In a heartbeat 2024 will come to a full stop and we’ll run straight into 2025 but before that weighty ball drops I’d like to reflect on the last very full 12 months. Towards that end, I selected 4 standouts posts of the 50 I wrote, each a fan favorite, highlighting some significance of my year. How about it, want to journey back with me? Oh, lets!

Perhaps the biggest shift of 2024 was me walking out of my classroom and leaving my role as teacher, a career I enjoyed for most of the 31 years. Sure there were some days better than others, but the daily grind was always sprinkled with joyful moments, enduring friendships and extraordinary opportunities. I must admit to feeling quite lucky that I kept such a wonderful job in a wonderful school with wonderful colleagues.

As I wrote in An Irish Goodbye, “I count myself lucky that a very perceptive college professor shepherded me toward high school teaching when I thought middle school best. But he saw me. That is indeed the very power of a teacher, to recognize what a student might not yet realize about themselves, encourage them toward that self, and allow them to gain strength from within. Having been taught both well and poorly myself, I endeavored to lead with kindness and a smile, saying yes more often than I originally thought prudent.”

Working full time in such a fulfilling career is harder to leave than I anticipated but I’m filling my new life with other inspired endeavors, which surely will be explored in future posts.

Along with saying goodbye to my life as a teacher, I also said a farewell to decades of living in Vermont in Last Looks. “Happy lake time runs from May into October and brings a constant treat. Diving in takes precedence on most afternoons, yet each time I consider myself lucky. There are more than 800 lakes and ponds in Vermont, one more spectacular than the other: I have done my best to swim in lots of them, although I have found favorites they are all fabulous. Of course there is more to my love than one season’s occupation, there is the richness of green hills against the brilliant blue sky, the sweet smell of yellow flowers that run Spring through Fall, as well as the stark black and white beauty of Winter: All an integral  part of me now.”

Vermont is a spectacular state which I definitely will revisit, for all the reasons of the seasons. Getting outside for the sole purpose of feeding my heart and soul is who I am, and thankfully one can finding plenty of beauty here in southern California, but, no doubt. the ethos of the Green Mountain state will stay at my center.

This last election cycle did its best to break our country, and honestly, for most it did. November 5th left me sinking in apathy spiked with despair. But as pendulums are ought to do, attitudes will swing once again. Of this I know for sure. Despite the billionaire bros pulling the purse strings of the Grand Old Party, our America has faced worse than those greedy fuckers.

You can witness the grit and drive and dreams in individuals and communities from one coast clear across to the other, which I highlighted in Our America. “All I know for sure is that people from coast to coast are awesome. Individuals holding doors open as you pass inside, strangers saying good morning as we each load our cars in the early light, service attendants wishing you safe voyage as grab an ice tea, and the hundreds of truckers careening along side of us observing the very best safety practices. It is possible that we are not made up of red and blue states or divided black, brown and white people when you look each other in the eye and wish each other well.”

Hope slips through the cracks and fills the darkness with light, doesn’t it? If allowed, it will fill all of us once again too.

Is a yearly reflection possible without a pause granted to my writer’s life? “If, like me, you have an assortment of story rattling around in your head, it can be rather haunting until you have the whole of it out, out of your head that is. This particular story has been haunting me for a number of years, and despite the months I have tried to get it all out, there is more that needs to be sorted out. I am obsessed by two characters, who are flawed beyond hope, yet I can’t let them drown in their own misery. I keep rooting for them despite their own self-destructive antics. They are survivors. Jaded and scarred but survivors all the same. Tonight, let me introduce Mrs. Hendricks and Helen.” A Writer’s Haunting was one post that broke into the fiction that occupies a big slice of my mind. Here’s the opening of Chapter 1, working title: Mrs Hendricks & Company.

The Arrival

The only motivation I had was to leave my apartment and fast. So when I read the advertisement that stated “Small apartment in exchange for small jobs. Calls only accepted in the evenings. 567-7661” I tore the small square out of the newspaper in seconds flat and planned to pack up out of the shit hole I was currently living in if only I’d be lucky enough to get the opportunity. My current living situation had been a disaster from the start. Thinking I had something going with that loser. Believing him when he said he would take care of me. At 19 I was shit for brains and here was the proof. But I told myself, holding that torn piece of newsprint, here was my one way ticket straight out of this jam.

This novel is not nearly out of my imagination yet, for it is peopled with complicated characters like Mrs. Hendricks and Helen who need coaxing but I do hope they allow me into their world long enough to fully capture them because I am quite fond.

Finally, what would a yearly retrospective be without a nod to some fashion fun? There are no rules, yet more often than not we fall into wearing the same “uniform” for decades. I love to find bursts of creativity wherever I can, as I did in Right on Target. “Yellow is not normally my go-to color, but there is something so light and cheery about this particular shade that grabbed my imagination, it was a must have instantly!” As always, I encourage you to dig through to the back of your own closet and find that one blouse or jacket that brings a smile to your face, and start wearing it again, or when you shop, try something utterly different. Let 2025 bring change!

Enough looking back for now but I am so grateful for the growth and learning in 2024. The future remains a mystery, but with best intentions, my writing about all of it will remain steady.

A big Thank You to my readers. I am grateful for your steady support and love. This Nine Cent Girl appreciates you, xxoo