Ah, December 2023 – the final lingering touch of one of my least favourite years. More appointments… Only this time following up on the surgery, though as a bonus, visits to the Cookie Shop. (Which didn’t inspire the story, but did remind me to publish it).

November 2023 was taken up with a lot of medical appointments. Which quite frankly, are exhausting.

It feels like a lot happened during September October 2023, but that’s mainly because it’s a relatively long time (8 weeks). During that time, I prepared to go into hospital, stayed for a week, and now I’m, out and still recuperating now.

Here in August 2023, I’m back to cartoon head spinning as the month whips past me, leaving me wondering where it went.

July 2023 was a much better month than June. A happier, more productive, and mostly more settled month.

May 2023 was a weird month ranging from laid out after my Covid vaccination to up and about, posing for a photshoot for new headshots. (Which went swimmingly, and you can look forward to seeing the new images soon).

April 2023 was a very social month, dominated by friends stopping over during their whirlwind visit to Australia.

March 2023 was a weekly mess of quiet preperation followed by a frenetic activity followed by prep followed by activity. I left the month almost as exhauted as when I entered it.

February 2023 was a month mostly devoted to rebranding and redeveloping my websites. Not that there’s been a great deal to see on this site. Some of it was even on my Kanban boards. Highlights from February 2023 I admit having to give up on the novella challenge was hard, and I moped for a…

January 2023 has been difficult for me without a plan to be going on with. I know I posted something towards planning 2023, but there weren’t any goals – not SMART, not HARD, not even getting better.

So. December 2022. Last month of the year. Supposedly the time you close out the year, ready to start afresh the very next day. I’m fairly certain I didn’t get to that…

What can I say about November 2022? I finally got my sauna! And while getting it unpacked and put up almost killed me, along with the fencing, I’m really happy it’s here.

October 2022 is over already! A day seems to take forever, but the month seems to have flown by. As usual.

September 2022 was notable for a deluge of stationery shop emails inviting me to pre-order my 2023 diary. Which was also handy for remembering to start my Christmas shopping list!

This is a combined July-August 2022 report, because quite frankly I’ve no idea why I didn’t do one in July. And I’m not going to bother this late.

June 2022, was pretty much missing in action – I went out to visit a doctor and came home with a lurgy or two. It seems I need to build up my immunity after being confined to the house for the better part of two years.

What can I say about May 2022, except that it came and went way too quickly. And I discovered there’s a world day for bees!

So, April 2022 marked the start of the second quarter, and my second 12 Week Year, the first using the 12 Week Year For Writers. And started with a sense of excitement.

The end of March 2022 marks the end of the quarter, and I can’t help feeling the year is over. Though I suppose my first 12 Week Year is. It’s left me feeling tired and a bit irritable.

Now that it’s February 2022, thanks to the 12 Week Year, I have the uncomfortable feeling the year is half over. And it kind of is.

January 2022, the first four weeks of my first attempt at a 12 Week Year. With mixed results.

Ah, December 2021, when the year that was FINALLY ran out of steam and ground down to the end. I thought we’d never make it.

November 2021 was like when someone (e.g., your recorded meditation) tells you to set your mind free and let it go anywhere it wants to go, but you don’t know where that is. And the options are endless so you don’t do much.

October 2021 marked the lifting of restrictions and the end of COVID lock downs. We were watching the vaccination rate increase, and I felt like a kid again, counting down the last couple of weeks before school broke out for the holidays!

September 2021 is best summed up by Dickens. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Well, it’s August 2021, and I’m still here. Nothing much has changed since last month… Remember the good old days when something was always happening?

Is it July 2021 already? It’s almost not worth ticking the days off the calendar – my life feels like one long hump day. Groundhog Wednesday…

June 2021. I’ve no idea how to describe June. Or where it went. Though I know I wrote a new short story a collection…

May 2021 turns out to be the month I broke, and then got my shit back together again. Struggling with bronchitis, but making progress. It feels bloody good to get back to living again.

April 2021 pretty much followed on from where March left off, and I ended the month still tired and needing some rest.

Spent most of March 2021 feeling exhausted and napping. I am one of those people tend to sleep when times get tough, so I’m starting to feel the pandemic is finally getting to me.

February 2021 was mostly devoted to settling the new addition to our family in. There was a lot of dog proofing, though we found out fairly quickly it was mostly inadequate, so we now have boxes stacked above puppy height with all the portable things.

January 2021 is off to a good start. And hopefully, I’ll continue to be a little kinder to myself, and remember not to think too far ahead, and to stay focused on each day.

I about reached the end of my rope in August 2020. For the most part nothing much has changed for me since January. I stay home, I write, I develop my Photoshop skills, I get through the day. But even I am having difficulties. I’d probably still choose to stay home, but having the choice…

July 2020 was a mixed blessing. One the one hand, the planet, and Melbourne in particular is a disaster.

June 2020 feels like a five-minute disaster movie sandwiched in between a bunch of other disaster movies in a century long disaster movie marathon.

Sitting here, preparing to review May 2020, it just feels like a sucky month. And this is, of course, the point of a monthly review – there was always more that happened than you can remember.

April 2020 just happened in between all the spaces. And there were a lot of spaces as (unsurprisingly) my appointments and meetings were cancelled or rescheduled one by one.

March 2020 was a horror month. There was/is all the Covid-19 shit going on, but more importantly for us, we had to say goodbye to Pretty Girl. She leaves an enormous hole, but also the opportunity to consciously reshape our lives with better habits. Virtue Feb Mar Notes Pleasure: AdventurePlan and take an international vacation…

Made some progress in February 2020, but I feel the year has already run away without me and I’ll not be able to catch up.

January 2020 marked the start of the transition to Quarterly planning. It’s been both harder and easier than I expected. Virtue Dec Jan Notes Pleasure: AdventurePlan and take an international vacation late Q3/early Q4. – 😐 In the main, I’ve just looked at the dog and felt guilty about planning a trip to take place…

I’ve been so busy planning 2020, that December 2019 has become a distant memory. I’ve had to go back through my journal to see what happened.

November 2019 was difficult as Pretty Girl has been very ill, and we thought we were going to lose her. Not that we’ll have her for much longer, but at least we have time to prepare.

Is it my imagination, or did we skip right over October 2019? I mean I know there was stuff that happened, but I feel a bit like Speedy Gonzales whipped by and I’m left clinging to the ceiling by my fingernails.

And that’s September 2019 been and gone. Is it just me, or are the days flying by faster and faster? Or is it that Christmas is in the stores already? The weather’s been good enough for working outdoors (with the laptop), but September 2019 has also had a lot of very cold and wet days.…

During August 2019, I took a few weeks off for some navel-gazing. And now I’ve started developing a new kind of normal. It’s been hard work.

July 2019 featured the transplant rejection scare, the month when the Earth spun upside down on its axis and inside out.

Due to a recent transplant rejection scare, I’ve lost track of June 2019. It took up a lot of brain power and time, but thankfully was just a scare.

May 2019 marks a small but significant change in direction for little writing business. It seems that April’s clearing out had freed some time and space for other concerns.