The beginning of 2024 feels like forever ago. Without true seasons to mark time, days blend together in a way that sometimes stretches and sometimes compresses years.

If this year has a theme, the one I give it is stories. The stories we tell ourselves and the stories I tell others (or will one day when they’re finally published–writing is hard and it’s also fun).

Year of

Living in the upper room. It’s about living in God’s grace and listening to the secrets of God’s heart. It’s the place of significant events. The Lord, this year, wants to reveal to us what it means to live in the upper room with Him. In a place of practical wisdom, of God’s light amidst a dark world. A place of healing. A place of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Lean into the leading of the Holy Spirit.

January

I got sick just as I was trying to fly home. My flight was delayed by 5 hours. Impending doom seemed upon me. But I decided that I wasn’t going to let these difficulties define the year for me. I focused on the blessings (very helpful people working to get me home sooner, easy flights with Kira, getting home at a reasonable hour and getting to be home in my space if I had to be sick, grocery deliveries, homemade chicken noodle soup and getting better by the end of the week).

If it set a precedent for anything it’s that we choose the story we tell about the circumstances we end up in and I would choose, all year long, to find what God was doing in my story.

I went back to Colorado a few weeks later and spent a week in Denver. I also reread the Caraval trilogy. I enjoyed it more the second time around and it did exactly what I hoped which was reignite my creative spark a bit.

A friend and I enjoyed Astra Lumina together. It wasn’t quite a creativity spark but it was visually and auditorily interesting and fun to get to spend time with a dear friend.

I also made a new friend over coffee. It’s always enjoyable finding someone with like interests, but just that different enough point of view on the world to mix things up.

February

I went to Charolette, NC for the first time. For work. I’ve always wanted to visit Charolette. I don’t know why it seems like a cool place. But I was in and out in only a couple of days and it was raining so I didn’t really get to enjoy much.

I did get Day.ly published in the Apple app store. Since it was my first app it took a good bit of back and forth to wrangle through Apple’s convoluted process but the Swift lessons I started last August finally came to fruition in a live app!

In case you’re curious, I wanted to build a day planner app because I didn’t entirely love the options available. There are some great task lists and calendars. But not all things have a date and time (so don’t fit on a calendar) and nothing really provided a look at a day. Dayl.y combines task lists and meal plans and workouts in a single view so you can see all the things today is about. Well, maybe not all the things. This was the first version and I already had all sorts of ideas of how to improve it.

March

Then to Seattle for work. I think I’d been to the outskirts of Seattle before, or maybe Portland. Either way, I didn’t really know much about the city. Unsurprisingly, it was like walking around in Twilight. Surprisingly it looked the way Colorado is in my imagination, all thick green forests nestled with civilization.

I saw Dune: Part Two and was not impressed. Visually of course it worked. And the performances were as good as they could be given the script. But the story was desperately uneven (compressed where it should have been given room to breathe and slow where it should have been quick and focused). It’s disappointing to see so much time and talent fall flat when you want it to be really good.

I was also invited to a lovely solstice tea with some ladies at a church I’d visited. It was a nice afternoon to talk and laugh and enjoy light and delicious delicacies. Afternoon tea should be incorporated into more areas of our life, I’ve decided.

April

I didn’t do much except a lot of online shopping to get ready for a Mediterranean cruise later in the summer.

May

Denver for graduation then Colorado for annual writing retreat. It was exactly what I needed since it got me writing again. I finished the latest iteration of The Helion Chronicles season 2 episode 1 in about two days. I also started on ep 2 which took a bit longer.

In preparation for this trip and also ramping up for my cruise I released Nova, my travel planner, to the app store. There are dozens of trip planners and many of them more connected than Nova. But, like the day planners, they mostly do one thing (whether that’s manage trip details or help you discover fun places or navigate foreign spaces). Nova holds trip details (the basics of flights and hotels plus house or pet sitters) as well as including a task list (the main thing I couldn’t find in a travel planner but there’s a TON of things that go into planning trips that would be nice to track in a task list). Nova also includes an itinerary screen with details about each event and eventually I added a packing list too (which are available but are separate apps from trip planners).

June

Thankfully, I continued to enjoy some writing progress. I didn’t expect the description iterations to be so difficult but once I refocused back in May it helped me go into each episode with a sense of excitement. I finished 2.2 (Finley’s episode which I hope is both playful and dangerous) and started 2.3 (Eoin’s adventure).

July

I finished 2.3 and started 2.4 (focused on Talon) somehow in the midst of all the other things.

Including a day in Rome. Exceptionally well planned and then fairly well derailed. By the grace of God got it stitched back together. Walked 12,000 steps in the process. Then seven days through the Mediterranean to see Pompeii, Mykonos, Ephesus, and Santorini before ending up in Athens. In case you’re curious, Athens is on the list of my least favorite airports.

It all started when Levi Lusko threw out a side comment about a cruise with him and Lisa Harper during one of his sermons. I immediately looked it up online: a cruise through the Mediterranean with two of my favorite speakers to explore places where Paul preached? 100% in.

I had forgotten that it was the year of the upper room where Pastor Prince encouraged us to explore the Pauline epistles since they provide a fullness of God’s truths that our Lord Jesus didn’t share because the people hadn’t received the Holy Spirit yet. But God hadn’t forgotten. Walking Roman roads and through Ephesus while studying Paul’s letters to the Romans and Ephesians was incredible.

The cruise was relaxing and fun and had half busy days where the second half was delightfully idle. I reread A Voice in the Wind and An Echo in the Darkness while I was walking through those places in the world. The cruise was also not what I expected, and I had to lean on God’s grace and listen for what He wanted to do instead of what I wanted to do. It reminded me of part of what Pastor Prince discussed about the upper room, how it’s a picture that God wants us to be strong, healthy and enjoy a long life. Maybe it was the food or the light and breezy days but I started to really consider what the path to health and strength looked like in this season.

In case your curious the sermon Rome Sweet Rome has some of the fun and interesting things Levi shared on the cruise about Jesus time on earth and the impact of Rome.

August

Low key rest days. Beach day with Kira. I also started to spin up some of those paths to work on getting stronger.

And I started teaching for my second year! I appreciate that the prep gets easier and simpler each semester, but also I can make adjustments to improve for each class.

September

I intentionally kept things stable and worked on simple routines after the cruise. Somewhere in August or September I finished 2.4. It was a bit of a rough episode that required me to go back and evaluate a few character arcs throughout the season. After conferring with my brother, I redrafted at least two-thirds of the story from the plot up. I definitely got started on 2.5 in September.

October

Another trip to Colorado for a week of work and family. I appreciate how well those blend together with the time difference from the office and the slower pace in a mountain town.

I even got some writing done, finishing 2.5 (Rylie’s episode) and starting 2.6. I really wanted to get a full first draft of each episode done by the end of the year.

November

I discovered that Christine Caine (who is a fantastic speaker and good friend of Lisa Harper) preaches at a church I’d attended a few times. I went to an evening ladies service that was fun. I met a few very nice women. Wished I’d brought ear plugs because it was LOUD but overall appreciated the message and the fellowship.

December

Finally (FINALLY) Apple published my third app, Monarch. I don’t know what it was about this app, but I first submitted it in September and it took 3 months and a lot of back and forth before Apple finally approved it. In fact, it took so long I built and released a fourth app (Avid Expense Tracker) in less than the amount of time it took Monarch to be approved. Who would think a simple goal/project management app would be so difficult.

I did get everything released just in time to go to Colorado for the holidays. Cold but only a little snow. Beautiful time with my family and a chance to look at the coming year and decide what I want it to be.

I want a continued focus on being healthy, especially strong. I want more creativity. I want to finish projects that are in motion. Not finished with a sense of finality, but stable. Done enough and ready to be iterated on. Like finishing a first draft because, for me, revisions are more fun.

Friday Playlist

There was, for real, no Friday playlist for the first time in YEARS (my first Friday playlist was compiled in 2014).

I did compile some stats on the books I read this year. And by “compiled” I mean looked them up on Bookhype. The stories I read weren’t nearly as good as the ones I wrote (both in the fiction realm and in life).