Updated on 2023-12-28 Thursday from Tokyo, Japan
I value the days between Christmas Eve (the 25th is just another date on the Japanese calendar) and New Year as a time to rest and recharge. I also look at Tokyo’s dry, (usually) cold, but sunny winter weather as a mini-reward for surviving the hothouse summer. However, rain is forecast for New Year’s Eve; a rare enough event as to make the main news.
Here are some of the things I did in December worth a mention:
Read Oliver Burkeman’s “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” and then passed it onto a friend. The author writes well about a topic most people know deep down - “life is short” - but one that many of us avoid getting to grips with. It’s more of a philosophy of time managememt. Worth reading.
Now reading the collected works of Robert Louis Stevenson (“Treasure Island” etc.) when I’m on the train. I’m also enjoying Jack Dann’s “The Fiction Writer’s Guide to Alternate History.”
Finished my Secret Santa (short) story on https://www.sffchronicles.com/. See this post for some background and a Christmas acrostic poem to boot: SFF Chronicles Secret Santa Short Story
Self-Care: abandoned my 2023 “web2” social media experiment with Mastodon by asking myself the WIBBOW question - Would I Be Better Off Writing? The answer was a resounding YES.
That’s it for this month.
The next NOW update will be published on 28 January, 2024.
Happy New Year!
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