Something New!

Two days ago I bought a new car. Yesterday I went grocery shopping, a regular weekly activity. This time I did it with a new car. The uniqueness of it caught me off guard. Had I not been grocery shopping for years? I’ve been a driver in Wichita for twenty-three years, taking this same route as long as we’ve lived in our house for over twenty years. Why did it feel different?

Last month the third book in my historical crime fiction series, the Ark City Confidential Chronicles, was released. Book Four is being edited and Book Five (the last in the series) has been outlined. I have planned to go on to a new historical crime fiction series afterwards, have been researching meticulously for the past several months. This new series is not even planned until 2021. So, why does it feel new and different?

It really doesn’t matter what you do in life even if it is something akin to what you have been doing. We get into routines, patterns of exactness, with only minor variations to color the day-to-day experience. The comfort of the familiar is more desirable than the possibility of uncertainty in the New.

Eventually, that new car and that new historical fiction series will fit as comfortably into my life as the old car and the current book series. In the meantime, we work our way through the transition and perhaps find enlightenment in the newness of the experience.