. I started it last November during NaNoWriMo and finished it last month. Next, I’ll be dedicating major time and energy to revisions.

Part of me still can’t believe I did it. Writing a book has been a dream, a bucket-list item, for most of my life. I remember starting my first story, which had something to do with a magic academy, on a Windows 95 computer. I got up to maybe 10 pages at most, before losing creative steam and moving on to other elementary-school pursuits. There are countless other abandoned attempts floating around, opening sentences and paragraphs leading nowhere in my mind, in various notebooks, in the cloud, and probably in broken hard drives in landfills somewhere. But I finally pulled together the ideas and focus to get this body of work done, and for that, I am really proud of myself.

The other big highlight of the year was getting pregnant with our second child. This, too, has been a journey. We started saying three years ago that it might be nice to add to our family. Tiring and stressful days, bad timing, probable fertility challenges, and a miscarriage made it take longer than expected. I don’t mind the bigger age gap, though. With both of us working full-time, I’m happy that our firstborn will be more mature and independent. The three of us are very much looking forward to embracing our new family member soon.

We took four family vacations: to the Poconos, the Bay Area, Seattle, and the Bahamas. My husband and I went to New Orleans on a babymoon, and I traveled alone to Memphis to see an old friend. Each trip created treasured memories and reminded us what a vastly rich, bustling, beautiful world we live in.

Of course, it hasn’t all been sunshine and roses. I got laid off earlier this year, something I never thought would happen to me. It was like getting dumped by a romantic partner out of the blue, when I knew we had some issues but fully intended to remain loyal and work them out. It made me take a long, hard look at my priorities, mental and emotional investments, and identity.

In the summer, I got into a car accident. Someone decided to zoom through a stop sign when I was still in the middle of the four-way intersection. His van slammed into the rear passenger side of my sedan, shattering the windows and deploying the airbags. Thankfully I was uninjured, though I was ten weeks pregnant and worried about the baby. My car, which was paid off and ran perfectly and I planned to keep driving for many more years, was totaled.

Six months after celebrating the retirement of my legendary high school band director, “Dean,” I mourned (or am still mourning) the death of another musical leader and mentor. “Mr. Petes” conducted a local professional ensemble called the Garden State Symphonic Band. When I returned to New Jersey after college, unsure what to do next in life but keen to keep playing music at least, Mr. Petes allowed me to partake in GSSB’s rehearsals and even performances. These were paid gigs, so I felt very proud to be a “professional musician” even if it was only for eight to ten days a year. I played with the band for seven years, until we had a baby followed by the pandemic. Mr. Petes gave me free lessons for a couple years, and in exchange I helped him transcribe music, burn CDs, and do other computer things. “He always thought highly of your flute playing,” his widow wrote me. “‘Keep practicing’ as he would say!” Ah, now I feel bad for not having touched my instrument in months…

Mr. Petes was 86 years old at his passing. He played for many famous acts, such as the Jackson Five and Tony Bennett, and was a longtime teacher. Both he and Dean were on the scene for so long, they established countless connections and influenced decades of musicians and music appreciators. Both of them, along with Elvis Presley (you may laugh to see these names together, but my visit to Graceland during my Memphis trip left a powerful impression), have been making me think a great deal about what I want to achieve and what kind of legacy I want to have.

Anyway, has 2023 been a good year? I’d say both the highs and lows were more extreme than usual. But I do feel that it was pretty good overall, which is how I tend to feel about most years as an adult. In fact, I have a neutral-to-positive view of most intervals of time. It’s rare for me to say I’ve had a “rough week” or a “bad month.” Part of it is that I try not to let myself get swayed too much by specific pros or cons that are all just fleeting moments. Also, I feel these timeframes are so arbitrary, it’s pointless to bog yourself down by fixating on one. This passage from Tommy Angelo’s Elements of Poker* resonates:

There have been times when I wondered how I could ever lose. Days, weeks, even months sometimes, when all I did was win, win, win. […]

There have been times when I wondered how I had ever won. Days, weeks, even months sometimes, when all I did was lose, lose, lose. […]

All of my good streaks and all of my bad streaks of every length and depth have had one thing in common. They did not exist in your mind. They only existed in my mind. And this is true for everyone’s winning and losing streaks. None of them actually exist. They are all mental fabrication, like past and future. Everything that ever happens happens in the present tense. But how can you have a “streak” in the present tense? You can’t. […] There is no inherent existence to streaks. The streak is there when you think about it, and when you stop thinking about it, it goes away. It blossoms and withers, all in your mind. And when your mind invents a streak, you believe it exists, because you believe what your mind tells you. But the truth is there is only the hand you are playing.

That’s all I have to say for now. My New Year’s resolution is to get better at writing endings. 😉 I am excited for the next milestones in my life, whether or not they fall neatly within the 366 days of 2024. And I hope you have some awesome things coming your way, too. Happy New “Year”!

*Not everyone knows that I used to be heavily into poker. I began playing Texas hold ‘em with friends in college. After graduation, when I only had a part-time job, I was a regular at Parx Casino near Philadelphia. I grew to love the $6/$12 limit Omaha and stud game, and I made what I considered at the time to be some decent side money. Now it’s been years since I played poker at a casino, and I’m not sure when or if I will be back. But when someone on Reddit recently recommended Elements of Poker as a “life-changing book,” I was intrigued. I’m about 3/4 done and finding it quite profound, indeed.