Morning, CoSo. 💫

I woke up so early and so refreshed. Gave my highly impulsive sibling, halfway across the world, a crash course in teaching English to A1s (absolute beginners), and...

Now I'm going to take another day for the novel. SO CLOSE to ready! Then tomorrow I'll return to other forms of prose.

I had to restructure the tail end, which means I have revisions to do after the last drafting, but ideally this can be on to my beta reader by week's end. Then to my agent by mid-Jan? 🤞 #Soon

A big family living rough has set up a tent in the highway divider across from one of my windows. Probably just in passing for the night.

Their belongings are heaped up in two strollers beside the tent--though surely to be taken in soon against thieves.

For now, though, the tent flap is open, kids are at play, and it looks like food is being shared.

We all begin our years from such different positions.

What a wonder it is, when we're able to remember our shared humanity all along the way.

What a gift to be able to experience the world, for all its many hardships. 💛

#Nature #Colombia

There were caracaras circling out my window while I was trying to work, so I had to take a photo break. (Thems the rules.) Sadly, close-up nature photography isn't in the cards with my cellphone, but what a happy day all the same.

We are alive, and get to make choices.

Sometimes they're not right.

Sometimes they do harm.

But we learn from them--if fortunate--and go on.

This makes us the lucky ones.

Okay, so movement is still a big energy-cost. Currently fatigued from even a few blocks of walking. Noted. Will hold off for another day or two on running etc. again.

But - all the more reason just to focus on the book today.

Have a lovely one, chums! Off to work with me.

#AmWriting

I have to go out real quick to reassure my street vendor friends that I'm not dead. (One tried to call, so I bet they're worried about my no-show for the last few days.)

While I'm off... three questions for 2024:

1) Have you forgiven yourself for how you acted at your worst last year?

2) Have you thanked yourself for doing what was hard but necessary along the way?

3) Have you decided how you can be kinder to yourself in this daunting year ahead?

I hope so.

We're all just doing our best. 💛

But now I have a novel to finish.

So much for big plans. 🙃

Gotta get caught up! Need this off my plate so I can write things that might pay in the short term too.

Have a lovely one, folks! And thanks again for all your kind words while I was recovering. This one came out of the stinkin' blue - and after such a good day of writing, too!

Ah well. Here's to new and better surprises now. 😘

😊 Good morning, CoSo!

Happy New Year.

Fever's gone! Energy's great.

I'm feeling early-2000s-Viagra-after-commercial good today.

How about you?
https://youtu.be/-7_RXZlrw-0

Nope, no more day for me.

Fixed a few things that needed fixing (fever brain makes for frustrating errors), nudged my inbox, eyed my voice messages, but... I'm still feeling super shaky. So, no novel writing after all.

Another round of meds and back to bed for me.

I'd say I was sleeping through New Year's, but... this is Colombia. 🙃 I will *try* to sleep through New Year's, and wake up 80+ percent to try again.

Have a lovely one, gang.

It was an awful year, but we did the best we could. 👍

My fever brain would *not* let this go, but my goodness, 2023 needs to end.

Today's year-end round-up covers five core issues for the world this year: AI hype cycles, climate change and inaction, union power, war, and far right extremism - in the world as in the US.

These issues all feed into one another. Maybe, just maybe, understanding the intersections between these struggles will help ready us for the fight against them all in the year(s) ahead.

Go get 'em, tigers.
https://onlysky.media/mclark/five-core-issues-that-defined-2023/

I slept for the vast majority of the last two days. Still have a fever, chills, sore throat, and low energy, but I feel I've nipped it from getting worse - and it hasn't descended to my lungs, thank goodness.

I'm staying in isolation until after the fever breaks, but once I'm healthier again, whew! My body's going to need a smacking good workout after all this bedrest, I tell you what!

In this last newsletter for 2023, I reflect on intense moments from this past year—personal and global like—that deeply affected my relationship with writing, and often left me at a loss for how to go forward.

This was a very hard year for so many of us.

The next might be, too.

But if writing can keep us present in the struggle together, it’s doing precisely what it needs to do.

#BetterWorldsTheory
#Humanism #Writing
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/whats-the-use-of-a-year-end-review

On the plus side, I got to pick up my annual wheat for New Year's. I love this local tradition. You keep a stalk of wheat in the house in hope of prosperity all year round--some simple, some laden with food and other tokens, that your home might always have what it needs--and... on New Year's you burn last year's wheat as a way of saying good freaking riddance. 🙃

Very therapeutic. Catholics here add in prayers and incense and "cleanse" bad spirits from the home, but the burning's enough for me!

Time to venture out masked for more meds. COVID tests aren't as easy to acquire here, but better safe than sorry, and even regular influenza sucks. Don't know who gave this to me, but I'm not regifting.

Every time I sit up my head starts to overheat like a robot trying too hard, and the "exertion" has me breaking a sweat, then breaking out into coughing. Sleeping it off is dull, though, and has me behind schedule.

Silly body. Silly best laid plans.

🫂 Big hugs for all the well-wishing, though.

Still fever-ridden, but while tossing & turning last night I knew I finally had to write a piece I'd been putting off for a while.

It's not pleasant - but as you read the latest reports about the war crimes visited upon women on October 7, pay attention to the excuses given for why the internal investigation was such a mess. Horrific things happened--& the victims deserved a hell of a lot better than being used as political props while evidence was allowed to slip away.

https://onlysky.media/mclark/the-weaponization-of-crimes-against-women/

My causality was wrong. The headache wasn't a reaction to working yesterday so much as prelude to a full-on cold.

Silly bodies.

But! It's a good excuse to stay indoors for the next few days while shaking it off, and to finish my year's work. Too many elderly friends I don't want to sicken as well.

Take good care of your health, all. Diving into an afternoon of writing now. 🤗 Fingers crossed the meds won't make for weirder prose.

I tossed and turned with a thudding headache since 2am, so I'm taking this as a sign that my body is not happy about all my screentime yesterday. (Though my wordcount is!)

This morning is for nothing but nature and crosswords with a friend, while I wait for some supplements and ibuprofen to kick in.

🤗 Have a good one, lovelies.

There are few days as perfectly human as Día de los inocentes: a Catholic holiday marking an ancient slaughter of babies... that people celebrate by pulling pranks on one another. 🙃 Kind of a "little death" of the gullible, I suppose.

Happy Colombian April Fool's!