3 days working, 7 days off, 2 days working, 4 days off and now 3 days working then the weekend…I could get used to that schedule!  But reality has set in so we’ll see how strong my will and determination are now that I’m back in the 8:00 – 5:?? workday real world.  There are some things that I am going to have to deal with tonight that are important (I have a new health insurance formulary that I need to do some inquiries in before my doctor’s visit tomorrow) but I am determined to write something before I go to bed.  How much I write will depend upon how long the health insurance inquiries take me to complete.  But I am not going to let it stop me.  I also want to work on my goals for the new year by getting them into my planner.  So it could be a jam-packed 4 or 5 hours.  And that’s fine because if I don’t stretch myself, how will I move forward?  Sometimes you have to prove to yourself that you can do the things that you are determined to do.  You have to prove your inner critics wrong.  If I can get something done tonight, I can definitely get it done on a normal night when I’m not having to deal with a new health insurance formulary.  Life will always find a way to interfere with your plans but you have to just keep figuring out ways to work around what it throws at you.  Personally, I’m planning to leave at 5:15, get my outside critters at home fed, eat dinner, tackle the insurance, then write.  I will most definitely write something because nothing is going to stop me!   

I have changed during my life as have most people.  One of the things that I’ve noticed is that when we’re young, we rebel against our parents because well, you know, youth and all.  We look for our own separate identity and our only goals are to be different from our parents and to fit in with our peers.  As we grow older and our worlds expand outside of our parents’ home and influence we find that the changes we made during our teen years need to morph a bit more.  In our twenties, we’re exploring the real world…serious relationships, careers, new acquaintances and friendships, contemplating our futures.  Some of us marry during that time and speaking from experience, for a lot of us that can be a big mistake because we are not fully the person that we are going to become within the next ten years.  I personally believe that people should put off marriage until they are in their thirties.  When we are in our twenties we are baby grownups still exploring and growing.  The person that you fall madly in love with at twenty is probably going to be just as different as you will be in ten years.  Your career goals and aspirations, or lack thereof, are going to test the relationship because they have also changed.  The people in your lives have come and gone and you now have friends whose personalities just don’t mesh with your spouse’s and the same is true about their friends.  Life begins to feel constricted and the paths you have chosen begin to diverge.  And a large number of those relationships will end badly by the time you get into your late twenties and early thirties.  It happened to me and to the majority of my friends.  By the time that we’re thirty, we usually have a career and a plan for our lives.  We have matured to the point that we have a good idea of where our lives are going.  Even then there will still be surprises along the way…some good and some bad but we have learned to roll with the unexpected and to correct our course as needed.  My best surprise was unexpectedly meeting my second husband to whom I’ve been married twenty-three years.  I had sworn off marriage after my first disastrous one and then our paths crossed and I course corrected.  He was the complete opposite of the men that I dated…older than me, settled, not an artist or a free spirit, different tastes in food, music, and movies, different beliefs, different attitudes toward life, he’d been previously married around twenty-five years and had three older children and a wicked divorce, enlisted in the Navy at 18 and did two tours in Vietnam (I was six when he enlisted), he’s right wing and I’m left wing, etc…, but here we are and we’re happy.  Because we were older and more mature, we have been able to accept each other’s differences and adapt.  And over the years, we’ve learned to like some of the things that the other person likes.  But there are things that we will never agree on, like politics, so we don’t discuss them or we end up in an argument.  We pick our battles.  In our forties, we begin to mellow out a bit.  We are usually settled in our relationships and careers, our likes and dislikes have solidified, as have our core beliefs.  We tend to put our lives on auto-pilot to a degree during this time of our life.  Some might become disillusioned with their lives in their forties and go through what’s been labeled the midlife crisis.  They question their current situation, they look at the things that they haven’t accomplished and begin to wonder if they ever will.  They see their lives as boring so they have affairs, buy sports cars, get divorced, or look for the zen in life.  And there are some who just go off the rails because the existential crisis that they are experiencing makes them feel that they are found wanting.  They feel as though their lives have no meaning or value.  We all question that at some point but we course correct and continue on.  But these people that go off the rails don’t feel that a course correction is enough.  Only a completely different direction and destination will suffice.  Personally, I think that’s fine and a bit brave.  There have been times in my life where I considered doing a 180 and heading off into the unknown but I wasn’t brave enough to do it.  So let them go out and explore themselves in ways that they couldn’t in their current situation.  There will probably be some hardships, depression, feelings of loss, etc…, but hopefully, they will come back with a wholeness that was missing before.  They will be changed and some people might not be able to understand those changes but it wasn’t done for them so they can either accept the person that has emerged or not.  The fifties…my current decade…is a bit of a continuation of the forties but most people have decided that their life is what it is and won’t be doing a lot to change anything.  There is a sense of acceptance in your fifties.  There is a bit of unreality in that decade.  We still feel and think like we did during earlier phases of our lives so we don’t necessarily feel like what we thought fifty should feel like.  Remember when you were a child and you thought that fifty was only one step away from death and could never imagine being that old?  Your parents were ancient at thirty, so fifty was antiquated.  But as we aged, we realized that in so many ways, we are still the same person that we’ve always been…just with more gray in our hair.  I still can’t reconcile the fact that in about one year and three months, I’ll be 60.  That just can’t be right!  I still like heavy metal and horror movies, have the same liberal beliefs that I’ve always held, I still have dreams and goals that I’m working towards, I have the hots for Jason Momoa, etc…  How can an age that I’m only a little over a year away from seem ancient?  We have to realize that nothing but our age changes at this point.  I still think like I did when I was probably 35 and in some ways, I’ve become a bit more radical than I was back then.  I care about people and things much more deeply and I’m more secure being just myself…no pretense, no hair dye or plastic surgery even though there is absolutely nothing wrong with either of those two things.  I just don’t have the time for either which is why my hair is white instead of auburn and I have wrinkles under my eyes and breasts that are not perky.  I’m never going to be any younger than I am now and I’m fine with that but don’t mistake that as me giving up or just accepting that I am older.  I still have some dreams to make real and, by God, I will.  So clear the way because I’m in a hurry to make those things happen and I’m not letting anything stop me.  You see, that is one thing that has changed about me, and every single older person.  When I was in my twenties, thirties and even my forties, there was always a lot of time in front of me so I didn’t have to hurry.  I still have time but there’s less of it now so I have to put a little more effort into it all.  And I’m up to it.                    

I am not a crazy cat lady. No, I am a crazy animal lady. I take care of feral and stray animals at home and at work. My Amazon Smile charity is an animal shelter. I shipped 100lbs of dry cat food from Amazon to a lady that takes care of a huge colony of feral cats…that’s only about a week’s worth of meals. I also carry cat and dog food in my car. I spent a couple of hours last night and tonight trying to make “friends” with a couple cats that have started showing up for kitty dinners after I get home from work. I think they’re litter mates and completely adorable. And pretty friendly. That’s just 1 of the reasons that I don’t always get around to writing at night. No, it’s 1 of the excuses I use to not write. I have to write in spite of doing these things. There are always going to be things that get in the way of our writing. We have to find a way around them. Through them. Under or over them. I do have some issues that I really don’t know how to do this with however. I have 3 sleep disorders for which my neurologist has medicated me. I have insomnia so I have a difficult time falling asleep at night. I have delayed sleep phase syndrome which means that my brain’s and body’s sleep cycle is off. My natural pattern is to stay up until about 4:00am and sleep until around 10:00am. I also have narcolepsy. So I take meds to go to sleep, to stay asleep and to stay awake. How messed up is that? The problem is that I have to stay consistent with my meds or it will throw everything off. Very seldom do I make it to midnight and just dragging myself out of bed in time for work is torture. It took my neurologist about 10 years of trial and error with medications to get me to the point where my sleep clock is set right. I don’t want to have to go back to square 1 again. So I have to figure out how to work with it. Well, I am about to crash hard so I’ll have to think about it in the morning and come up with a plan.

This is my circus and my monkeys.  Am I always thrilled to be the ringmaster?  No, but this is just how it is.  Sometimes they get a little crazy and I have to wrangle them and that can be a job.  Other times, they behave and they’re fun to watch.  Usually, it’s somewhere in between.  Working a demanding multi-faceted full-time job makes it difficult to write because when you get home at 7:00 after a 10 hour day, you just want to veg out and you literally have to force yourself to even turn on the laptop, much less write.  And when you make it to the laptop, you just sit and stare at the blank document.  I don’t have any brilliant answers to this problem…I’m just putting it out there to let you know that you are not the only 1 with this issue.  We have to find a way to wrangle those monkeys and make them work for us.  And when I figure that out, I will let you know.  Or, if you figure it out…tell the world!       

Well, I didn’t accomplish everything that I set out to during my 7 days off from work but I still have today so I’ll get a bit more done…I say hopefully.  Being ill for the first few days slowed me down but I did get my writing haven more organized after moving quite a few more books and notebooks into a space where it seemed as though nothing more could fit.  Is it perfectly organized?  Nope, but it’s Donna organized.  I don’t mind my haven being small and a bit cluttered because I’m surrounded by things that I love.  My husband gave me a beautiful tapestry for Christmas that I hung and absolutely love.  It goes with my room perfectly!  He has always been such an amazing gift finder and giver.  He also gave me a small bamboo Bluetooth speaker that sounds like a much larger speaker and since it’s bamboo, the music resonates perfectly with no distortion.  It’s awesome and the perfect size for my little space.  Right now I’m sitting at my desk in my Donna-perfect writing haven, listening to a gorgeous song by William Ackerman (guitar and cello) called New England Morning.  It has the most amazingly sensual soulful cello part that just reaches right into your being and moves through your body.  No matter what I’m doing, when that part of the song plays, I have to stop and just experience it.  It says more than any lyrics ever could.  If you’re in the mood to be moved…find it and listen to it.  I first heard it on the CD The Essential Winter’s Solstice so it’s perfect for a day like today.  Sorry, I guess I’m kind of on a stream of consciousness kick here…ADHD gone wild!  Listening to the song and the wind howling outside, watching the birds taking flight from the trees on a stormy day just makes my mind wander so I’m just going to let my stream of consciousness run a little wild here.  Now, I’m listening to videos by Khalid Al Ameri.  He and his wife Salama make wonderful videos about their lives, their faith, about bridging the gaps that exist between people and different religions, and life in general.  I have learned so much from his videos on Facebook and his group.  He is one of the kindest people out there.  And he and Salama are hysterically funny.  I am a spiritual person that doesn’t identify with any particular religion although I was raised Southern Baptist, majored in religion at a private Baptist college for a year and a half, and in my 40’s converted to Catholicism.  I have been disillusioned by too many of the people I’ve come into contact with inside brick and mortar churches as well as their “we are the one and only true church/religion” belief.  I also believe in things that most people in those 2 denominations don’t so how can I call myself either one when some of our basic beliefs are so different?  I believe in love, equality, peace, kindness, not judging others because they’re supposedly different, and everything good and positive.  I don’t care what your sexual orientation is or how you identify.  Nor do I care what religion you are or aren’t.  All I care about is that you’re a good person in your heart.  We are all united just because we are on this planet together and we have to find a way to peacefully coexist.  So far, we haven’t really done a very good job of that in our time here.  We are all more alike than we are different.  We have to work harder at seeing and building on that.  Well, I think that\s the end of my stream for now so I’ll say goodbye.  It appears that the thunderstorms are about to make their way through Dallas.  The winds have died down a bit and the thunder is rolling.  I love a good storm and I have a perfect seat from which to watch and enjoy it.  Have a wonderful rest of your day!