Refulgence is an elegant word, one that I learned from Final Fantasy XIV. It means shining brightly; radiant; gleaming; a resplendent quality or state. I love the meaning. I’ve mentioned before that I play Final Fantasy XIV. Throughout all the Final Fantasy game series, you play a character called the Warrior of Light, the hero of the story. In Final Fantasy XIV’s game expansion, Shadowbringers, your role has been reversed where light has become evil and you become the Warrior of Darkness, saving the world from the flood of light. The role reversal describes how I’ve felt emotionally in the last three months.

Specifically, there is a fight in the game called, Eden’s Verse: Refulgence, which is a level 80 raid introduced in patch 5.2.

With the dark entity that haunted Gaia defeated, at least for the time being, you return to the task of restoring balance to ice, the final element. Being the most strongly aligned in favor of stasis, it appears that Ryne’s direct involvement will be required to properly manipulate the aether. Inspired by tales of Ysayle on the Source, Ryne decides to use her own body as a vessel and wield the power of Shiva.

In-Game Description: Final Fantasy XIV

The context of this fight fits my reflection on the end of 2022; I am filled with lightness, gratitude, and hope. The wedding, of course, was the biggest highlight. And barely three weeks after the wedding, right before Thanksgiving, I was laid off from my job at Storable. It was both expected and unexpected. I was crushed. Even though layoffs were and are happening everywhere in the tech world, there’s always a sense of “what did I do wrong”? And Eric was upset because we have debts to pay off from the wedding, plus two house mortgages. So I spent one month from November to December frantically searching for a new job, knowing that I needed something by the time my severance package ended in January 2023. Being unemployed is awful. It’s a strange limbo feeling. I knew I would find something quickly, but on bad days when I received a lot of rejection, I wondered if I was too optimistic. Was I doing enough? At the same time, I wanted to embrace downtime. When I wasn’t applying for jobs, talking to recruiters, and networking with friends and former coworkers, I spent time with Tsuki, watching movies, reading, and playing Final Fantasy XIV. None of it was very relaxing, and I didn’t possess any motivation for my book.

BUT!

After countless applications and a few interviews, I received a job offer from T-Mobile with a job start date in January 2023! The timing could not have been more perfect!

And so I am embracing the light at the end of 2022. Balance and tranquility have been restored to the land in the kingdom of Lily and Eric. My refulgent hope and optimism for my new source of income are powerful. And with that power, I know we can weather the flooding high tide of a new recession in full motion. I hope my position will last for a long time. At least until I become a famous, published author! The world remains turbulent in the new pandemic era. People in power are more cruel and selfish than ever and people who are poor and weak are angry, as they should be. I hope balance will be achieved in 2023.

Now I am almost three months post-wedding as the new Mrs. Bender! We just returned home from our honeymoon a few days ago, and although I tried my best to have this post done prior to our departure, it wasn’t in the cards. Since I had the wedding at the start of the fourth quarter last year, I separated my wedding update from this post. If you’re interested in a few photographs and my comments and memories of the day, you can find that here:

Wedding Edition ~ Dream Come True

The Road So Far

During my time job-hunting, we celebrated my Dad’s birthday and also attended a Christmas Party for the Lighthouse Literary Group. It was an interesting end-of the-year party, awarding one of the group’s teacher’s by popular vote. I’ve taken a couple classes from this organization before which help me think differently about my writing and gain fresh perspective. I really like that they are empowering writer’s of all ages to achieve their dreams. I would like to attend more classes or even a writer’s retreat. With all of the upcoming travel we have planned for 2023, I’m not sure that will be possible. We have no less than FIVE weddings this year, only one of which is in Colorado where we live 😭. But if I take any class this year, I want to take this class from Erin Bowman, recommended by my fellow writer friend and editor, Ellen Rozek: Plotting with Revelations.

We celebrated the Winter Solstice and Yule, a new tradition that I started for us when we bought our house in 2020. However, the tradition itself is thousands of years old and based on the earth itself. I love embracing more pagan and Wiccan rituals because they resonate with me and my beliefs, even though I don’t consider myself to be religious I am deeply spiritual. Yule ties back into refulgence with the calling of the sun’s return, bringing light into the world once again. It is my intention to create magick with this ritual each year and bring blessings of light and love into our household.

The wheel of the year has turned once more, and the nights have grown longer and colder. Tonight the darkness begins to retreat, and the light begins its return once again. As the wheel continues to spin, the sun returns to us once more.
Even in the darkest hours, even in the longest nights, the spark of life lingered on. Laying dormant, waiting, ready to return when the time was right. The darkness will leave us now, as the sun begins its journey home.
As the wheel turns, light returns. The light of the sun has returned to us, bringing life and warmth with it. The shadows will vanish, and life will continue. We are blessed by the light of the sun.

Learn Religions

And then Eric and I enjoyed a white Christmas with our family and a quiet new year celebration, just the two of us (well Tsuki too!). My family was good to me with presents, and I received quite a few books off of my to-read list! I can’t wait to dive into them!

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2023 Book List

2022 End Year Book Summary

What Else?

My cosplay turned out great! At least I think so, considering it’s my first time delving into the world of cosplay making. Nodding once again back to Eden’s Verse: Refulgence, I cosplayed the fight’s boss, The Heritor of Frost, Shiva. I learned a lot from this project. Working with EVA foam was fun and something that I think I would do again in the future. I’m sure my skills will improve with practice.

Now that I’ve worn it for Halloween, I’m going to redo the costume. I’m going to separate the skirt from the top of the dress and add an elastic waistband and zipper to make it easier to get on and off. I’m going to turn the top into a body suit, for which I purchased swim-suit fabric that I think will work perfectly and hopefully I can reuse the black mesh fabric. I need to get a pull-top bra that will go underneath so I won’t show through the mesh. And I need to add more foam armor detail to the sleeves and the back of the dress. I didn’t have enough time so I just went without it. The wig covered most of the back anyways. I’m going to sew on the pink bows on the back. They were supposed to be attached with safety pins, but they kept falling off so I will just sew them. I also want to add the foam links at the bottom of the skirt, but I will have to see how that will work as the skirt was pretty long and the links will drag at the current length.

What I’ve Been Writing

When I came back from the wedding, I spent a few days working on the Nine Kingdoms. I’ve made it to chapter 8. I am thinking about redoing the first chapters I have because I want to switch to different character perspectives. It’s quite common in YA books with multiple lead characters. At least Rei and Solomon are my two main characters, but I could do perspectives from two others as well if I am skilled enough. I feel good about the plot so far and where things are headed. I still need to think about the logistics of the magic system and how it all works.

My plan to review any last minute query options for The Tower did not happen. My Dad gave me some good publishing links to check out and I need to look at them!

Three Favorite Reads

Next

I start a new day-job on Monday and from there I will be doing my utmost work on my photography website with updates from my trip to Saint Lucia and using my new camera. Since the honeymoon was in 2023, I’ll be writing about that in the next quarterly post!

And I plan to dive back into writing & editing for my books.

Happiest of new years to all of you! 🥂

Thank you for reading!