2021 comes to a merciful end today, and I still haven’t finished my sequel to The “Volunteer”. When I started hauling RVs for a living, I figured on being able to write a little bit while on the road and even more at home. And since I only planned on being on the road about half the time, I thought my opportunities for writing would only increase from what they had been when I worked as an IT technician. But that hasn’t been the case as driving my eleven hours a day is exhausting and takes a toll on my eyes. I’ve been unable to read or write at the end of each driving day just because of the eyestrain and general exhaustion. It usually takes me a day to recharge once I get home from one my trips and another day to get back into the writing groove. However, I seem to be my four-year-old granddaughter’s center of attention on most of the days when I am home, and writing (and just about anything else) takes a back seat to her.

I generally loathe new year’s resolutions, but I am making a commitment to making more writing time in 2022, even if it means driving less than my eleven hours a day. I have to at least open my laptop and typed a few words each and every day. My sixteen-month-old truck already has 176,000 miles on it, and at my current rate, it will hit 300,000 miles by the end of 2022. While I’d like to think the truck will make it to one million miles (it is possible), I have to face the reality that I need to build more revenue streams than just that truck. I not only need to finish The Girl Who Stopped Wearing Clothes in 2022, I need to write several additional novels. I do have two other ideas percolating in my mind, one of which already has a few chapters written.

I would like to wish anyone reading this a very Happy 2022. I still enjoy my RV hauling gig though, and to demonstrate that, here’s a photo of me from early October in front of Stephen King‘s house in Bangor, ME (my first-ever trip to Maine). I had delivered a trailer to a dealership in Glenburn. I had no idea where in Maine that was when I booked the trailer, so imagine my surprise when I saw that it was about ten minutes away from Stephen King’s house. I’ve been reading Stephen King’s fiction since 1982, so a stop in front of his house was just something I had to do while there. And I ate a very tasty lobster roll right after this photo was taken.