Four years!

Four years gone! Not sure why I want to post today versus any other day of the last 1,500 some odd days...

A piece of wisdom learned from my own experience - do it today. Whatever it is - improving health, reconnecting with lost friends and family, doing one thing to move myself forward, taking action to do anything - tomorrow is NOT a better day to start! There is no other moment than this one right now.

I have read hundreds of posters, memes, postings, essays, motivational books, pithy Hallmark messages, all saying this same thing. Reading, watching, and thinking about life equals experiencing time left unmarked. Acting to take back my life before it's gone now feels like an emergency!

I am horrified and grief-stricken to remember my hopes and intentions from four years ago and to realize I can hardly account for anything that has transpired since!

Waking up these days is like climbing through a sludgy fog. It is so easy to fall right back into dreams that have so much more life in them than reality.

My small step toward getting off this life-long roller coaster: do one thing every day. More than getting out of bed (although, believe me, this is a challenge some days) and beyond dressing and feeding myself. I need to take one action that is on my path back to my own life. Oh and btw, to my future self, you know that watching TV is NOT a substitute for living your own life. Living my own life is not easy, fun, or preferable these days, but maybe moving one small rock at a time will result in a cleared path.

A Year...

Sigh...a year has passed since I started this blog and I am no clearer, no richer, and no healthier than one year ago. On the positive side, I have a new and dear friend who I am very blessed to know. This is my friend Noel, with whom I have coffee and share stories of our lives and families. Noel grew up in Dublin, worked in London, then emigrated to the US with his wife. He is the most amazing person and I have come to love him.





Here are some pictures since my last post in 2009...



Our dog Lucy, who doesn't realize she is a lab. She is just another family member with all the rights and privileges of us humans, including sitting wherever she wants, lying on laps, eating anything that she can reach, and loving the cats (which for her includes gently rolling their heads around in her mouth until they look like opposums)!


Here are said kittens just after they came to live here last April...

...and here they are now (too big for one photo so they are separate...)
This is Finn (14 lbs) on the left..............................and Folie (12 lbs) on the right.


In May, I turned uneventfully fifty, at least on the outside. It has been more impactful trying to find a job despite the promise of "age blindness" and I am freaking out a little that I am feeling physically and mentally slower.


The best thing about my birthday (other than my fabulous family and the surprise and low-key party they threw me) was that our garden and yard looked just beautiful! Always a wonderful present each year the first weeks of May!













Summer brought beautiful weather, visits from family, beach runs, barbecues, but no jobs...

Ellen and Alison

Marsh in Sandwich on the Cape

With the fall, we joined a small chorus on Cape Cod led by a fabulous director who also conducts the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra. The music we did and are doing is wonderful and, much to my surprise, my voice has not disappeared but is actually dramatically improving under David's fine tutelage! I also joined a small women's a cappella group and discovered fabulous women with whom I seem to blend perfectly. All this is potentially leading to a move closer to the Cape and our new friends. I have applications in to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and hope and pray they might want me...

The inevitable first frost...


Kat's twenty-first birthday...

Folie enjoying pinapple yogurt...

Brian as Farmer Gilman...

Madrigal Feast singers...

And Thanksgiving with everyone...


Big pre-Christmas snowstorm...


And a blessedly downsized Christmas: instead of being depressing, everyone was happy to be with each other and we enjoyed good food and drink. Who needs lots of gifts anyway!!???

President's speech in Wordle

Don't you love Wordle? The word he spoke the most was American. Was this to pull us together under that common description? I also just love the art of this (I have this reaction whenever I see this applet anyway.) I redid this to include all of the times Congress applauded...interesting outcome no?

Another evolution

Today I realize that a new career/job/passion/path is not just going to appear out of thin air. I have had a persistent confidence that my next opportunity would be there when I open my e-mail or look on one of the job posting sites or pick up the phone to talk to a friend/colleague. 

Now that I am disabused of the idea that there is someone out there aiming for me without my having to lift a finger, I need to create my personae. This is a weird idea since it seems, in essence, deceitful. I must author different versions of me to be presented to the various opportunities I have and will encounter. But none of these versions will be able to reflect my whole self because, according to the experts, that doesn't focus prospective employers well enough to be able to fit me into what they need. As a friend of mine said this morning, I'm "a foot deep and a mile wide." 

So I need to parse my abilities and background by the kinds of opportunities I am looking at/for. General categories: government and industry advocacy; medical device management; general management; consulting; new venture/entrepreneurial; creative (writing, art, cooking).

Free...

So I am snared by my own sense of fair play yet again. I have signed up on a bunch of job posting sites for my job search. The Ladders is one that focuses on jobs paying upwards of $100k so I have been spending some time plumbing that site. They offer one "free" advice session to critique your resume. 

Now I know my resume is weak because all I did was set down my work chronology with no thought at this point to resume strategy or how best to market myself. I have not posted my resume anywhere yet because it's not ready to be searched. My resume critique came back panning the entire thing but offering a professional rewrite for $695. Does this mean that I should give any credence whatsoever to the comments the critiquer made? With the ulterior motive of having me hire them, it throws the exercise into question for me.

And it's snowing again! So...

...I figured a picture reminiscent of a warmer time was in order...same shot as the snowy one below - our front yard.

Day two

As I develop my online voice, I admit I am getting to feel like a bit of a blog stalker. I discovered this great blog "synch-ro-ni-zing" by Ruth that is so beautiful and soulful that I then started following another of her sites "huffing." Then I was interested in other blogs she listed so I went over to her brother Rauf's site which is equally mesmerizing and so I added that to my "I read..." list. Is this okay? I feel like I am invading their privacy somehow. And this brings up another web-lemma (Web dilemma) - is it okay to publish photos one takes of other people without their permission? It's not like I am a news agency but I also just joined Facebook and am uploading my family pictures and had that thought - that I am revealing these private moments in a public way - do I have an obligation to clear that with each person?