And how is your New Year shaping up?

One of the things I like best about the changing of the calendar is all of the yearly wrap-ups, countdowns, and look backs. I kind of like conglomerated information. Saves me from having to go searching for it. …

…Now that I think about it, other than the occasional party, the retrospective collections are about all I like about this time of year.

I mean, I don’t like the weather. I don’t like the decreased amount of daily sunlight. And I really despise this widely held expectation that people should, for some arbitrary reason – like our planet making another turn around the sun – take stock of and analyze their lives.

“Yay! It’s cold, dark, and vaguely depressing! Let’s examine our failings for the past solar cycle!”

(Yes, I know many people look back on what they’ve accomplished. But just as many people try to look back on what they accomplished and find out that, in any real and meaningful way, it didn’t amount to much; certainly not what they had hoped for).

Wow, this post is just a bit more depressing than I had intended it to be. I blame the weather.

So, let’s shuffle past the seasonal affect disorder musings and do my own little run through of the past year.

(For those of you that have read and remember my last attempt to do this – in 2014 – I assure you, this post will be different).

So, my last year has been , like most of life, a weird mix of events.

I got married in October.

(We’d only been dating for 4 years. I thought we were rushing it, but the wife was sure it was time. I’ve learned to trust her judgment in such things.)

It was a lovely, if slightly damp ceremony, of which I remember about half – all of the important bits, I assure you.

The wife and I have been living together for most of our courtship. So, the transition to married life wasn’t that difficult.

(Oh, not to seem cagey, but until I have the wife’s express permission to put her name into the public sphere in this way, I will refer to her as “The Wife”. It’s got a Sherlock Holmes/ Irene Adler feel to it which strikes me as strangely appropriate. And, it’s just polite).

I graduated university with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy. Suma Cum Laude, if you care.

(I’m still trying to adjust to just having the one job, which I get paid for, to work).

Note: I’ll post an entirely different blog about my thoughts on my college experience, sometime when I can have coherent thoughts about it. Probably be a bit on that…

I started the long and continuing process of getting healthier. Read as: losing weight. There’s a whole series of posts to come about that. Don’t get nervous. I’m not going to include any pictures.

I’m still trying to build a writing career. Now that I’m not in school, I can actually devote some significant time to that endeavor. That means more writing, more submitting, and probably more rejections. After the novel received a loving rejection from Angry Robot Books, I submitted it to Apex books. They, as well, had a snafu with their submission process and I had to re-submit to them as well. Got a less than loving rejection from them. (Not that it was acrimonious in any way, only that it lacked, completely, any personal reference or discussion of the book. It was something like four sentences in an email, two of which were apologizing for the submission snafu. So it goes).

Not sure where I’m sending the novel next, or if I’m going to resume the agent search. All possibilities I’m considering. My short story, “The Gray Lady” is currently submitted to Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show (yes, that is a long name for a magazine). I am waiting, for perhaps as long as three months, to hear if they want it or not. I’ll keep everyone posted about that, but it may be a while.

Let’s see. What else?

I still deal with mental health issues. In my continuing attempt to lessen the stigma of mental health in this country, I will probably post – from time to time – about those issues.

In reading over this post, it struck me that this is not a particularly long list. I wonder if I am forgetting something, but I don’t have the brain power to process it right now. Still, short though the list may be, it does contain some rather big ticket items. It’s probably enough for one year.

My plan for the coming year is to post here quite a bit more than I have in the past. This will be post #53. I’d like to get that at least double before too long. I’ve no loss of opinion in  my increasing age, so that probably won’t be a problem.

I will mention that, of you’d like more exposure to the weirdness that lives in my head, I’m also on Twitter. @tessrants if you want to check me out, it’s usually different material than I post here.

That about wraps it up.

Until next time…