Hello, 2019
Happy New Year
Oh, hi!
Yep, I’m still here. It’s been a while.
It’s been several months and a handful of big life events.
I just read my last post…from July! Is that the longest I’ve ever gone without publishing here?
It seems comical to me now, this idea of setting goals last summer, and making incremental changes in my life to move towards achieving them. There’s certainly a lot of value in visualizing what I want for myself, and I continue to do that. But what I didn’t anticipate at the time was how fast and hard life would happen to me over the next few months.
Seen on a wall at a local high school
I’ve been through it before, the unexpected turn that forces me to make a big change. I have long resisted change. I have long believed I could make a bad situation better.
But I can’t control people or nature.
View of the Woolsey Fire from our guest bathroom
My biggest lesson from the last 6 months: I can only control me. Maybe it’s a lesson I’ll have to learn over and over again. I’ll try to remember it this time.
All of this vague-blogging is to say that I ended up here: with new life experiences behind me that will hopefully make me a better, stronger person.
The most obvious change is that I started a new job a few weeks ago. I moved from communications in K-12 to higher education-graduate school (skipping college because I’m an overachiever). So far, so good. But my work won’t be the center of my life. I paid a hard price to learn that lesson.
My new workplace: a law school on the edge of the Pacific Ocean
View from the associate dean’s office
Also, I finished the first draft of my novel finally. I’ll be editing it next, probably for four more years (I kid! I hope it won’t take that long!).
Probably best of all is that the events and circumstances of the last few months brought new and wonderful people into my life.
Including but not limited to the founders of LV Fire Relief
Out of fire comes a phoenix, after all. That’s me.
Summer Goal Setting
Lots of people do their goal-setting at the end of the year, or the beginning of the year, or near the end or the beginning of their financial year. I just realized I do mine while on summer vacation. That makes sense, right? After all, I've always lived by the school calendar, even when I wasn't in school and didn't have kids in school. But this year, on my annual visit to my hometown, I paid … [Read More...]
The Bar is Low for Mother’s Day with Teens
What do you when Mother's Day sucks? I don't have high expectations for gifts or favors on special occasions. My husband isn't much of a planner or a big-gesture kind of guy, and try as I might to set the example for my kids, when it comes around to my birthday or Mother's Day, it doesn't seem to have taken. One year my husband actually forgot my birthday, something that can only happen … [Read More...]
The Pallbearer
It snowed on the day of my grandmother's funeral. Big fat flakes. I wore the full-length wool coat I left behind when I moved to Los Angeles in 1995. The boxy shoulders dated its style, but it kept my legs warm, and besides, my Nana was dead, so who cared? I insisted on being one of the six pallbearers. She would have loved that. Or maybe not. She was the firm matriarch of a traditional family, … [Read More...]
Bloom
In reviewing my first draft of my (first?) novel, I have found the word "bloom" used as a verb several times. You might wonder why I don't remember writing it so often, but other writers might tell you that they, too, review their words as if reading a work penned by someone else. They feel unfamiliar, yet of me. When I see the sentence "An answer blooms in her mind: a chance to say goodbye," I am … [Read More...]
Merciful Home
It's been a busy weekend, with sports, an epic sleepover, and at last a long lovely hike for me. It's been raining or overbooked for me the last few weekends, and I started getting itchy to get back out on the trail. (I still haven't tackled The Lady yet, but as soon as I do I will post about it.) When I got home today I took an epic nap, thanks to House Hunters Renovation, which always puts me to … [Read More...]