No pressure.

When I stopped my daily walks after my heart attack, my glib answer was that I felt "betrayed."

Now, a couple years later, that seems even more true. I can see more clearly now than ever what a commitment of time and energy it was to walk an hour each and every day. And how diligent I was about it. It was actually a two hour thing because I preferred solitude and scenery and had to drive a half an hour each way to find it. It was always difficult to carve out part of the day, but I almost always did it.

Of course, I was writing full-time and walking was helpful to that process, and now I'm not writing as much.

I'm fatalistic, frankly. Something's going to get me and it could get me at any time. I can see the aging of the outside of my body and assume the same thing is happening inside, where I can't see it.

I take my medications, but other than that, I'm more or less eating what I want. I'm keeping my weight down about 20 pounds from my maximum, but that is as much vanity as health. (If I could just lose that last 10 pounds, I'd have a closet full of new clothing I could wear. I'm sort of determined to do that next fall.)

I've more or less dedicated the next two years to getting the most I can out of the store before I fully retire. The store has been doing spectacularly well for a year now; ever since we came out of the Covid closing. Not at all what I expected. I'm detecting a slight slowdown from the peak of March, but even April and May were much better than usual.

And we are going into summer, which even with a slowdown should still be busy. 

I applied all my experience with booms toward acquiring Pokemon and find myself with plenty of product at reasonable prices when almost no one else does. This ain't my first rodeo. But there hasn't been the surge I expected because of Target and Walmart stopped carrying the product, so I'm starting to get a bit more cautious.

As I said, summer is coming and Pokemon will continue as a game, if not a fad. 

Meanwhile, new books continue to do well for us. I'm still trying to figure out how many new bestsellers to get each week, and what kinds, and what to do when they become paperbacks, but the problems are manageable. I can really only finesse things now, because there is zero room to expand. In fact, I'm hoping that summer will winnow down the books a little so I bring in a fresh wave. 

The store is fun when it is like this. I work two full days which is enough to keep in touch with what is happening. I work another two to three afternoons a week for a few hours putting away books. And I spend a few hours a week making orders. I'm guessing I'm working about 25 hours a week on average, which feels just fine. No pressure.