This is actually a two-fer, two topics for the price of one, as it were.

First off, who’s up for another bit of Evie Busk wisdom? I believe the last one had to do with not counting your chickens before they hatch—which I practiced on that occasion by not reporting a step milestone until I had actually passed said milestone.

Today’s Evie Busk saying is this:  A wise man changes his mind. A fool never does.  So yes, it’s another step report, and this time I’m breaking the first rule, because I haven’t quite passed the milestone yet.

Yes, I’ve crossed the 27 million mark.  The step score this very minute is actually 27,215,087, but this time I was actually looking at a different milestone—my current step streak.

This is Evie Busk’s bit of wisdom number three:  A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step.  In this case, a streak of a thousand days starts with day number one.  I’m currently at day 996. I should pass 1000-day mark on Sunday of this week.

This streak started on November 23, 2021. I have no idea what was happening on November 21st and November 22nd of that year. There’s nothing showing on the calendar, but on one of those days I got 4,031 steps and on the other, 3,479.  The only thing I can think of is that I must have been deathly ill, because the streak before that was 457 days long.

In other words, as of Sunday, those two steaks combine to a whopping 1,457 days, and I believe even Evie would be impressed.  But here’s the other point about walking—while dealing with the last few years—the isolation of the pandemic, the stress of ongoing health issues, and just plain life, those daily walks have really saved my sanity.

Now on to topic, number two—psychological income.  That’s the wonderful part about being a writer that the IRS can’t tax. It comes via the comments on blog posts and on the emails and things people tell me about how items in my books have been especially meaningful in their lives.

This morning I received an incredibly wonderful dose of psychological income when Dan Kritsonis, our personal trainer, walked in the door.

He reported that last night he spoke to Colleen, a cousin on his mother’s side of the family, who told him about a conversation with a woman named Gerri, one of Colleen’s cousins on her father’s side of the family.

Gerri asked Colleen, “Have you ever heard of an author named J.A. Jance?”  Colleen replied, “Yes, my cousin, Dan, is her personal trainer.”

It turns out that, for five years, Gerri had been the primary caregiver for her husband who passed away in June of this year.  After his passing, she fell into a deep depression.  “The only thing that helped me with that was reading J.A. Jance’s books,” Gerri reported. By the time Dan finished telling the story, my legs were covered with goosebumps.

The next thing that happened was my getting on the speaker phone with Gerri on one end and Bill and Dan listening in on mine. We learned that Gerri is blind—something Dan didn’t know until that phone call.  She listens to my books through a program that provides books for the blind and physically handicapped, and she’s listened to a number of my books at least three times each.

We chatted for the better part of half an hour.  Until this morning, Gerri was unaware of my blog. I’m hoping her daughter, with whom she lives now, will be able to find this one and read it to her. With Dan’s assent, we ended up cancelling today’s workout. I’d used up all our allotted time on that phone call.

So yes, I may be writing genre fiction—books thought to have no socially redeeming value, but if my stories can help people negotiate tough times, then I’m doing my job.

I’m pretty sure that would receive Evie’s stamp of approval as well.