My original thought for this looking back on 2022 blog was Good, Bad and Sad., but that means finishing on a low note, and overall that isn’t my intention for 2022. So let’s begin with the sad.

At the end of July, one of my best friends passed away. Chris had been battling cancer for many years, and seemed to have everything under control until the day after her son’s wedding, her heart decided otherwise. Through all her travails. I never saw Chris anything but upbeat and positive. Like everyone else who knew her, I will miss her smiles and infectious laughter.

Bad really falls into two categories. There’s life-bad and bad-to-good. On life-bad my writing fell off a cliff in July and really only picked up in November. Of course that totally derailed my writing goals for 2022 and has made me reconsider what’s really achievable each year. More on that when I look at 2023.

Bad-to-good covers my day-job world. In late September we signed a contract extension with our current client through the end of 2023. Just before Thanksgiving here in the US, the company decided we should be full-time employees or we were gone. I’ve been humbled by the number of people who suggested options when they knew I might be available in January, and now I have a contract that covers all of 2023, which is a good segue into the good part of 2022.

On the writing front, even though I won’t reach all my goals for 2022, I did publish five story collections and converted Thieves in the Temple to AI Audio as I mentioned previously.

Finally, at the beginning of this month (December), my daughter got married and I had the privilege of walking her down the aisle.

Overall a good year.