A New Decade

Hello dear readers!

Before me stretches the portentous, menacing road of a new decade. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “Thirty – the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair.”

Except I’m not 30. I’m 40.

Image description: A white-haired man with a awkward smile and sad eyes, holding up a mug of what’s presumably coffee. Text: Millennials reaching their 40s soon. Now we can be broken on the outside, too.

But do I feel it? I bench pressed 360 pounds on my birthday, I’m getting ready for rugby season, and I’m writing better than ever before. I love my job and my coworkers. My two partners make me happier than I’ve ever been. And I have a great relationship with my supportive family.

I’ve had setbacks and made mistakes, but on the whole the past decade has been the best of my life. It’s taken me a bit longer to get here than I hoped—my original plan was to write my first novel by 30—but I’m here now, driven and happy. And I understand why I failed so many times before (a big one: being really good at literary analysis doesn’t mean you understand plot structure. Also, executive dysfunction).

But enough navel-gazing! How has this month been?

I did celebrate my birthday by doing a bit of a baking bonanza. I made a slight error while decorating my cake, which meant it wasn’t the best-looking cake I ever made, but damn it tasted good.

Image Description: A 3-layer cream-cheese chocolate cake with 4-berry compote on top and in each layer. The cake is messily decorated because the recipe said that the frosting pipes better when refrigerated…. I refrigerated all of it and then realised piping isn’t the same thing as spreading.

Also, the main course:

Image Description: Roast Peppers stuffed with quinoa, cheese, and peas, cheesy garlic foccacia, and onigiri (I got an onigiri mold, and it makes the best grilled cheese snacks ever).

Why did I bake my own birthday cake and meal, you ask?

Image Description: Mordin Solus saying, “Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong.”

Outside of my birthday, I’m finally running again, and the weather’s been… generally good for it?

Image Description: A screenshot of my running app, saying that my fat ass ran 4k in 37 minutes.

I also went to Montreal with my sister!

Image Description: My partner Bren and my sister at the Notre Dame Basilica in Montreal

And I should post a selfie to round out the month, shouldn’t I?

Image Description: me at the gym with my pink undercut.

So, that’s my life update! In my writing, I’ve been making good progress. While I was definitely a bit slow to get into editing, the rewrites have also been more extensive than I planned, and the book itself is longer than I expected (it’s clocked in at 89k words, when my last two books have been around 70k). All that has made for significant delays. But I’m in the home stretch now, and it’ll be ready to go out to beta readers at the end of the month.

So, if you’d like to be a beta reader, let me know! You don’t need any qualifications or anything (most readers won’t have any, and it’s them I need to entertain!). All you need to do is read it in the space of 4 months or so, and say, “This part bored me. This part confused me. This part I really liked.” Those are the 3 things a writer needs to know.

All right, it’s time for me to head to work, so have a great day, and enjoy your spring! (Or fall, if you’re in the southern hemisphere)

Payson

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