We’re two months into 2023, doing this and doing that and trying to keep ourselves tuned in, but not uptight. What about you?

For example, Putin’s war on Ukraine has gone on for a year. Soon after the siege began on February 24, 2022, my husband and I fluttered a six-foot windsock of their powerful symbol, the sunflower. The purpose is to scare birds and ducks and other critters who might want to settle down in their own private pond, our backyard pool. Within six months, the windsock looked thus:

And, now at this one-year mark, almost all of the weather-ravaged strips of green are mere slivers in the wind – highly symbolic of war-ravaged Ukraine. Don’t we all wish that Putin would admit his mistake – before the entire world is pulled into war?!

So, dear friends, what mistakes have you blundered upon, head-over-heels, and pell-mell to make the best of the new year?

What resolutions have you made and already broken, gone wild as we feel fully free of quarantine? Will you re-resolve for Lent, which cometh upon us quicker than quick?

And/or, what glorious new mistakes and mischief have you made, you irrepressible you and/or you wild thing within?

Reader/Writer Peeps: what books have you read with relish or distaste? What deathless prose have you written, whether poetry, stories factual or fiction, another chapter in your next book? I know what I’ve done, but I want to hear about you, please and thanks.

The reason: I’ve been a slacker, seating my butt in planes and automobiles, desperately seeking to satisfy the wanderlust that has burdened my spirit because our national pause prevented us from the travel I crave. Three trips – one local, one within the US, and one abroad. Now I’m raring to work through the jet lag and write my tail off again!

That’s the road less traveled for me in 2023…

Finally, here’s a challenge. Take a guess – many others have – at the guy Sheryl Crow regards as “her favorite mistake” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmIlUKo4dQc