Goodbye 2020 – Finally!

Well, we made it. The last day of 2020. Did you think we would get this far? I wasn’t too sure, and unfortunately, a lot of people didn’t. Just a few days ago, I found out that one of my longtime readers and online friends, Truman Dobbins, lost his battle with COVID-19. My heart goes out to his wife Beckie, and everybody who has lost loved ones to this terrible pandemic. This makes nine people for me, two of whom were family members.

That’s why I get so disgusted with people who still claim it’s a hoax, who won’t wear a mask, or who preach nonsense like Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) being the cure-all. The only two things that will stop the pandemic are common sense and a vaccine. The vaccine is here, but it’s getting distributed very slowly, and we all know how rare common sense is.

I used to always do a review of the things we did at year’s end, but what can I say about this year? In February, we took a month-long trip to Arizona, stopping many places along the way to distribute books and do research for blog posts and future projects. We got home just in time to start self-quarantining, and that’s been about all we have done. In between the pandemic and my back issues, that was about all it was possible to do. After getting the RF nerve ablations done in June, my back problems have improved greatly. Actually, the problems are still there, but the ablations block most of the pain. I still have other back issues that bother me but at least I can move around now.

The one good thing to come out of 2020 for me was that I was able to put out six books, including two books in my Tinder Street historical family saga, which is something I have wanted to write forever. I am working on another John Lee Quarrels book now and hope to have it out by the end of January or in early February. Then I will jump into Boom And Bust, the next Tinder Street book. This one will start in 1925 and end with the onset of the Great Depression. It’s an era I know a lot about because my parents lived through it and spoke about it often. I will be using a lot of those memories in the book.

I had an interesting online conversation yesterday with a friend who is at a crossroads in his life and doesn’t know what to do. He retires May 1st and has thought quite often about getting an RV and trying the mobile lifestyle. But like many people, he is hesitant to make such a big change. He is also worried that as a single man, he might not fit in well. As I told him, the fulltime RV community is very welcoming of others, and we know many solo fulltimers, both male and female. I also sent him links to some of the different RV clubs for single people.

He asked me if I thought now was a good time to do it or should he adjust to retirement first rather than jumping into something that was even more of a change. My suggestion was to keep his house for a while and spend a few months traveling and see how he feels about it. I added that in the 18+ years that we were fulltimers, and in the hundreds of seminars I presented at RV events nationwide and at Life on Wheels, and of the thousands of fulltimers we talked to over those years, the most frequent comment we heard from any of them was, “My only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.” A few months before he died, my father, who was a very wise man, told me that we don’t regret the things we do in life nearly as much as we regret the things we didn’t do. I think that’s very true.

Whatever 2020 has done to us, personally and as a nation, hopefully we can put it behind us now and look forward to a brand-new year. Think of tomorrow as opening a brand-new diary with 365 pages to fill. What will you put on those pages in the days and weeks and months to come? I hope there are lots of joys and adventures and love on those pages, and very few regrets. Happy New Year.

It’s Thursday, so it’s time for a new Free Drawing. This week’s prize is a printed copy of The Twofer Compendium, a collection of 36 twin-themed short stories written by 34 international authors that leap across genres, from science fiction to whimsical, to downright creepy. In them, you will meet twins who are good, bad, fantastic, fearsome, magical, envious, secretive, devious, and more. To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening.

Thought For The Day – The most important project you’ll ever work on is yourself.