The annual recap of the year happens now:

1. I wrote. A lot. Not only did I write blog posts (see more later in the list) and finish a year-long writing challenge that I started in March of 2022, I wrote a WHOLE FREAKING BOOK in the month of November. I am shocked and thrilled and can’t believe I even did it, but I wrote 57,000 words of the first full draft of my first-ever novel – a romance that I can’t wait to share with the world at large.
2. Pierced my nose. Forever I thought my nose was too big to add jewelry to it that would draw even more attention to it but then I realized, with the help of some of my dearest people in this world, that hell yes I could rock a nose ring if I wanted, and I wanted, so I did. 99% of people haven’t even noticed it which tells me it looks natural enough that people probably assume I’ve had it for ages. I haven’t – only since July!
3. Had ankle surgery to repair torn ligaments and scrape out some arthritis in my left ankle. I spent two weeks non-weight-bearing which was horrendous and then the next several months doing PT and rehabbing it so I could walk normally again. The recovery for this turned out to be such a humbling and longer than I expected experience.
4. Went back to PT at the end of the year because of ankle pain returning; hoping to get some tendon relief from that to start 2024.
5. Self-published a Glimmers Gratitude Journal so I could share my daily journaling practice with a wider audience!
6. I taught. A lot. I had double sections for Bellevue for all four terms of this year and then added two sections for CCC for Fall Semester and it was a damn ton of grading, but I did it. All of it was online which meant I spent a ton of time on the computer, but again, I did it.
7. Finally got myself a (refurbished) desktop computer. For the first time in my 13ish years of adjuncting, I’m finally NOT doing so from a laptop. Thank all the stars in the heavens because looking straight at a large screen instead down at a small one in my lap is soooo much better for my body.
8. Dove headfirst into Swiftiedom. This journey started pre-COVID, was cemented by Folklore and Evermore, blown out of the water by Midnights, and then turned Full Fan Girl status after watching The Eras Tour via reels, clips, and then the movie itself this year. I am forever a teeny-bopper pop-loving girl. And don’t even get me started on her and Travis Kelce; spoiler alert: I am very much here for it.
9. Went to one major concert of the year – Nahko in Denver, CO in October. I haven’t seen him live since 2019 and despite a bizarre-o venue, the night was magic.
10. Added Book Store clerk to my resume, working several shifts during the holiday season in my friend Nichole’s new independent book store, located in downtown Hastings. Bryant Books and Music is a real gem, just like the owner, and it’s really fun to help people find new books for themselves and their people.
11. Bit the bullet and bought my first pair of glasses with progressive lenses. The lewk is fire but the adjustment to them for my brain has been clunky. I know they help but I’m having a hard time adding them to my daily routine.
12. Read 68 books this year. My favorite discovery of the year was author Ashley Herring Blake. I read all three of her Bright Falls books and she is an amazingly inclusive romance writer and I am sad to say goodbye to these characters.
13. Wrote 36 blog posts this year. That number tanked once baseball season hit and my writing challenge ended. And then November knocked out both my reading and my writing that wasn’t for my own book, but that’s hardly surprising.
14. Broke up with heels of any sort, not that I’ve ever been huge on them. Post-ankle repair, I just could not and even now, they’re just scary. I’ve worn a heel or wedge officially twice this year, both for brief fashion moments, but otherwise I’m now rocking flats and a really kick-ass pair of black Doc Marten boots on the regular instead.
15. Sent my last baby off to full-time school. This opened the door for many of the aforementioned work and creative opportunities.
16. Finished my second yearbook for my kids’ elementary school and started my third. This gets easier each time but is still a massive undertaking each year.
17. Learned how to make a killer oatmilk cheater* latte at home and have saved umpteen dollars in drive-thru coffee. However, still love coffee made for me, not by me, too. *I do not have fancy equipment or fancy coffee but that doesn’t keep it from being fancy to me!
18. Joined a new book club started by a dear reader friend; that makes the current total two.
19. Went Full Bluey this summer and watched every episode I could get my hands on with the kids. We freaking adore it SO. MUCH! This love included Christmas decorations, a baby Colorado Blue Spruce planted in our backyard that we named Bluey, and, now that I think of it, my blue front door!
20. Bought bigger pants. This year was it was and that’s what I needed. It helps that “new” (literally nothing about fashion is new right now) styles are circulating and I could explore some of that by buying jeans that fit instead of feeling like shit about ones that I already own that currently don’t.
21. Third year of being totally alchohol free.
22. Made my own little moody maximalist wall in my living room – I’ve been following some groups online who do this for a while now and finally got inspired to build my own made from family pieces, thrifted and gifted items, and a few special purchases to round it out. I adore it! See image below, but note that the mantle is extra right now because of holiday decor; that doesn’t all live there all the time.
23. Put my Christmas tree up the earliest I’ve ever done it – the second weekend in November! I have no excuse or reason other than we had time one random Saturday and Ben didn’t balk when I said, “Let’s go for it.”
24. Continued my egg-free, dairy-free, gluten-free eating. Learned how to make an incredible Vegan/GF cornbread from scratch as a result which is my favorite new recipe.
25. Switched back from Apple Music to Spotify. What can I say? The Spotify AI just gets me and I love it so much more. I’ve happily listened to a bazillion hours of music since making the return to my old love.

That’s not it but that’s all for this list. May you also find some time to reflect and compile a list of all the ways, big and small, that you moved through this world in 2023.

I don’t know that the blog has ever sat this quiet for this long in the 12+ years that I’ve been writing in this space, but the last month and a half have been a whirlwind, so it’s not surprising that I went radio silent here during that time. Instead, my writing energy in November was directed at allll the teaching (wrapping up two classes and starting two more, while still continuing the other two that just ended this last week but for which I am still currently grading) and alllll the book writing. And y’all, I did it! I freaking wrote an entire first draft – 57,000 words worth – of my very first novel!

While I don’t know the exact next steps (or rather, what the next chapter for this book of mine looks like), I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the exerpience of doing NaNoWriMo and specifically the Hot & Bothered Romance Writing Workshop.

First, it was such a freaking joy. I loved every planning session and lecture that the workshop provided us and I learned so much before I even began November and the actual writing. I laughed and smiled through every Zoom and found a real sense of community and support which helped me greatly in celebrating how the writing went. And it really went! I couldn’t believe that I started by cranking out over 3K words a day during the first week and then that trend just continued. I hit the 50K mark on November 20th – a full 10 days early – and then added 7,000 more before the end of the month to round out my draft. I didn’t have any idea how this would go, but I did put a lot of time and thought into what this book would be over the last year and apparently all of this combined to just flow right out of me. Creating my characters and their world and relationships brought me so much joy; I laughed out loud more than once as the story came together because I was so pleasantly surprised to find out that I did in fact know how to write a fictional story and doing it was so much freaking fun. Who knew?!

Second, my people showed up for me big time. This looked like friends bringing me coffee to fuel my writing time and so I could still see some of their faces for a few minutes as I sequestered myself in the cloffice for the month. It looked like B and the kids making me a paper chain of encouraging notes that I could hang by my computer, ready for me to open a link each time I hit another 1,666 words. It looked like text messages and Marco Polos asking how the writing was going and folks listening to me workshop ideas out loud at them. It looked like dance parties in my kitchen and dining room after every word count goal, in part to celebrate and in part to shake out the tension from my body after so much computer time. It looked like plowing through an ocean’s worth of student papers and grading so I could get in some writing time every single day (except for the few days after I hit 50K where I gave myself grace and a break). It looked like high fives and “Oh my gosh, good job!”s from the kids when they got home from school and asked how the writing went that day.

Third, I think it might really be a real book. After hitting my word goal, I took the first week of December, whilst caring for a kiddo who had a tonsillectomy (because why wouldn’t that happen in the same month I was attempting to write my first book?!), and did my first read-through of the draft. After making initial small edits and changes in the first chapter, I got a wild hair to record it as a voice memo on my phone and then I shared it with a few friends. And then they loved it and wanted more, so I kept going and edited and recorded the whole dang thing; and maybe I just know the sweetest and kindest people who would love anything I wrote, but I think we all think that it Really. Might. Be. A. Real. Book!

Fourth, even if nothing else comes from this, it was worth it and I plan to do more. I already have the next two in mind, actually, and have from the start of the first – this was always going to be a trilogy, and, by golly, based on how lit up the first one made me feel, I will definitely be taking on the second two sooner than later.

So I guess maybe that’s the next chapter – the next book and then the next, next book. And finding a home for them so I can legit share them with everyone. OK, maybe not everyone. The idea of everyone reading a romance that I wrote is weird, but all the same, I’m super proud of it and myself. If you had asked me at the start of this year if I would write a book before 2024 – actually, if you had asked me at the start of Septmember! – I would have laughed at the thought. But write one is exactly what I did and yes, I did laugh, not because it was ridiculous, but because it was very much real and very much packed full of joy.

For some reason, humans love to tack on challenges to the month of November. No Shave November and 30 Days of Gratitude are perhaps two of the best known and most popular quests in the 11-month of each year. Why do we do this? Because the end of the year is coming and we want to make it count? I don’t know, but writers are not immune to the call of November and have their own specific challenge known as NaNoWriMo which is short for National Novel Writing Month. And yes, they really do mean write a novel. In a month!

For a long time now, I’ve had the idea knocking against my brain that I need to write a book. And not a memoir or personal-based book as this blog would probably lead you to believe since that’s what I write here. I’m talking fiction.

There’s no basis for this since I haven’t written fiction with any serious focus since the fourth grade when I was a very prolific author of little books that I wrote and designed covers for in my spare time at school (I kid you not – there was one about school, shaped like a bell). But also? I can’t make the notion go away. I’m supposed to write a book. It’s supposed to be fiction. And even more specifically? It’s supposed to be a Romance.

Some of you may know, from my reading logs and social media posts that I started reading Romance in earnest in 2020. A friend had shared some titles with me prior to that and I enjoyed them, but when the world turned upside down in the pandemic, I found myself in an awful reading slump and I just could not bring myself to read anything heavy when the world already felt like Too Much on a daily (hourly) basis. So I did a deep dive into Romance books and I’ve never looked back in the three and a half years since.

I’ve now read dozens (probably 100, actually) and have some absolute favorite Romance authors (Jasmine Guillory, Casey McQusiton, and Ashley Herring Blake are forefront in my mind) and I will legit read anything they write. Romance comes with a lot of stereotypes and judgment, but I stand by the notion that to read such books – about women, often by women, and showcasing the pleasure of women – is an act of rebellion because so much of society really doesn’t like any of those things. And apparently, it’s now my turn to try that style of writing. Ready or not, get set, GO!

Except, I am ready. Or mostly. And I have amazing support and guidance thanks to the Not Sorry Productions workshop that is happening in Oct/Nov in which the amazing folks behind the Hot and Bothered Podcast (omg – I listened to seasons Five and Six about Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice, respectively and they were like auditing the best possible college lectures ever. I adored them and highly, highly recommend them) are leading us through the preparations for NaNoWriMo and the production of 50,000 words of our very own novels, but of course, with a Romance genre in mind.

I feel ready to tackle that mountain of words because I already have my story in mind. I know my two main leads. I know their circles of friends and family. I know my troupe (Romance is alllll about the formulaic troupes which is again, part of the comfort and joy that comes from reading them). And I know my reason for writing. I won’t share any of that at this point, but I wanted to throw this quest out there to the ether in part to let you know what’s going on in my world and in part for accountability.

November is going to be a wild ride. In addition to teaching my four classes, we have two birthdays, a day off from school, a 5-day holiday break, and – as we just found out this week – a kid getting tonsils out in the last 10 days of the month. And I’m going to write 1,666 words a day and attend 1.5 hours Zooms every Sunday from now until December? Yes, yes I am. Which is why NOvember is going to be about the NOvel and about saying “NOt right now” to pretty much anything else. Except maybe coffee deliveries and messages of support, both of which I will greatly appreciate as I take on this pipe dream of a creative journey.

Is this a good time for this journey? NO it’s not (you see what I did there, yes?). But there will never be a good time and I might as well do it now because, well, why not?! Why the heck not.

Maybe I’ll pop on here during the month with a check in or when I get stuck in that writing, but either way, thanks as always for reading and check back soon. I’ll definitely have a story to tell about the story I’m writing come December. And in the meantime, I’ll be staring at this Post-It in my cloffice that’s an Anne Lamott quote/writing reference that I have long loved:

In the years before I started blogging, I was a journal keeper. But then motherhood came along and the blog became my primary means of writing, both for myself and for an audience. At some point along the way, though, I read somewhere about a specific approach to journaling that once again grabbed my attention. The concept is part-gratitude, part-bullet journal, and part-easy because it consists of writing just three things each day for which you are grateful, which I started doing on and off over the years in this or that little journal or diary.

In fact, years ago, when a relative asked for time capsule gifts for her then young child (to be opened on her 18th? 21st? birthday – whatever the number, a very cool idea), I sent a blank journal with the instructions for this very concept. I can’t wait to hear what she thinks of it someday when the time comes to open that thing! Our church even did something similar one fall, having people write their daily gratitudes for the month of November in small pocket notebooks handed out one Sunday during service. Which, really, all of this is to say, none of this gratitude collecting is exactly new, but I did come up with a way this fall to share my daily practice that I’m excited to share with you here, now.

Perhaps you’ve seen the idea of glimmers floating around the internet? This notion that there are bright spots, albeit sometimes small and fleeting, that happen each and every day, if only we take the time to notice them? Pretty similar to “an attitude of gratitude” list, but I love the idea that what you look for doesn’t have to be big and sweeping. That’s the same thing I’ve been doing for the last three years, every single day, when I write down three unique and specific items for which I am grateful!

Really, there are just three rules: 1)Write three things. 2) If I name a person, I have to say why they’ve made the list that day. And 3) Whatever I write has to stay in the lane of positive, even if it takes me 10 minutes to sort through my thoughts at night to find those bright points from the last 24 hours.

This has become such a healthy and helpful way to manage my days while also keeping track of my memories (in a shiny way since I don’t list the hard stuff from each day in this same journal, so it’s a little skewed, I know). I look forward to my nightly practice of processing in this way and on the rare evenings I forget, I go back and make up for the next night. So, I decided to share and created my own journal that this online trend gave me the perfect name for: a Glimmer Gratitude Journal.

You can get your own copy of Glimmers, in paper or hard back copy and start keeping your own list of three daily bright spots and see how this helps you not only brain dump at the end of day, but also end on a positive note before bed each night. Just use the following link:

https://www.amazon.com/Glimmers-gratitude-journal-Jenni-Welsch/dp/B0CK3KDVKM/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1696451449&sr=8-3

I can’t wait to hear what you think of the journal and the practice!

Now that we’ve had a month of Regularly Scheduled Programming, a.k.a., over four weeks of normal school for everyone, I think it is safe to say I’ve landed in a good place with my day-to-day of work-from-home-and-still-be-a-person life. Of course now that I’ve said that, I’m going to knock on wood because yikes, the cockiness in that last sentence is just asking for trouble from Murphy’s Law. But also, it’s true – I’ve managed to find a pretty decent routine to help me forge this new-to-me way of life.

I call it my Skeleton Schedule and if you’ve been around me in the last month, you may have picked up on these habits. The basic concept is that I block out my days with certain parameters and then build what needs to happen on those actual days according to their label.

I got the start of this idea from a wise friend who already had all of her kiddos in school but also worked from home by learning to protect my Mondays. She said she liked to keep Mondays for herself because it helped her recharge after full weekends of family time and I knew right away I wanted to do the same. I also knew that with this new teaching load of four full classes, I would want Mondays for grading because I feel so much better about my weeks if I can get a jump start early on each grading cycle. And somehow, even if I just schedule one little thing on a day, it feels like I suddenly don’t have enough time for the one big task I need to be doing, hence latching onto the Protect Mondays mentality.

The birth of the actual Skeleton Schedule came this summer when Ben and I sat down to map out what our general weeks would look like once school started. This meant figuring out which days I needed to focus on work (because no way was just Monday going to cut it for my grading), which days he needed to stay late to grade since he’s now back in the classroom, and which days were heavy with after school activities for the kids. (We also happen to be in the middle of the super busy season of Fall Y Sports which adds a whole other layer of chaos to our weeks, but at least we had the frame work for sanity before it started, so that helps.) That lead me to setting aside Mondays and Tuesdays for work, Wednesday and Thursday for appts, be it medical, coffee dates, or walks with friends, and Fridays as a catch all – extra grading, cleaning, Me Time, or whatever the day allows.

I know it doesn’t seem like a month is quite long enough to call something a success, but I don’t care, I’m doing it anyway because this is absolutely working. I’m loving the routine and it’s just enough structure to help me feel like I’m accomplishing what needs to be done and not floundering from one thing to the next. AND I am not over-scheduling my weeks in such a way that leaves me feeling like I need to run from one thing to the next each day even though most days are in fact quite full.

I realize that for some folks, this is far from revolutionary, but for me it’s a big change and a welcomed win because I’ve never had this much time on my hands without kids’ needs coming first. I didn’t know how all this was going to go, but I’m pleased with the results so far and proud that I’m still making tweaks to both optimize and enjoy this time. Part of that comes from slowly adding bits of Me Time in the form of walks and yoga each day, so I can feel better in both my physical and mental bodies in post-surgery life, because that’s another Plot Twist of 2023 that I’m still recovering from and it’s nice to know that with time and effort, I can affect these changes. None of this happened overnight and it takes dedication to keep it going but I’m willing and I’m here for it. Literally because it’s Tuesday and that means, it’s time to grade!