What I did during my summer vacation: Billie Best Blog

Hi, friends. Step into Mr. Peabody’s time machine and reminisce about your early days at school when the first assignment in September was to write a page about what you did during the summer vacation. I haven’t posted since July 3rd because I’ve been focusing on my new book. It’s not summer vacation, but it’s certainly a pleasure. I’ve been writing this blog for five years and this is the longest break I’ve ever taken. But I miss interacting with all of you. Thank you so much for your comments, emails, and book reviews.

I’m two-thirds of the way through Esmeralda, a novel about four women who share a cell for years and become friends. Then on the day three of them are released, the fourth, who still has ten years left to serve, disappears, implicating all of them in her escape and jeopardizing their new freedom. Without breaking the law or the bonds of friendship, the three former prisoners must find their former cellmate and convince her to return to Esmeralda.

I had a lot of fun writing this story. I had no ulterior motive when I wrote my first novel, Clitapalooza. This new story was just for fun. But feminism is in my blood, and I am still concerned about the development of technology and how it changes every aspect of our lives. When I started writing Clitapalooza in 2022, the words artificial intelligence and chatbots were not in the mainstream vocabulary. Now there are dozens of fiction and non-fiction books about the role of intelligent machines in our life experience. The next target of our event horizon is humanoid robots for social service and security. Like smartphones, they will become commonplace and we will accept this intrusion and integrate into their functions.

On the low-tech home front, things are not so bad. This is the first fire season my partner and I have lived here without the threat of evacuation. The summer was hot and dry, but in our new suburban home, with towns and rivers running between us and the wildfires to the east, we are lucky that the winds don’t drown us in smoke. Plus, the state is getting better at preparation and prevention. Thank you, Oregon.

This month, my cohabitee and I will celebrate four years of living together and look forward to continuing our fifth year of romance. Our success in moving our family from the countryside to the suburbs, downsizing the man nest, and dividing our resources in a small house is a testament to our compatibility. We miss the mountain views, stars, and butterflies from our previous home in the mountains. But we enjoy the convenience of living in the city.

To stay consistent, we walk our dog together every morning and every night before bed. We take walks together, of course, but we also share our experiences of living in this new neighborhood. We feel more connected to our community than we have in the past, greeting more people on the street. We have also witnessed that, in a time when people may be divided by current events, we feel more in common.

We are the oldest people in our community. I turn 70 in six months. When I started my blog in 2018, my age was a revelation to me and I had a lot to say about it. There are now hundreds of women blogging about aging in their 40s and beyond, and I feel like I’ve been there. Turning 70 feels normal, like that’s just how life is. Yet people are still blind to the changes that older age brings to their lives, as if they didn’t have parents or grandparents. Age takes over, but we don’t resent it until it’s painful. So stay healthy and live well when you’re old.

Life has a circadian rhythm, and I have an internal sundial that guides me through the daily habits that allow me to be at my desk writing for six hours a day. I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life for financial stability, skills, and a story. Finally, it’s all here. If you’re interested in the writer’s journey that got me to this point, CanvasRebel invited me to be interviewed about my background as an artist. Here are the links:

Thanks for joining me. I hope you have as wonderful a summer as I have. I will resume posting more regularly in October. I wish you all the best.