This is actually a two-fer, two topics for the price of one, as it were.<\/p>\n
First off, who\u2019s up for another bit of Evie Busk wisdom? I believe the last one had to do with not counting your chickens before they hatch\u2014which I practiced on that occasion by not reporting a step milestone until I had actually passed said milestone.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s Evie Busk saying is this:\u00a0 A wise man changes his mind. A fool never does.\u00a0 So yes, it\u2019s another step report, and this time I\u2019m breaking the first rule, because I haven\u2019t quite passed the milestone yet.<\/p>\n
Yes, I\u2019ve crossed the 27 million mark.\u00a0 The step score this very minute is actually 27,215,087, but this time I was actually looking at a different milestone\u2014my current step streak.<\/p>\n
This is Evie Busk\u2019s bit of wisdom number three:\u00a0 A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step.\u00a0 In this case, a streak of a thousand days starts with day number one.\u00a0 I\u2019m currently at day 996. I should pass 1000-day mark on Sunday of this week.<\/p>\n
This streak started on November 23, 2021. I have no idea what was happening on November 21st and November 22nd of that year. There\u2019s nothing showing on the calendar, but on one of those days I got 4,031 steps and on the other, 3,479.\u00a0 The only thing I can think of is that I must have been deathly ill, because the streak before that was 457 days long.<\/p>\n
In other words, as of Sunday, those two steaks combine to a whopping 1,457 days, and I believe even Evie would be impressed.\u00a0 But here\u2019s the other point about walking\u2014while dealing with the last few years\u2014the isolation of the pandemic, the stress of ongoing health issues, and just plain life, those daily walks have really saved my sanity.<\/p>\n
Now on to topic, number two\u2014psychological income.\u00a0 That\u2019s the wonderful part about being a writer that the IRS can\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
This morning I received an incredibly wonderful dose of psychological income when Dan Kritsonis, our personal trainer, walked in the door.<\/p>\n
He reported that last night he spoke to Colleen, a cousin on his mother\u2019s side of the family, who told him about a conversation with a woman named Gerri, one of Colleen\u2019s cousins on her father\u2019s side of the family.<\/p>\n
Gerri asked Colleen, \u201cHave you ever heard of an author named J.A. Jance?\u201d\u00a0 Colleen replied, \u201cYes, my cousin, Dan, is her personal trainer.\u201d<\/p>\n
It turns out that, for five years, Gerri had been the primary caregiver for her husband who passed away in June of this year.\u00a0 After his passing, she fell into a deep depression.\u00a0 \u201cThe only thing that helped me with that was reading J.A. Jance\u2019s books,\u201d Gerri reported. By the time Dan finished telling the story, my legs were covered with goosebumps.<\/p>\n
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\u2014something Dan didn\u2019t know until that phone call.\u00a0 She listens to my books through a program that provides books for the blind and physically handicapped, and she\u2019s listened to a number of my books at least three times each.<\/p>\n
We chatted for the better part of half an hour.\u00a0 Until this morning, Gerri was unaware of my blog. I\u2019m hoping her daughter, with whom she lives now, will be able to find this one and read it to her. With Dan\u2019s assent, we ended up cancelling today\u2019s workout. I\u2019d used up all our allotted time on that phone call.<\/p>\n
So yes, I may be writing genre fiction\u2014books thought to have no socially redeeming value, but if my stories can help people negotiate tough times, then I\u2019m doing my job.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m pretty sure that would receive Evie\u2019s stamp of approval as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is actually a two-fer, two topics for the price of one, as it were. First off, who\u2019s up for another bit of Evie Busk wisdom? I believe the last one had to do with not counting your chickens before they hatch\u2014which I practiced on that occasion by not reporting a step milestone until I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-Oz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3136,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3135\/revisions\/3136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}