Jack of Harts

I’m bouncing off the top of two sixty right now. I was darn near close to two eighty at the beginning of the year, so touching two sixty is pretty amazing. Getting under it is the challenge of course. I continue to exercise, and need to keep my portions small, but a body that has been not been exercising enough tends to complain about it.

Even with modest and careful exercise, I have a lot of aches and pains that are making it difficult. But I see weekly progress. Even as my weight will sometimes plateau for a week or two or three, my conditioning improves. I’m not losing muscle weight. I’m actually gaining it, which is good, even as it hampers the goal of losing weight. But the goal is to lose weight in a healthy way, so I’m perfectly happy to take stagnation in actual weight loss if it includes stronger muscles.

But there are a number of things that are better. I can fit in all of my shirts better, and can actually take off most of them without unbuttoning the wrist cuffs now. My belly continues to shrink, and I am losing the beer gut, even though I’ve never been a drinker of beer. There’s still a little bit at the bottom trying to hang on for old time’s sake, but I intend to see that gone in the weeks to come. I said before I can fit my Green Lantern ring on my middle finger now, when I never could before.

And I just slipped on an old birthday present for the first time in years. No… not that one. It’s a Celtic Ring my mom bought me decades ago. I stopped wearing it because it became too tight. It fits me again. And then there are the shoes. I never fully understood the meaning of the phrase “My shoes are too tight, but it doesn’t matter because I have forgotten how to dance.” But many of my shoes had become too tight. I could walk in them, but I had to take them off many times a day because my feet were too cramped. They no longer are. My shoes are no longer too tight.

So many little things. I have a short term goal that I intend to hit. The Minnesota State Fair is coming. I intend to be under two sixty when I walk onto the fair grounds. That will feel amazingly good.

I just submitted a new story to a press I’ve never published with. They publish romance, and I don’t write romance. I write stories about strong men doing daring deeds and beating the bad guys. And I may mix a bit of romance in there. Nothing naughty, you understand, but the relationships between the characters are what moves the stories forward. And a long time ago, I got really sick of a whole mess of “he” in my stories. If a story has a series of “he” and “she” it makes it easier for the reader to understand who is talking. That is why I started writing stories about men and women all those years ago. Just simply targeting readers to make my stories easier to read.

And if I’m going to go to all the trouble of writing them, I’m going to write people I generally like. And that like each other. Because I don’t want to write a story about people who hate each other. And if they like each other, why not play with it? I grew up reading and watching stories where guys and gals liked each other and flirted with each other, so I started writing that in my stories. And things grew from there. I’m told by ladies who read my stuff that I write good romance. So I decided to throw my hat into a romance anthology that asked for no naughty stuff. I much prefer the “fade to black” and “close the door” kind of stories, so that’s right up my alley.

I took an existing story that had been through a few versions. Each one aiming at a different anthology. Each one showing the same basic events but changing the story around them to fit the anthology it was aimed at. I did some minor surgery on it, added a bit more as the thoughts flowed, and I came out with an entirely different story that showed the same events but worked much better than any previous version did. I like it. I hope the ladies I sent it to like it. If they don’t, there’s a real good chance it will show up on my substack or in a collection soon. I like it the way it is and don’t think I’m going to alter it again for another submission. It finally feels right to me. And the artist in me tells me it’s time to move on now.