The Plan

The rest of my year will be planned for maximum effect. Sundays will consist of grocery shopping and writing.

WRITING

I will reedit and redesign my books. The great thing is that it consists of either editing or reformatting the manuscript. Editing takes brainpower, while reformatting is a passionless task. Whichever one I feel like doing, I will do. Simple and productive.

As for The Sapphire Veil, I’m putting it off until I’ve finished re-editing the others. There are several reasons for this. I’ll mention a couple of them later. For now, I have two conflicting thoughts. The first is common advice. Never stay away from a project for too long, or else you’ll lose your connection to the material. It becomes foreign to you and the drive never reappears.

But then again, maybe that doesn’t matter. My second thought is that I’ve done plenty for the mystery-reading community. I gave them four novellas and I’ll be providing a short story next month. I don’t need to write a novel right now.

Exercise

Mondays through Thursdays will consist of exercise and work. I cannot write and exercise on the same day. Once in a while–maybe. Most of the time, I’m not able to create. After an hour lifting weights and two 12,659-step walks (sometimes with a weighted vest), I simply cannot sit and write. If I manage to do a little writing, that will be great. A novel is not in the cards. I need to write a little every day to write a novel. That ain’t happening.

I’m not sure I’ll hit my personal goals by my 50th birthday, but I’ll get there by next Spring. I look better. I feel better. This matters more than anything else now.

Friday Travels

Every Friday, I will be visiting sites and attractions in Illinois. My only rules are: (1) no restaurants and (2) some exercise—hiking, walking, stairs… so many fucking stairs!

Yesterday, I went to Matthiessen State Park. It is essentially an enormous canyon circled by upper trails. While there are clearly marked trails, there is also some mildly challenging terrain. On your fourth hour (in this humidity…so much fucking humidity!), crossing a muddy creek or scaling a boulder isn’t a cakewalk. I got some better shoes and I was prepared (after my previous humiliation). It was a magnificent experience.

I am a terrible photographer (phoneographer?) Capturing nature in its various forms is a skill. I do not have it. Hopefully, I can read up on some tips. In the meantime, I apologize for the lack of quality.

The nicest people in the world are hikers.

The previous Friday, I visited the Morton Arboretum. How to describe it?

It has 17 miles of trails and over 30 parking lots. You can drive to and fro, walking the nearby paths. Or, you can be stupid and try to walk everything. There are so many sidetrails. In 2.5 hours, I barely scratched the surface. It’s beautiful. I have a feeling it’s even more so in the winter. And the hills are not a cakewalk. I got a lot of walking in.

The animal scultpures turned out to be helpful. You might not remember a tree, but you’ll remember a giant snail.

I had the vague feeling that I was out of place there. It seemed like most of the visitors were wealthy. I imagine if you live near there, you’d have a lot of money and the Arboretum would be a great personal park. However, I saw that a year-long membership is only $95. This means that if I visited the Arboretum five times in a year, it would be worth it. That’s probably the amount of time you’d need to walk everywhere. It’s only about a 25-minute drive out there. It might be worth it. I’ll think about it.

There are plenty of other places to go — most of them free. I’ll be posting at least once a week with some photos. Maybe I need to buy a real camera. I listen to a playlist and it’s a pain to stop it to take photos when I’ve got a good sweat going.

Here’s a picture of the Moon during daylight. (I think it was a waning gibbous.)

Saturdays are a wildcard. I might write, I might add exercise. But I’ll probably be lying in bed with aching muscles from Friday.

That’s the plan. I think it’s comfortable while staying productive. And it allows me to continue this blog without resorting to stunts. I’ll either post about my Friday travels (with longer descriptions) or share observations from the editing process. It also makes me re-read the books from scratch. That can only be helpful.

Happy Fourth of July to all my fellow U.S. readers. If only Henry Gibson could be here to update his song from Nashville.

I hope all is well.