Our small blue world has once again orbited all the way around the giant fusion furnace in the sky, and I can think of no better way for me to kick off 2025 than curled up in my chair typing away. There’s always more work to do, a new story to flesh out, or an old one to refine. I can’t wait to see what the new year brings for me and get some good stories out. And of course, some good content too.

First order of business is a little bit of house keeping. This’ll be the first post of the year, but to keep my records straight, day 471 will officially begin on Monday. That way I can have my nice, round, five-day pattern for the rest of the year like I always have. Also, it gives me the next three posts to go completely nuts since the posts don’t actually count, right?

I have some big plans going forward this year. First of all, I’m tired of the blog’s look. It’s basic, boring, and I probably should have upgraded a long time ago. Another major issue I keep running into is the weird limit WordPress puts on the number of posts I’m allowed to give you, the reader, access to. I’ve been exploring new options, but haven’t settled on anything quite yet. Since WordPress has already received my money for the next year of hosting, I’m going to leave this blog up and add all the new posts I make here, as well as on whatever other site I settle on. By the time I need to renew my payment, the migration will be complete. I’m going to make this a project for the first month of the year, and plan to have something much nicer by the time February comes around. Look out for new updates because at some point I’ll post a link to another site with all the same content you can find here.

Another big step I want to take is trying to get ‘Jeffries’ published. I’m going to continue refining it (the editing never ends), but in the meantime I’ll be sending out preliminary versions for magazines and other publishers to see if it gets any traction. As they say, published is better than perfect. Although I think I prefer this saying …

“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.” -General George S. Patton, Jr.

Finally, I’m planning on reading lots of good books! Some things should never change.

Do you have any big plans for the new year? Gym resolutions that you’ll probably abandon in a couple weeks, perhaps? Let me know in the comments!

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley