I won't bore you with details of a year that wasn't one of my best. In fact, it has been the worst year in quite some time, and I sure won't be sorry to see it gone and done with. I usually don't sit up until midnight and wait on the new year to come in, but I will this year. I might even drink a no alcohol beer and sing silly songs along with a bunch of party hounds on television. I've had some wild New Year's Eve nights in my day, but that's all behind me now. Sitting up until midnight is wild for me these days.
My year could've been worse, but that's a lame excuse for not giving 2013 the blame it deserves. I'm smart enough to know that time has nothing to do with bad luck . . . but timing does. Was I just at the wrong place at the wrong time? Or maybe I was at the right place at the wrong time, or the wrong place at the right time. Regardless, I was here in Brady, Texas, and I didn't have much choice about that. And my bad year didn't have anything to do with where I was; it had to do with what I was doing. I didn't have a lot of choices about that either. Bad luck was part of it, and maybe that's what threw my timing off.
I worked harder this past year than I have in some time, but it seemed like all that went to waste because nothing much worthwhile got done. I've been hospitalized twice, but that turned out to be a good thing. I've lost some friends, but at my age you have to expect that. Old folks die, you know. That's just part of life, so I can't blame that on the year. It just seems that 2013 brought around more bad news than I needed or was able to process. I'm ending the year tired and grumpy . . . and disappointed. I know there's still a rough road ahead of me in 2014. There's more unpleasantness to deal with.
Well, you know the old saying about lemons. When life gives you lemons, make lemon pie, or maybe a whiskey sour. 2013 has been a lemon year, a bumper crop of them, and I'm sick of lemons. I've got seven new books on the market now, and I put in a lot of work into getting them out there . . . and most of them are lemons. I expected to be thrilled at seeing my books in print, but I'm not. They're nice enough books, good stories, and worth the effort I put into them . . . but they fall far short of meeting my expectations as a writer. I'm sure I'll feel better about them as time passes. And if I don't, so be it. I'll write something new this coming year, and at least the books that come out won't have the date 2013 on them . . . and that's a helluva big improvement in itself.
Bye, bye, 2013 . . . and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!
No comments:
Post a Comment