Sunday, March 9, 2025: Ta da! List

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. Occasionally, I will also publish some of my shorter fiction in this newsletter to read for free.

Daily Diary, Day 1649:

It has been well over a month since I did one of these posts. This was, in part, because it has been difficult to feel personally celebratory with the state of our nation. Too many people experiencing frightening financial, health, and emotional crises through no fault of their own, and it seems almost daily I hear of someone who I personally know being affected by the decisions made on the national level.

The second reason for my reluctance to celebrate came from the new crop of health issues that had developed since the last post (specifically tendonitis and bursitis) that had prevented me from walking. I couldn’t help but feel frustrated by these new problems, since it seemed that every time I celebrated a success within the area of my health, new, completely unexpected, obstacles popped up to interfere with the consistent exercise that is so important to my over-all health.

However, despite the continued out-pouring of difficult news, I do feel there are reasons to celebrate. First of all, I am heartened by the growing signs of resistance within and without our nation. Second, if I have learned one thing in my 75 years of existence, it is not to let problems I have no immediate control over destroy my own serenity and rob me of gratitude for what I do have and can control.

Third, many you have been kind enough to tell me that when I share my struggles as well as my successes, you get something positive out of hearing about them. And finally, I do have some positive news to share about my health…including my faith that I have learned some important lessons on what to do as I head into the second half of my seventies.

I had begun to worry that the accelerating problems I had been encountering this past year with joints, tendons, and soft tissues meant there was some sort of underlying inflammatory disease at work. But, I just passed an extensive series of tests with flying colors, which is a great relief.

What this means, is that I have just been encountering the effects of aging interacting with the long-term effects of my Sheenhan’s Syndrome, which is something that if properly managed is not life-threatening. While this probably means I will continue to encounter problems with arthritis and tendonitis, I am pretty good at managing pain, and now I just need to practice patience, because so far, in time, every flare up has eventually calmed down. As has the recent bout of bursitis and tendonitis!

As a result, two weeks ago I started back walking…taking it very slowly, adding on about 5 minutes a day. This week I finally achieved my goal of two, 30-minute walks a day for three days in a row for a total of sixty minutes. This is certainly a reason to celebrate, but perhaps the greatest reason for celebration is that I was sensible and didn’t push for a fourth day of walking that much when I noticed the second 30 minute walk each day was causing increased discomfort. I am pretty sure this is something I needed to learn. My goal is to listen to my body and build in rest days, as well as shifting my definition of success from the number of minutes of exercise I get every day to number of weeks without a new flare-up or set back!

So I am celebrating that at the end of my second (but shorter) walk yesterday I felt much stronger and the discomfort from the day before was missing! And I hope in two weeks I will feel up to doing another of these posts, and I will be able to celebrate achieving that modest goal!

Finally, just wanted to mention that today, audio editions of all my Victorian San Francisco mystery novels are being discounted for a limited time on Chirp. I hope in a couple of months when I finally get the data on how well they sold, I will have another reason to celebrate. If you are interested, do click HERE.

What are you celebrating today?

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