The Year I Didn’t Quit

The Year I Didn’t Quit

(A short story about a man, a body that won’t cooperate, and a dream that refuses to die)

December always shows up like an old friend who knocks once and then just lets himself in.
No warning. No courtesy. Just cold air and the quiet question:

“Well? How’d you do this year?”

Tonight, I was sitting at my computer, back screaming, hips aching, and kidneys doing whatever failing kidneys do, staring into the glow of my monitor and wondering how to even answer that question.

Most days, it feels like my body is in open rebellion: Spinal stenosis makes sitting too long feel like punishment; Congestive heart failure turns stairs into mountains; Some days walking from one room to the next feels like a small expedition.

And yet… somehow, I kept moving. Not gracefully. Not painlessly. But forward. (Or sometimes backwards down the front steps on my back. Yup, definitely not graceful or painless.)

I looked at the open tabs on my computer, what I like to refer to as little digital breadcrumbs of my year, and I realized something I don’t give myself enough credit for:

I did a hell of a lot.

There they were:

• The character portraits I designed — each one with stats, backstory, and personality.

• The fully built author website I made from scratch, despite not being a website person in any universe.

• The book thumbnails, the Amazon links, the library pages, all neatly stitched together.

• The Witch, Margaret Barclay — written, torn apart, and rebuilt line by line until it finally felt right.

• The Book of Tabitha — newly begun, whispering ancient stories whether I asked for them or not.

• The full-length trailer for Maleficia: Birthrite, somehow crafted by a man juggling failing organs and a spine that hates him.

• And the monthly blogs — each one a little piece of my heart on display.

And then there was the other side of my life — the projects which had nothing to do with writing.

Such as the 1989 Firebird I’ve been restoring, the one that fights me as stubbornly as my back does. And the 1987 I’m modifying out of nostalgia and necessity. Plus, it feels good to bring something old like that roaring back to life.

The DIY projects around the house that I tackle in short bursts, with breaks in between to keep my legs from giving out.

Most people would assume a man dealing with my list of medical diagnoses wouldn’t have the bandwidth (or the energy) to do half of what I’ve accomplished this year.
Hell, I wouldn’t have assumed it.

But I kept going.
Slow.
Steady.
Determined.
Sometimes helped along by sheer spite.

Then my eyes drifted to the folder labeled “Feedback” — still empty, still waiting for the day someone actually completes the entire Maleficia trilogy and lets me know what they think of my imagined world.

I laughed a little, one of those dry, tired laughs you give when something stopped hurting a long time ago, because I know there are plenty who have read and enjoyed them. But there are so many others who haven’t. And that’s ok. It’s life. But I do hope they pick up my next novel.

And sometimes it comes down to one silly thing: I talk about my books too much. I know that. I just love the worlds that I’ve built. They feel like home, and who doesn’t love to talk about their home?

I know I do. But when you build worlds, when you breathe life into characters, when you stitch storms and demons and redemption arcs together out of raw imagination…you want someone to see it. To talk about it. To meet you inside the story, even for a moment.

The silence used to bother me.
Now it just nudges me onward.

And that’s when the truth hit me — the kind that settles quietly instead of slamming into you:

This was the year I didn’t quit.

Despite the pain.
Despite the silence.
Despite a body that seems determined to slow me down.
Despite the days where sitting, standing, and walking all hurt in equal measure.

I wrote.
I revised.
I built.
I created.
I dreamed up new worlds even while patching up the broken places in my own.

I finally decided to shut the computer down for the night, leaving the room dim except for the faint glow from the streetlight on the corner, and it reminds me how I manage to do all of this.

“One word at a time.”

Tomorrow, I’ll sit down and write again — maybe in pain, maybe in exhaustion — but I’ll write.
Next year, I’ll keep going.
Because the stories aren’t done with me yet.
And, truth be told, I’m not done with them either.

This was the year I didn’t quit.
And for a man held together by determination, medication, and pure stubbornness…that’s one hell of an accomplishment.