Man, this time of year is always so crazy; I even completely forgot to do a Monday Morning Reset Post last week. I didn’t realize it until Wednesday night, and, at that point, it just seemed silly to post it on Thursday. But I only do it to myself, having decided on December for releasing the annual World Unknown Review (the latest of which is available now, if you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet). Even after three years, I keep hoping I’ll one day have enough money for publishing the anthology and Christmas stuff, but, alas, that time has not yet come. Maybe that’s when I’ll know I made it: my bank account isn’t completely depleted by the time January comes around.
I love January, though. It’s the BIG reset button, where I start fresh on all sorts of new projects that make the final two weeks of December feel like they exist in a sort of limbo. I’ve got plenty to try to plow through before then, though, so I just need to focus on those things and try to not even think about next year quite yet.
Reading: Because of the craziness of the last few weeks with getting WUR 2016 out, I haven’t had nearly enough time to read as I would like, meaning my big stack of books to finish by the end of the year is just as big as before. But so many books are close to being finished that I’m sure I’ll get to add a good surge to the final count of the year before it’s finished without too many stragglers. And then we’ll get started on a whole new line-up. I think I’m going to start with Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals, but only if I manage to finish his Everything is Illuminated first.
Writing: I’ve still been getting my page-a-day-at-least scribbling in, working on a variety of different things, but I haven’t been focusing on submitting things much with WUR on my plate. I did get a few rejections trickling in, but nothing much. At least certain other aspects of the world seem to slow to a trickle during the holiday season. It would be nice to get two more rejections in the next two weeks to give me a nice rounded 60 at the end of the year, and getting 100 next year is going to be a piece of cake.
This is where I just now realize that I forgot to start a new story today like I do every Monday, which is interesting, because I spent all day yesterday excitedly thinking of a sort-of sequel to my Potters Field Six story, “Sleepwalker.” So I’ll dive into that one tomorrow. It’s going to be really cool revisiting some of those characters, which have just been really lively in my head lately.
‘Rithmatic: And then the rest of things is waiting on Christmas. I finally managed to get most of my shopping done, which I was kind of stressing out about, so I feel a pretty big weight is lifted. I don’t even have that many people to buy for, but I always go overboard. My only remaining one is my boyfriend’s father, who is pretty much impossible to buy for. I don’t know him well, except that he likes drinking coffee, so I just buy him coffee. I’d be open to suggestions for hard-to-shop-for sort-of-fathers-in-law gifts, though!
I’m going into my third day out of a four-day streak at work, and really, really, really looking forward to my two days off coming up. I haven’t had any time to do all the cooking and cleaning I’ve been wanting to do, so it’s going to be really nice and productive. I hope. Or I could just play Roller Coaster Tycoon all day. That is entirely a possibility as well.
How’s your holiday seasons going? Crazy and eventful or calm and collected? Looking forward to the new year yet?
L.S. Engler 
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