Hot, naked, and wa-a-a-a-y outside my comfort zone.

Some people choose a word for the year. I never have because I forget about it, which is also the reason I don’t buy journals. But this year, I did pick one. I kind of cheated because I knew what plans we had (like building a new house and moving to Arkansas, which is in the works), and I knew I could easily correlate my 2026 life to my word.

The word is adventure. My first adventure took place on January 1 while I was in Georgia. My stepsister invited me to accompany her to the JeJu Sauna. This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

She described it as a total-body exfoliation.

Friends.

That was not an exfoliation. It was more like a flaying. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It started innocently enough. You pay, get a shorts set (prison-orange cotton top and shorts), and a locker key. You change clothes in the locker room and can then explore the various nine saunas. The temperatures vary from cold (in the Ice Room) to very hot (the Salt Room). We visited each, dipping into the Ice Room in between to keep from passing out from a heat stroke.

When you’re ready for your body “scrub” (don’t be fooled by that innocent-sounding name), you move to the wet area, and from this point forward, you’re completely NAKED, but so is everyone else. You get used to it after a moment. You sign up for your scrub (a.k.a. flaying), then wait in the hot tub for your number to be called. There is a cold-water tub as well, but after all that heat, you can’t ease your way into it. You just gotta jump and hope your heart doesn’t seize up from the shock.

When it’s your turn to be scrubbed, you move to a room with massage tables where a Korean woman awaits to inflict her torture. She squirts an oil into a glove she wears, then she goes to town.

Girl. Are those gloves manufactured by Scrub Daddy? It HURT. After a while, your nerve endings go numb, and you just lie there awaiting your instructions. A tap on the hip means turn this way. Another tap means roll the other direction. Almost nothing is left untouched.

But when you’re done, and you step into the shower to wash off the oil and the little rubbed-into-a-ball bits of your skin, you feel like a newborn baby. Since I’m old, and my skin both bruises and looks like I have blood blisters underneath my epidermis every time my dog jumps on me, I looked injured afterward. It was ALMOST worth it for the smooth skin.

Because—also due to my age (thanks, menopause)—my skin normally looks like a lizard, with scales and flakes abounding. When I peel off my leggings, they look like I shook the saltshaker on them. Gross, right?

Well, my daughter turned me on to a product called the Kessa Exfoliating Glove for Shower. It looks like a mitten that you slip over your hand, and it claims to remove dead skin cells.

My friend, the first usage sent me straight back to JeJu in my memory. The mitt is just as “scrubby.” But boy, does it work! And of course, since you’re the one doing the flaying, you can control the pressure. I use mine every time I shower, then follow it up with a squirt of baby oil down each arm and leg while I’m still wet. I rub the oil in, pat dry with a towel, and my lizard skin disappears.

Here is the link, if you want to try it for yourself. https://amzn.to/45YFqaL (paid link)

I’m now a total fan.

My next adventure in 2026 was in the world of publishing. The first book was Sweet Dreams Are Made of This, an anthology containing seventeen short stories written by my writing group—ACFW DFW Ready Writers—and friends. We’ve been discussing this, learning about anthologies, watching presentations from others who have published them, and finally took the plunge last summer. I gave everyone the theme—choose a song from the 1980s and write a story based on what you imagine from the lyrics—and I edited each story as it came in. When the collection was put together, my friend Cheryl Burman gave it another editing pass, we hired a book cover designer, and it was uploaded in June. You can order it here.

https://amzn.to/4qFDflM (paid link)

On the heels of that project, I released my next book, Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. This is a Christian contemporary romance about an aging rock star who wonders if fame and fortune is all there is, and a newly divorced journalist struggling to find her purpose after her daughter leaves for college. If you enjoy second-chance romances, stories of redemption, or musician stories, this is for you. It just went live this week. I’d love for you to check it out.

https://amzn.to/4xkxeh0 (paid link)

My new book was self-published, and I did everything on my own this time around. I figured, now that I know how everything works, why not give it a try? I don’t have to share my royalties with anyone, I control how the cover looks and the selling price, and I can run ads or giveaways whenever I want.

I learned a lot doing this, from hiring a cover designer to opening a Draft2Digital account, so if you’re contemplating going the indie route, I’d love to discuss things with you and share what I learned.