Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age

“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” (Frank Lloyd Wright) Non-fiction pieces…

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A way too honest review of 2024

The Holiday Letter You’re Not Getting

My inside voice wrote this and I can’t take responsibility

Jan M Flynn
Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age
4 min readDec 29, 2024

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My shadow side considering the year in review: Image by 愚木混株 Cdd20 from Pixabay

Over the decades I’ve spent thousands of hours, not to mention dollars, writing, addressing, and stuffing envelopes with cheery, well-meant holiday missives.

But I didn’t get around to Christmas cards this year. Last year either. I told myself I was saving the planet and our mail carrier’s back, but that’s BS. I simply didn’t feel like it.

I’m too old to do things I don’t feel like if I don’t have to. Especially if those things require some level of polite dishonesty. Given how the year 2024 has been, I’d worn out my reserves of that by June.

Also, it’s an exercise with diminishing returns. The pile of holiday cards I receive has been diminishing drastically year by year even when I was still diligently sending mine. I was feeling like the kid who tried too hard, and I didn’t like that feeling, so I stopped.

This resulted in calmer holidays with more free time and lower postage costs. Still, there are those of you out there who continue to send your photo cards and group letters, making me feel like I should reciprocate somehow.

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Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age
Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age

Published in Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age

“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” (Frank Lloyd Wright) Non-fiction pieces, personal essays and occasional poems that explore how we feel about how we age and offer tips for getting the most out of life.

Jan M Flynn
Jan M Flynn

Written by Jan M Flynn

Novelist, essayist, inner space explorer. GRIFFIN SPEAKER, book one of a middle grade fantasy series, coming from Disney-Hyperion in spring 2026.

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