Yesterday, WordPress congratulated me for seven years of blogging. My first post was a brief statement about my site, Tavern Tales, being under construction. Almost two weeks later, I added another post—this time with more of an introduction to me as a writer, and my original intentions for my blog.

Back then, I had a full-time plus career as a Technical Writer, working on the bleeding edge of technology. Most of what I wrote about is just now appearing in computers and on server farms. After I retired, I shifted my writing to fiction. I began journaling the stories based on events in the many Dungeons & Dragons games I’ve hosted for my kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids. While wildfire robbed me of some specifics of those encounters, I still have a lot of the roleplay locked in my memory.

I didn’t really start contributing to my blog until the end of 2018. The writing was on the wall with my career. I could only grind my teeth in frustration as my new ‘manager’ set me up to be laid off. It had been a hatchet job three years in the making because she couldn’t outright fire me. All of my reviews up to her taking over were ‘Excellent’ and ‘Outstanding.’ Here I was, a woman over the age of 60, an honorably discharged veteran, and a lesbian. Had she fired me simply because I made too much money (it was the real reason, they said as much), I could have sued the bejeezus out of the company for discrimination. Take your pick which form I’d have chosen. I chose instead to make sure they paid me a severance package when the pink slip finally appeared. (I should have been more specific to the Universe and asked for Early Retirement. Silly me.)

By that point of my career, I was tired. Tired of fighting the ongoing discrimination and pushback from people who didn’t understand my role in the design process. These engineers thought they could do a better job writing the documents and protecting company patents than I had been doing for over sixteen years. In the fall of 2019, my ‘supervisor’ escorted me out the door with my dignity and pride intact and straight into the next chapter without a backward glance. I had been posting about my fiction writing experiences every Sunday until that event. I began updating the blog several times a week, and by the middle of November, I was posting daily, or almost daily.

Then came 2020. In mid-March, COVID-19 entered the scene as one of the latest threats to civilization. The world went into lockdown, hoping to contain the deadly virus. Not that being encouraged to stay home and healthy affected me overly much. I’m a homebody on a good day. What hurt was not being able to spend time with the kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids.

We cruised through the summer, but had the threat of wildfire looming over us because of the drought conditions. That was when it happened—the Cameron Peak Fire. My Sunday updates have been mostly about our recovery from that disaster for the past two-plus years. First Reader and I are still battling to get our home replaced (we’re close 😁). Delays have plagued us. Most of them were preventable, and some were not. I’ll keep writing about our little side-quest until we’re back in our own home.

What will the future bring for my little corner of the blogosphere after that? Who knows? Once we get into the new place, I’m sure life will settle down to a dull roar. We’ll go back to Living the Dream. 🥳 Until then, FR and I take it one day at a time and try not to scream into the void too often.

As for what’s ahead, big changes are coming to our lives. Besides a major move this fall (always a big stress-maker), I am editing the novel I wrote for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November of last year. I have sent it to my alpha readers for reading and commenting, so I can only wait until they finish.. Then, I need to analyze and process the comments, looking for common threads. I’m sure there will be many, as the story is a skeleton that I need to flesh out. The problem is, I’m not sure where to add the meat without a ton of exposition. (Yes, I’m a baby fiction writer.) I have yet to decide whether I want to shop for an agent or I want to post it serially to these pages. Choices, choices. 🤔

Finally, thank you` for following this blog. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy maintaining it. Besides, it keeps me out of the bars. 😉