It was a busy day. I finished, proofed, and submitted a city bid, submitted 3 different sets of safety documents and reports, did 4 separate deposits and took them to the bank, went to municipal court and got the approval to take defensive driving to have my ticket dismissed, registered for defensive driving, ordered and printed out my driving record from the state, left work at 7:00 and loaded 50 pounds of dog food and 60 pounds of cat food into my car when I got home because Rick’s herniated disk is acting up. I am tired! I apologize for another short post but it’s already late and I still have things to get done here at home. I promise to post something besides my daily schedule tomorrow! Goodnight.
Month: January 2019
Day 117: Late Start
It’s 10:45pm and here I am just starting my post. I thought about skipping it but I decided that I took the 365 day blog challenge “whenever it’s easy” blog challenge. Today was challenging. I had a lot of work to do but that mostly was put off until this evening because we had a little excitement today. It started when a week or so ago the paver that is resurfacing our yard built an illegal drive out of the back of the yard across a ditch that helps prevent, only slightly, flooding on that street. Well, today the guys were using it to go get material from our temporary yard and when they finished, they didn’t shut gate. So a semi decided to use it as an exit. Apparently he didn’t know how tall his truck was and he snagged a phone line and grazed a power line which caused an arc that looked like fireworks. Oh, and did I mention that the gas company was trying to repair an active gas leak across the street from this little show? Then I had phone calls to make and reports to fill out since I’m the Safety Coordinator. Then I was able to get to my other work. I finally finished up around 7:00. And I and tired now I am going to brush my teeth and pass out! Have a great night.
Day 116: Cold, Beautiful Day
Just looking out the window, it appears to be a perfect day out there. Stepping outside, however, will quickly prove that observation to be very incorrect! It is so cold out there but fortunately, the crazy wind finally died down. When I was young, I loved the cold and hated the heat and now, I am exactly the opposite. I just want to be warm. It’s strange how much certain things about you can change and usually, it happens so gradually that you just don’t even pay any attention to the changes. Then, one morning you wake up and it seems as though everything has changed. Your likes have become dislikes and your dislikes are now likes. Most of the time it’s small things like a certain type of food or drink or a color…nothing life altering. Then there are things that will actually force you to change your life…falling in or out of love, making a big career change, or discovering your destiny or that what you thought was your destiny was just a whim. We have to be open to these changes because they are like a map that we can follow to find our true self. Maybe if I were younger and unencumbered, my dislike of the cold weather would send me off to a tropical island or Greece rather than just make me buy heavier and heavier coats each year. When my first marriage became too dangerous for me to remain in it, I fled it even though I still thought I loved my ex-husband. It took me years to realize that love had nothing to do with that marriage. So, that obviously was a change for the better. It didn’t stop me from making a few more relationship mistakes but it did teach me what I definitely did not want and that I was always free to walk away from an abusive relationship or situation. As we age, we have to learn to embrace the changes even when we aren’t 100% certain what they could mean. I have become more of a “go with the flow” person. I still am not a huge fan of some changes, obviously, but I can deal with them better than I used to. I’ve also gotten better at just waiting to see how they’ll affect my life before deciding to hate them just because they are changes. I’m still a fan of the status quo but some of the changes that have happened in my life over the last year have really led me in a better direction. I am happy with where I am right now emotionally and creatively. Change is good for us…it keeps us on our toes. And I’m definitely on my toes right now and it feels pretty good.
Day 115: Mon-UGH-day
I did not get to sleep until almost 2:00am this morning so my alarms were a very rude awakening when they all went off. Things went wrong here and there as I prepared for the day which I knew would be crazy. As soon as I got here, David was in my office and we talked about the new hire that I needed to do safety training for this morning and all of the general and safety paperwork that needed to be done. One form, the I-9, was missing the second page so I had to go online, find and print it out for him. I grab all the paperwork I needed for the safety training and head back to the desk and computer that I do the training on and the keyboard is gone but the mouse is still there. What? This is after the fact that when I checked the computer Friday, Microsoft Office had completely disappeared and I needed PowerPoint to do the training. Contacted IT and they reinstalled everything. Anyway, I go get another wireless keyboard that also had a mouse but left the old mouse and set up the new keyboard. The keyboard worked but the mouse wouldn’t. So I switched out the old mouse with the new mouse. The new mouse didn’t work either. I came back to my office and opened up another new mouse and finally, it worked. We started the training and we’d finished the PPE portion and he was taking the test when Rhonda called me and told me that we had a COD check to process and I always have to help her with it. We only get checks from one company and fortunately the kid that comes in is pretty cool because the process is kind of a nightmare even when it actually does what it’s supposed to do. Today, it didn’t do what it was supposed to do. She finally got into the program and it said the scanner couldn’t be detected. The green light was on, I checked the USB cable and it still said it wasn’t connected. I screwed around with it for a bit and finally just unplugged it for 15 seconds and plugged it back in…it was detected. We ran the check and it was approved. 10 minutes. We used to pick up the phone, call the check approval company, get the approval and it took about 2 minutes. But that wasn’t good enough…we had to go high tech even though the new tech is slower and less reliable than the low tech way we used to do it before. The company keeps making “improvements” that are no such thing. They make our lives more difficult but they look cool so they have to be better. We sell to utilities construction companies and they couldn’t care less about the latest gadget. They just want to get in and get out and have their order be correct. At least I’m done with the training and I have all of his paperwork so I’m feeling better about the day. I still have a city bid to work on, deposits to do, and I still need to get to the municipal court and get approved for taking defensive driving this week. And I have a long doctor’s appointment tomorrow…my retina specialist. It’s about 40 minutes away because of traffic and the process is just so involved once I get there. First, I go in and they check my vision, find out if I’ve changed any meds, check me for glaucoma, and then put hardcore long-acting dilation drops in my eyes. I go back out and sit until my eyes are really dilated then they call me in for the scan of both eyes. I go back and sit while they look over my scans to see if I have any issues. I go in and Dr. Chong examines my eyes very closely in the dark with an extremely bright light for a long time looking for tears, bleeds, diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration, or some other problem. She’ll also take these metal things that are about as big around as the tip of your little finger and press hard on my actual eyeball. If I do have a tear, that means they will laser it back together. I hate that because I always just know that I’ll blink or move my eye somehow and ZAP I’m blind in one eye. After they do that, you have your fully dilated eyes and everything you see out of the lasered eye is a neon green color. It kind of sucks! The green goes away after about five or ten minutes but the dilation will last the rest of the day. I actually have to wear a pair of these rolled up really dark sunglasses that they give away because of the dilation under my regular sunglasses to be able to drive back to work. I have to go to the retina specialist regularly because of my diabetes and I also have to have my eyes checked twice a year because I’m on Plaquenil for my RA and it can damage your eyes but right now I also have some floaters and there’s some blurriness in one eye so I’m a little concerned. Dr. Chong is awesome and she really knows her stuff so I know I’m in good hands. Knowing that helps a lot. Well, I need to get that bid started. I’m still waiting on pricing from someone else who is dragging her feet and it’s not making me happy! But it will all work out. One way or the other.
Day 114: 1 Step Forward, 2 Steps Back
Yesterday, in spite of oversleeping, I managed to get all of my tarot, oracle, and angel cards arranged more or less the way I want them to be…but that arrangement will evolve over time as most things in my life usually do. I did a little rearranging in my Magical Writing Haven as well. Sounds great, right? Well, I noticed a stack of notebooks a lower shelf of one of my bookshelves and, unfortunately, decided to check them out. Well, they were a wealth of writing information that I have been collecting over the last ten years or so…online classes that I’ve taken, downloaded information and worksheets, etc…. HUGE notebooks. I brought them into my Haven and they are sitting here on one of my tables and there is absolutely no place to put them where they will be out of the way. This is is the story of my life. I get things exactly the way that I want them then someone, somewhere yells, “PLOT TWIST”. Sometimes it’s a good thing and other times it’s definitely not. Even though I don’t particularly enjoy change, especially change that I did not instigate, I have become fairly adaptive. It’s happened in relationships (friendships, family, love, and sexual), a first marriage that turned extremely abusive, jobs, college majors, passions, etc…. Basically, every possible area that you can think of in my life has been subject to these changes. Even my mind…it changes directions more than anything else does. I know that it’s partially because of my ADHD but I can’t blame it for everything. One of the things I love and hate about myself is that I love to learn and to get into new things but, as benign as that sounds, it is a slightly crazy side of me. When I decide that I want to learn or do something new, I dive into the deep end and completely immerse myself in it. I buy every book, read everything that I can find online, I enroll in classes, etc…, then I eventually move on to something else. Odds are though, that I will at some point return to the original interest at a later date. It makes me a little crazy though. It’s also one of the reasons that I don’t have my degree. I have gotten within a couple of semesters of finishing my accounting, religion, and legal studies degrees and a double major in social rehab and psychology. I have even studied sign language for a couple of years in college when I was thinking about becoming an interpreter. Why did I never graduate…because every single degree required a public speaking class and I absolutely cannot do that. A couple of years ago, my then therapist, offered to give me a written diagnosis of severe anxiety and would speak with any school at which I chose to continue my degree. At that time I really didn’t have the time for school and now with all of the reputable online colleges and universities that I’m sure don’t have that public speaking requirement, there are other options to pursue. Right now I am concentrating on my writing and studying my oracle, tarot, and angel cards so I think I’ll probably not be too concerned about finishing any of my degrees right now. I’m trying to just stay on track with those two things for now. I have to keep my wandering mind contained for a while. But right now, I have to go take care of my outdoor critters before it gets too dark and the raccoons come out and scavenge their food.
Day 113: Beautiful Day
It is a beautiful day with lots of sunshine and a bit warmer temperatures. I went out to feed my stray and feral critters and I just wanted to stay out there even though it was still a bit chilly. I have so much to do today and I actually overslept…by quite a bit but I don’t feel too badly about it except for the fact that I’ve gotten a really late start on everything I want to accomplish today. I needed that extra sleep, I guess, so I won’t beat myself up for it. And I’m still going to make sure that I get everything done that I planned to do. Sometimes you just have to listen to your body and let it get what it needs and I haven’t really been doing that as much as I should and that’s really not good for me. As creative types, we have to take care of ourselves because our brains are our tools and if we don’t take care of our body’s needs, we lose our sharpness and ability to really think as deeply as we need to be able to in order to be able to do our magical creative thing. I need to do more of that. I work too much, stay up too late, eat poorly, etc…, and I know that zaps me in general as well as my potential as a writer. I also distract myself with things that in no way helpful. I just turn my brain off and zone out. I am trying to stop it…at least the majority of it. We all need that zone out time occasionally but it’s become a habit and that’s not good for me. I have too many things that I want to do and I’m allowing myself to hide behind other things that prevent me from accomplishing them. It’s strange how our minds work. I want these things so badly yet I seem to be putting a wall up between them and myself. I’m sure that a psychiatrist would say that I have a fear of acquiring what I want and/or of being successful but I really don’t have years to spend in psychotherapy figuring out why. So I have to fix this myself…now. And, after a good, long night’s sleep, I’m ready to start tackling it today!
Day 112: Fri-yea!
This hasn’t been a completely crazy week but I’m still so very glad it’s Friday. I have some things that I really want to get done this weekend. I’m going to organize all of my oracle, tarot, and angel card decks. That will take a while because I have a lot of decks! And then I’m going to start working on the new storyline that I’m going to integrate into Rapture. I’ll mostly be making notes. I found some dry erase flashcards that I think will be helpful when I start working on that tomorrow. I want to get things straightened up first though. I’ve been letting Smurf use my Magical Writing Haven as his safe haven while he gets acclimated to the house and all of the other animals and he gets a little crazy since he was an outside feral cat and knocks things off and scatters them around the room. But he’s so sweet and adorable and he’s just learning to be a house cat. Anyway, I have plans and I can’t wait to get started.
Day 111: Rethinking Some Things
My book Rapture has had me stumped for a very long time because I’ve known that I needed to do some big edits and rewrites as well as moving some chunks of the story around but I haven’t been able to come up with the “perfect” way to do it so I’ve just been spinning my wheels and it’s been making me a little crazy…okay, crazier. I was listening to a class on reading oracle and tarot cards and I had this major epiphany when 1 of the speakers was talking about trusting your intuition and when you’re looking for an answer you need to go fast…don’t overthink it because if you do, your left brain and ego get involved and choose the answer for you whether it’s what you truly desire or not. I used one of her spontaneous intuition methods. Think of your yes or no question, close your eyes, and see a traffic light…what color is it, red, yellow, or green? Red is no, green is yes and yellow means later or ask again. The answer to my question (should I stay on the same path with Rapture) was no. And within a few minutes, I had an amazing new idea for the book that allows me to keep the part that I’m 100% sure of, add a completely new storyline, and then weave some of the other parts into it. For the first time in a very long time, when I think about approaching this edit/rewrite I am excited rather than being filled with apprehension and dread. I am so glad that I decided to listen to that class because I had been so completely determined to keep the same storyline even though I wasn’t exactly thrilled about where it was going that I never even thought of going off in another direction. Such a load off of my mind! Yea, me!! After we’ve invested so much time and effort into something, it’s really hard to admit to ourselves that it’s just not working. We need something to shake us up a little so that we can see things in a new way and explore other options. I still have to do some of the dirty work but now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Day 110: A Gorgeous but Brutally Cold, Windy Day
Looking out from my office window, the day seems completely perfect…sunshine and blue skies all the way. It’s gorgeous out there. Then I made the mistake of going outside. I can honestly say that when the wind hit me full force, every curse word that I’ve ever uttered in my entire 58 years came flying out of my mouth. Unfortunately, I had worn my big ass parka this morning and that will not fit under my safety vest so I had to go out there without it so more curse words came out. I think I was muttering like a crazy person the entire time that I was out there but I really didn’t care. I am not good with cold weather. If it gets below 70 I start getting a chill. And I have RA so my joints don’t take too kindly to it at all. I move a lot slower in the cold, just like molasses. I think that age causes the sensitivity to cold because until I reached my late fifties, I was so hot natured. I couldn’t handle the heat at all. Now, I still don’t like heat all that much but I seem to be able to tolerate it better than the cold. And we have a woman in the office that dresses like she’s going on an arctic expedition and then complains when the thermostat is set higher than 65. We fight over it every day, all day. I tell her to dress in layers so when the thermostat is set on 70 in here, she can just start stripping down. I dress like I’m going on an arctic expedition as well since that’s what it feels like. I even wear gloves with the fingertips cut off. Oh, and she has the warmest office while I have the coldest office and she doesn’t want to switch because hers is larger. It also has more traffic since it was actually a conference room and you also have to go through it to get to the office supplies and filing cabinets. Mine is an actual office with a door and some privacy. But it’s smaller and that doesn’t suit the queen. Sorry, I went off on a bit of a tangent there, didn’t I? I guess that I’m also stalling because I don’t want to go back out in the cold again…but at least I will have on my parka and scarf! Stay warm everybody.
Day 109: Reflections
Back in late 2007, when I began writing Rapture, I was in full writer’s mode. I was so driven to write and nothing got in my way. It also helped that I was going through a severe period of insomnia where I was averaging one to two hours of sleep most nights while working full-time and keeping up with everything else in my life. Some days I was just barely able to function and would drag through my workday with the intention of going home and sleeping but around 8:00pm, I would be wide awake and ready to write all night long. I was so driven and lost in my writing that everything just fell away. Finally, I’d look up and it was 4:00am or later. So I’d force myself to lie down and eventually fall asleep. But I’d be up at 6:00am getting ready for work and the cycle repeated every night for over a month. And even though I could barely function during the day, I was writing seriously quality stuff at the time. My husband finally intervened because my mental health was deteriorating rapidly, I’d sometimes cry because I was so very tired, he was afraid I’d end up in an accident on my daily commutes, and I was just plain pitiful…except when I was writing. He forced me to go to the doctor who is still my beyond wonderful PCP. He tried everything to fix me but couldn’t so he referred me to my current amazing neurologist/sleep specialist. He tried the obvious medications while waiting for approval from my insurance company to do a sleep study. I went in and did the sleep study and I was found to have delayed sleep phase syndrome so he prescribed one medication after another…at one point I was even on antipsychotics which I loved because I’d tell people at work to go ahead and piss me off but to remember that I did take antipsychotics and wasn’t sure that they were working. We went through a wide range of medications and cocktails before finding something that worked. I wasn’t diagnosed with narcolepsy until a couple of years later and let me tell you the Multiple Sleep Latency Test they use to diagnose it is pure torture if you do have narcolepsy. You go in around 7:00am and they get you all wired up. Then you take a series of 20-minute naps every 2 hours from 8:00am to 4:00pm. Before you nap, they ask you a series of questions and when you wake up they ask you another series of questions to determine how you feel and your mental state. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? It’s not for people that don’t have narcolepsy but for those of us that do, it’s a nightmare. After the 2nd nap, you are so disoriented and you aren’t even sure if you’re going to sleep or waking up and the questions no longer make any sense because of that fact. Sorry, I went off the rails there for a bit. Anyway, after we got my nighttime sleep regulated, my writing became a bit of a struggle but I continued writing, however, I wasn’t nearly as pleased with my output or the quality of what I produced. Shortly thereafter my life kind of went to hell and I legitimately did not have the time to write because of my mother’s fast descent into Alzheimer’s and her multiple hospitalizations because of other health issues, injuries, and complications. I was working during the day and would be at the hospital all night long and because she had sundowners really bad and the hospital wouldn’t restrain her even after she broke her shoulder socket and elbow when she decided to make a run for it one night so I was once again getting no sleep but I had to spend all of my time watching her like a hawk and, at times, pulling my chair up beside her bed, putting my arm between the rails, grabbing the rail on the other side and holding her down so that I could get a few minutes rest. When it came time to start writing again, I couldn’t. I tried but it was all so forced and contrived that I wasn’t happy with any of it and I couldn’t fix it. I completely gave up. Fast forward almost 10 years to a few months ago when SARK came back into my life and my desire to write came back full force. I am still having some trouble finding the time and sometimes even making the effort but the important thing is that I want to write. Before last year, I don’t think that I’d even been able to write this blog but here I am 109 days in and still going. I’ll get the logistics figured out eventually and finally finish Rapture. I’ve even been kicking around a few other ideas lately so I am back. I’m just working on timing. So, if you’re going through a difficult time and are struggling with your writing, don’t give up on it like I did. Keep forcing it. I wish that I had.
Inspired Writer 