The obligatory end-of-year wrap-up post you’ve been waiting for

If nothing else, 2024 for me was a year of transition and disruption. And — I hope — a year I learned to be more grateful and empathetic.

After 40 years of full-time work, much of it in academia, I entered a new phase of life last January. Some call it retirement, but it has hardly been that. My pursuit of creative writing and some freelance work has kept me busy enough. In addition, my wife and I and our cat had a couple of health scares that made us reevaluate our values and gave us greater insight into the workings of the U.S. health care system, the good, bad, and ugly of it. We also mourned the passing of a few friends from our church family and continue to honor their memory.

In other words, a lot of life happened in 2024. Here are some highlights from the year:

The writing life

Since the focus of this website is writing, it makes sense to me to start with a summary of my year in writing, creative and otherwise. In some ways, I think of 2024 as my rookie year as a creative writer. But it’s probably more accurate to call it a second act of my writing story, one that began years ago but was put on hold as I pursued my career.

• 116 submissions to literary journals.
• 12 pieces accepted for publication (6 micro/flash fiction, 2 longer short stories, 2 creative nonfiction essays, 2 poems).
• 81 rejections. Boo! Hiss!
• 13 withdrawals of simultaneous submissions accepted elsewhere.
• 22 pending. One “in progress” short story was submitted April 24.
• 102 blog posts (an average of 8.5 posts per month).
• 188 journal entries. I try to write a journal entry every Monday through Thursday — part of that whole morning pages routine that is supposed to help us become more creative — but I don’t always hit the mark, and sometimes I write entries on the weekends, too. Most entries are two pages, but some are as short as half a page or as long as six or seven pages.
• 12 bylined articles published in the Phelps County Focus, our community’s newspaper. I started doing some freelance writing for the Focus almost a year ago.

Accolades, etc.

To my surprise, I received a lot of recognition in 2024, mainly for my sunsetting academic career.

• In February, I was invited to talk about my career in academia on Jaime Hunt’s podcast, Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO.
• In April, I received the Virginia Carter Smith service award from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) for my higher ed career at Missouri S&T. Many thanks to my colleagues at S&T for nominating me for this great honor.
• Also in April, I delivered the keynote talk at Missouri S&T’s inaugural Innovative Communication Conference.
• In November, I was included on Missouri S&T’s Miner Wall of Fame, a digital display and website about the 150 most impactful people of the university’s first 150-plus years.
• Also in November, I was interviewed by the literary magazine Bulb Culture Collective about one of my short stories, “Baseball 1971.”

I’m grateful for the recognition.

Transitions

2024 brought us some sad farewells. Three in particular stand out. We lost three churchmen who were, as they say, pillars. In memory of:

• Rod, who worked alongside me in youth ministry for many years (late 1990s-early 2000s time frame) but had been ill for many more. Rod finally succumbed to that illness last January at age 69. In my eulogy at his funeral, I mentioned that over 30 years ago, Rod, who had one of the greenest thumbs I’ve ever known, had given Dyann and me dozens of seedling maple trees for our new home. They were planted in the bottoms of two-liter soda bottles for easy transport and transplanting. Many of those seedlings have since become stately trees that provide ample shade in the summer. Whenever we are in our yard, we know that a part of Rod is with us, providing shade and shelter.
• Chalmer was 89 when he passed. He’d lived a good, long life and was always ready and willing to help with church-related duties for as long as he was physically able. He was a longtime friend of my wife’s father and their family.
• Tom was diagnosed with cancer earlier in the year. It spread rapidly and he succumbed to it in the fall. He was only 67. He was a firefighter for years, and served as fire chief for his community’s volunteer fire department. In his honor at his funeral, the fire department he once led paid tribute with a moving final call ceremony, during which all radio traffic ceased as the dispatcher made the final call for this selfless man of community service.

I also received word that a friend from my hometown, a running-around pal from my junior college days, passed last April. Rest easy, Jamie.

Life otherwise

It was the Wednesday before Memorial Day. My wife, who had been having some stomach and digestion issues for a few days, texted me that she thought she should go to the walk-in care center in our town. I drove her there. They x-rayed her and discovered something in the duodenum area and advised us to get to the emergency room. There, she was examined, then admitted to the hospital for further testing and observation. A few days later, she was transported to a medical center in St. Louis, where she could get more expert evaluation.

We spent Memorial Day and beyond in that medical center as she underwent further examination and a procedure to open her duodenum. I’ll skip the detail to say we spent much of our summer shuttling between Rolla and St. Louis, in and out of the hospital, until a surgery in August finally remedied the situation. Between May and August, however, my wife lost 40 pounds (and really didn’t have it to spare) due to the liquid diets she was on and her loss of appetite. And there were days when we both wondered if she would survive the procedures and the illness.

It was a difficult time. Here was this beautiful woman, so healthy, who walked four to six miles a day and took no meds, suddenly waylaid in a way neither of us could have ever imagined.

Thankfully, she has recovered. We are grateful to all the doctors, nurses, and others who helped her on the path to healing.

Our other health scare came in November when our cat stopped eating and drinking. We thought it might be a hairball and thought we could wait it out, but after four days of her lethargy, we took her to the vet, who discovered a lesion in her mouth that was potentially cancerous. Fortunately, the tests came back negative. No cancer. The vet put her on pain meds and antibiotics, and we fed her liquids, then slowly transitioned to soft foods, and now she is fully recovered. It may sound silly to worry so much about an animal, but those of you who have pets know how it feels when they get sick.

Into the new year

2024 brought its share of surprises, the good and the not so good. Who knows what 2025 will bring? If 2024 has taught me anything, it is that I have much to be grateful for, and that I should express that gratitude more fully, and live a life of gratitude.

Also, I think I realize today, more than ever before, that none of us can make it on our own. Whether it’s a nurse in the ER or the loved ones who are in and out of our lives or the friends we care about and who care about us, every person matters, and no person should be taken for granted. Ever. May that be a constant reminder to me as long as I live.

Finally, as I think about the year to come, I am reminded of something I posted on social media several years ago. It’s a thought that I believe remains relevant today.

As one year ends and another begins, may we be a little more patient with one another, a little more forgiving, a little more understanding with each passing day.

Happy New Year, friends. Thank you for reading.

Image via Pexels.