Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels.
Daily Diary, Day 1279:
Brief check-in: Woke up to rainy Sunday morning, even though this was not forecast. My husband got in first short walk with dog, while I did first bit of dusting of the downstairs (as it is Sunday this was the thorough dusting of all the shelves holding books, CDs, Vinyl, and knick-knacks, and picture frames etc.). Then we ordered groceries, and I did the rest of the cleaning when it stopped raining and he went for second longer walk. One phone call and more writing is all else that is planned for today (and putting away the groceries when they come.)
Celebrations:
I would like to first celebrate how much I enjoyed the long phone call I had this week with an old school friend (I probably met her when I was about six, so we’ve known each other about 68 years).
One of the most unexpected effects of Covid on me is the way it has made me so comfortable with interacting with people on the phone or occasionally on zoom. I grew up in a time (the fifties) when long distance phone calls were quite expensive. As a result, my parents seldom used long distance, or when they did, tended to keep the calls short. In college this meant our major way of communicating was by mail, and my mother wrote me about once a week. I did a pretty good job of writing her in return during those years. However, once my husband and I moved out west, and I became busy with graduate school, then motherhood and a job, my correspondence waned. Unfortunately this meant that most of the in-depth communication I had with friends and family (most who lived back east) was by through occasional hurried visits back east (or in the case of childhood friends when I returned for a high school reunion.) I did have a few people in my life before Covid that I had long conversations with—a couple of very close friends, But the rest of my frequent contacts were with people I saw face to face (first at work, and then when I retired, by seeing each other at meetings, going on joint outings, or getting together for tea or lunch.
But with the advent of covid, these face-to-face meetings became unsafe for me, so I was forced to use the phone (with an occasional zoom meeting) all the time, and I discovered that in some ways I prefer this form of communication. I certainly prefer it to conversing on email (modern equivalent of letters). On the phone, hearing a person’s voice, just the two of us (not worried about the lack of privacy sitting in a public place,) I feel an intimacy and a closeness that quite satisfies my need for social contact.
I know this isn’t true for everyone, but what it has meant for me is that relatives and friends that I might have only seen every ten years or so, I am now more likely to keep in contact with, with long conversations at least every month or so. In short, I would like to celebrate those phone calls with friends near and far.
My second celebration comes out of the unexpected consequence of what at first was a real setback to my health and writing. As any of you who read my posts know, this week I have been facing some minor but irritating problems (injured knuckle, bad stye). My injured knuckle is continuing to be sore when I type for any length of time, (or frankly do anything—so today after cleaning, it’s sore) and then a stye developed that I couldn’t take care resolve without turning to oral anti-biotics, which have some distressing side effects., including arthritis flare-ups. However, as I’ve also written this week, the knuckle has forced me to try dictating instead of typing, and I definitely want to celebrate the positive effects of that. This is not only giving me hope that even if the knuckle is now going to be a chronic problems, and even if the antibiotic does cause a flare up in the other arthritic fingers on both hands, it won’t completely end my ability to finish this book in the next month. In fact, given that I have gotten more than a 1000 words written every day for the past 3 days, I may complete this first draft more quickly than I would have otherwise. And I’m certainly looking forward to experimenting with trying to write the first draft of my next historical mystery book in this fashion. And that is certainly a reason to celebrate.
My final reason to celebrate is the recent weather. This week we’ve had sun, clouds, wind and rain, often in quick succession, and not always when predicted. As an example, yesterday afternoon, when I headed off for my walk, the weather app on my phone said that the next rain was going to come Sunday afternoon or evening. (Wrong, it started raining sometime in early morning, has stopped and started three times since then.) In any event, yesterday 10 minutes into what was supposed to be a 30 minute walk. it started to rain—not mist—not drizzle—but real rain drops, bouncing on my hat and soaking those parts of me not covered by my jacket. I loved it! And I particularly enjoyed waving and smiling at all the people I passed (most walking their dogs) who had also been caught unprepared!
You’ve seen enough clouds, so how about a mushroom and some pretty flowers that popped up this week because of the rain!
So, ta da! these are my celebrations this week, what are yours?
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I'm glad you've learned to enjoy your phone calls. I absolutely hate using the telephone. Tasks that require phone calls are my worst procrastinations.
Our weather further up north here has been all over the place, too. A couple of days ago I was so hot I changed from a t-shirt to a tank top. By the time I got back to the front of the house it was pouring rain.