Maybe April Isn't the Cruelest Month?

 

Apologies to those of you who thought you'd gotten rid of me, here I am again! But this will (I hope) be a short post. It's just that my last update came at a time when I was feeling a bit discouraged, and in retrospect it doesn't feel like a great way to wander off.

So I had a couple of great things happen last month. And I hope I'm not the only one? I'd love to hear if there's something in the air, some ethereal springtime sprinkling of hope and promise, or if April was just as shitty as any other month in 2026 for you all. Hoping it's the former.

So what were the two great things?

What's In A Name?

Has your name ever made your life more difficult? This seems to be my year for it!

And, on what at first might not seem a related note (but stay tuned), my new book is out! Actually, it's only available for pre-order, if you're enough of a mad risk-taker to spring for a $4.99 ebook before the reviews are in. But it's only a short wait: fully available to read in ebook format, or as a $15.99 paperback on March 28. And if you have Kindle Unlmited it's free. 

More on this (much more, probably) once the book is officially launched and no one is rushing to buy it. But I thought I'd at least mention it now.

 

Check out the link here: Niccolo Would Like a Word on Amazon.

So why has my rather ordinary name caused me grief? And do I have crotchety observations about names in other contexts? Of course I do!

New Year, New World, New You?

Readers from "before times," when this was an actual health and fitness blog, may recall that I've already written many posts about New Year's Resolutions.

There's a search bar if you're curious, and if you were to type in New Years Resolutions, many, many posts would come up, full of advice and complaints. Mostly it's the obvious stuff: Keep promises realistic, and expectations low. Aim for baby steps. Celebrate small victories. Try hard, but expect repeated failures, and focus more on getting back on track and not giving up than on perfection.

We know this stuff. And yet the failure rate for resolutions remains pretty darn high. So the heck with that, let's not talk about making promises to ourselves that we may not keep!

Instead, let's talk about hopes and dreams and intentions for the coming year in a totally hypothetical way. No pressure. After all, the beginning of a new year is a good time for reflection, for fresh starts, and maybe even big dreams. And if thinking big leads you to want to do something little in order to get there... bonus!

But before we get to that... a special request.

So I recently found out that the little doohickey at the top of the sidebar that was supposed to encourage email sign-ups? It didn't actually work.

But now there is a much better, user-friendly email subscription/newsletter link. Please sign up! Your email will stay totally private, and you can always unsubscribe later if you get tired of my ramblings.

That way when a new post is out, you will not have to swing by the sad little Facebook page to find out about it. You can read new posts in your email. Or, having been duly alerted, come back here to read it and leave a comment and make my cranky old heart sing.

One thing you WON'T have to worry about is getting a whole slew of Just Cranky blog posts. One or two a month is probably max, and you know me... I will likely stop posting again, and then in 2035 you will suddenly discover that I've yet again resurrected the blog, which will appear as a hologram in the artificially intelligent lenses surgically implanted into your eyeballs.

There may at some point be an announcement about my novel, Niccolo Would Like a Word, hitting virtual bookshelves in a few weeks or maybe months. But I won't be a pest about it.