2024: The words, the goals and the books
A Parisian Phoenix look at the year ahead and unsolicited advice for moving forward
Cue the confetti, the clicking champagne glasses and the chatter and celebration that occurs in Times Square here on the East Coast. It’s New Years! In Pennsylvania Dutch country, the celebrate with pork and sauerkraut— something about a pig not walking backwards.
We ended the year with Oracle Card readings with Suburban Mom Medium, sponsored by one of our new favorite places, Eva’s Bargain Boutique. The owner at the boutique is allergic to cats, and since she was hosting free divination, the store was busy and she noted, “Spiritual people tend to own cats and you’re all killing me. How many people here own cats?”
In the crowded store, of the 10 or so people milling about, 7 hands went into the air.
Suburban Mom Medium used the Woodlawn Wardens Oracle Cards and the artwork immediately put me at ease and I felt welcome. My cards were the rooster, the dragonfly and the bat. The end of the reading implored me to follow my intuition in the year ahead— that’s the bat— so of course I had to show her my bat tattoo.
And on actual New Year’s Eve, I felt compelled to tackle a project that has stricken darkness into my soul for months. I cleaned my bedroom closet. That closet had me stuck. I wasn’t putting my clean laundry away as diligently as I should and I had started stuffing things in random places to the point where I could not step into the closet. This is a problem, especially since I do not have any sort of bureau or dresser in my room. All my clothes, even my underpants, are in my closet.
The act of cleaning my closet took a couple hours, but it wasn’t hard because I still keep the same old things in my closet. Clothes, blankets, sheets, jewelry, scarves and books. I found some old shoes in there, which were once upon a time “good shoes” and most of them had dry-rotted or got so covered in dust and grime that I don’t know if I can revive them. It felt good to empty that closet, even better to vacuum it, and what better way to reflect on the past than to sort through its physical presence in your current life. And, just like the closet, the past (in the emotional sense) can get obtrusive and disorganized if you let it.
Many people consider cleaning an act of spring, but I’m now convinced it’s an easy way to set priorities for the new year and to reconcile oneself with the past. And speaking of reconciling…
I would also recommend taking 15 minutes to a half hour and reviewing your finances. If you’re not in the habit of doing this regularly, or if you’re sloppy about budgeting, just open all the bank accounts and credit cards and your physical wallet. Review your spending. Double-check your assets. Make sure your recollection of your habits and the reality of them match.
Even if finances make you sweat, acknowledge them now and if you see problems, do some brainstorming and set some goals for realistic ways to if not get out of any sticky situations to at least address them so they don’t linger in your head.
Tangent on 2024 Planners
The New Year season is often portrayed as a time of goal setting and perhaps we don’t spend enough time reflecting. This theme has come up repeatedly for me. If you have noticed our recently active TikTok (@parisianphoenix), you will see that I reviewed all 14 of the planners and associated tools that I had collected in search of the perfect one— and if you need to know, I selected the Clever Fox Weekly Planner Pro with Timeslots.
If you really want to see my thoughts, I gathered all the TikToks into a 38-minute planner review video on YouTube: YouTube compilation of my planner reviews. In short, this planner gives me the wellness and planning features of the more expensive Silk and Sonder system, without having to carve my year into months. I can’t isolate my life into blocks that arrive every month. My April is already exploding and it’s January 1. I have a disability which means I have doctor’s appointments like some people have casual coffee dates.
And yes, I got the planner with timeslots every 30 minutes. It may, as photographer Joan Zachary likes to say, look like I’m running a dental office (and I do hang out with dentists, see below under subhead “January Releases”) but it is the only way I keep myself from overscheduling my days.
Back to New Year Reflections
Thurston Gill, author of The Phulasso Devotional: Engineering the Warrior Priest, sent out another addition of his Substack newsletter:
I love working with Thurston and helping him expand his voice. In person, he’s warm and inviting but his writing has a clinical side to it. I’m pushing him to use more of his natural self in his newsletters. He’s also planning his next series of books. That’s right, a Phulasso series. He’s retiring from his full-time employment and dedicating himself to Phulasso.
Thurston pushes me to maintain my spiritual health and it’s Nancy Scott who drives the practical side of my life. Nancy has contributed to Not an Able-Bodied White Man with Money, allows us to distribute her out-of-print chapbooks Leveling the Spin and Hearing the Sunrise, and will hopefully have a special project for Parisian Phoenix maybe for 2025. Life is too daffy, as she would say, to facilitate that right now.
Nan is a mentor to me in life, finances, disability and writing and my partner-in-crime for minor adventures that bring us both laughter and joy. She shared an email with me that she got from one of her writing groups.
The email encouraged everyone to sit with their 2023 calendar, page through and jot down/reflect upon the big events of your year. Savor the successes. Contemplate the challenges.
And with that information, Olivia, contributor to our erotic anthology, Juicy Bits: Stories of BDSM, Fetish and Kink, has found for you a free tool that is both reflective and intentional, it’s the “YearCompass.” And voila, click here. It’s British so we Americans can feel posh.
January Releases
While the world around us drank egg nog and unwrapped presents, Parisian Phoenix has been pushing three projects to the finish line for January release.
The Emotionally Intelligent Dental Office by Dr. Steven Hymovitch. Don’t let the title fool you— yes, Steve applies his knowledge and skills to the dental office but the lessons he provides will improve any business and all of your communication. Steve hired Parisian Phoenix as a project manager and editor to get this project across the finish line as a companion for his first book, the memoir The Dentist Who Gets It. Steve has his specialty dental practices, his MBA and has certifications in executive coaching. He gives practical, valuable advice in everyday terms.
Phorgotten No More: Glimpses of the African-American presence in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, 1777-2021 by Reverend Wayne Sherrer. Wayne did original research on the Black History of Phillipsburg and compiled it into a mini-book to launch his larger volume on the overlooked history of Phillipsburg, N.J. Wayne did the research, the layout, and even collecting the images and permissions to make this project a reality. He is part of the Parisian Phoenix collective, and I am proud to have him as a client, but I am encouraging him to self-publish his work because he has very clear ideas of how he wants to present, market and distribute his work and that’s what a publisher does. I want him to reap the rewards of that work. If you’re a history buff, like I am, like Wayne, considering adding this book to your library. It’s arriving in time for Black History Month.
And last but certainly not least, the first Parisian Phoenix Kittens middle-grade fiction, a very bright and playful expanded second edition of Echo City Capers: Who Turned the Lights Out? by illustrator Joseph Swarctz and author Ralph Greco Jr. Trust me, if you remember and enjoyed the old, campy 1960s Adam West Batman television series, you will love reading this book with the young ones in your life. I encourage borrowing children if necessary. But check with the parents first, as kidnapping is a crime and we don’t want anyone ending up on Santa’s or the government’s naughty list in 2024.
It’s a quiet and unpredictable time of year for events, so if you’re looking for us we’ll be checking out events at our local Barnes & Noble (Bethlehem, Southmont) primarily Noble Quills Poetry Showcase but perhaps also their book club. Speaking of book club, I’ll also be at Mary Meuser Memorial Library’s Book Club and hopefully Jerry Waxler’s Memoir Group that meets on Zoom, facilitated by the Emmaus Area Public Library.
PAID SUBSCRIBERS can read the publisher’s introduction to Lights Out at the end of this newsletter.
Keep reading!
As always,
—Angel
Who Turned the Lights Out?
Publisher’s Introduction, Expanded Second Edition
When I was a child, we lived in a rural valley on the banks of the Delaware River. It offered every picturesque advantage, but it did not offer the staples of television. We didn’t have cable. “The cable” didn’t come anywhere near us until I turned 12. For that first decade of life, we received signal from affiliates of CBS, ABC and NBC and on very good days we got PBS which meant Sesame Street.
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