Good endings

As a writer, I am always about a good ending. There is nothing like that feeling of denouement and completion when you set the book down for the last time because the story is finished. I have noticed recently that I enjoy this in terms of chaos as well. A good ending satisfies on its own and not just as a means to a new creation.

That being said, we did not need the tire to go flat on John's birthday while he was at work. We were properly prepared, there was a donut but we were not quite yet prepared to have to buy a new tire around the holiday and bills. I am going to try to keep the hubs calm or at least less anxious after he gets back home. I am not sure it's going to be so easy. Still, it's going to be as great of a birthday for him as I and our friends can manage.

I have done more baking in the past two weeks than I probably have all year. Somehow I need to develop that sort of a habit about my writing. Still, it is the holiday season and we all should be taking time to spend with families and friends more than anything else. It's stressful but it's good. It's the best way to end out the year.

Grad School Semester #2

So, after my experiences last semester, I am down to just three classes, all of which are online. Some of my desire for the online classes was related to the hours at work. Now that I have less hours at work, I have even more time to focus on my class work. Only two of my classes are going on right now. The third doesn't start until the second half of the semester.

I am under doctor's orders to eat better because I've not been getting enough 'good' cholesterol lately. No matter how pithy our food budget is at times, I have to stop eating like a carbohydrate-obsessed freshman. No excuses. Hey, at least I stopped putting sugar in my tea. I am also down to two cups of coffee per day on most days that I drink coffee. I've started enjoying hot tea again on occasion. Some days, I need to not rile myself up which is one of the negative things coffee will do to me when I'm already annoyed or upset. In other news, however, my blood pressure is awesome, no reasons to be fearful of my glucose levels for type II diabetes, and my weight is slowly going down. Although it did fall 40 lbs over the course of three weeks when I hadn't really done anything except stop stressing as much. Yep, I bloat when I'm running on pure adrenaline due to fear/stress/etc. Isn't that an awesome defense mechanism?

I've actually starting taking fish oil pills at my doctor's advice. How crazy is that? For the most part, though, as long as I eat properly and keep active, I'm pretty healthy despite weighing more than I should.

As I have said before, I love working at the funeral home, but learning some personal and political attitudes from coworkers made me more than a little uncomfortable this week. Especially I'm not exactly sure how the topics were reached or deemed appropriate for work and my boss was part of it. I know I'm the square peg in the round hole when it comes to the majority culture in Kansas. I believe that everyone has the right to believe as they wish in America, but I think, especially in a work setting, you should keep your weird religious,  political, and paranoid messy thoughts to yourself. Especially if you start the sentence with "This is going to sound horrible, but I believe..." Yes, it does sound horrible, because that was a horrible thing to say about other human beings. (I'll leave the meat of the conversation to your imaginations.)  In some ways, I'm ashamed of myself, because I kept quiet. The sad truth is that I cannot afford to lose the job right now, but it certainly reminded me that perhaps I need to keep looking and striving for better opportunities. The sad part is, my boss had all my respect up until Monday. It's slightly diminished, but I still feel like I can put those feelings aside to work as hard as I can while I am work. That's pretty much my work focus until I move on to better things.

Codeacademy has been my new 'go to' for refreshing my HTML skills and eventually building up my repertoire to include some web programming. Programming is just something we all need to know for today's job market, so I'm going back to the basics. If anyone has any better or further resources, I would be grateful. My goal is to have a much stronger skill set once I am done with my MBA. I'm still plugging away at my rudimentary Japanese at times as well. (Not nearly like I probably should.)

Here's to a good half-week of classes! Congrats to everyone who is back in school right now. Some of you probably have been there for awhile already. I hope to have more regular updates to the blog this year. It's not exactly a New Year's Resolution, but, I had so many other plans for this blog that I've not yet implemented. 

Start of Week 2

Despite my best intentions, I lost momentum on my NaNoWriMo project towards the end of this past week. I finally hit over the 10K hump when I should be nearer to 17K at this point. I still feel pretty confident about finishing my 50K this month despite that. I do need to work on matters of laundry and homework today, so I may treat writing as more of a reward today.

Endings are a bit of an issue both in writing and life, as I have seen lately. We have so much anxiety in our culture about failing, leaving, and quitting, which seems so counterproductive. I am looking forward to yet another interesting shift. And, yes, Herodotus mentioned this: "Illness strikes men when they are exposed to change." So the issue has been a part of Western culture for some time.

The old adage about when one door opens, another closes, tends to be thrown to a wayside, as a comfort for that "shameful" moment when something has gone wrong. But a pagan perspective has a slightly different perspective: you have to destroy to create and there is balance in the ebb and flow of fortunes. Everything you do make a mark on the universe that ultimately affects everyone within it. It is silly to think that whatever "bad" happens to you is some sort of punishment. If karma was actually about biting people in the ass or giving them rewards on the basis of actions, we would not need a legal system.

The police sirens were quite busy in our neighborhood last night. It should be interesting to read the paper tomorrow to see what happened. I do know, however, that my chaotic people are aligned within the confines of the Law, which has made for some interesting fireworks. Everything is getting ready to ignite as it shifts, burning the fabled Tower to the ground.

Strange News of the Day: Morgue Worker Notices Crash Victim is Still Alive

 

This sort of story is always going to be popular on news feeds especially not too far from Halloween. Readers find themselves dealing with deep-seated fears of being buried alive when they hear about cases of this nature. While being buried alive is not likely to happen in first-world countries, we know that it has happened in the past. 

In the U.S. autopsy is generally required for any unattended death, accidental death, possible homicide, etc. I would say that this is the same for Germany as the story reads as if she were in a morgue for a medical examiner, coroner, or equivalent for autopsy rather than a morgue at a hospital or funeral home. It is sad that she was there several hours before anyone noticed breathing, but it still might be what saves her life. Had it been until they had gotten around to making the first incision for autopsy, she might have already passed away while in the morgue.

I think what really scares people about stories like this is not the idea of someone being in a place that is connotative of death when they are still alive. I think it is because we do not speak of death in Western culture with anything other than trepidation. We try to deny that it exists or beat it back as far and as long as we can even though we know logically that we all die at some point. Death is often seen as a negative thing, even in belief systems that promote life after death. I prefer to speak about death as it is and acknowledge its importance in the life cycle.

Matters of Life and Death

"While I thought I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die." Leonardo da Vinci 

It's a shame to me that we do not talk about death in our society like we should. This omission leaves people without any clear direction on how to celebrate life nor how to accept death as a necessity. Fearing death is the same as fearing life. It seems to me that both can cause needless heartache and pain.
I did not think about this as much until I started working at the funeral home when I caught myself trying to apologize for enjoying my job. I have not felt as necessary or that what I have done was as important as I do with this position. I feel more alive surrounded by the issues of death. To a certain extent, I think it is because I care about people's emotional health even when I do not fully understand my own. Perhaps I take a little bit of pride in a job that most people would not want to do. The hours might be few and far between, but I love a job that, ironically, doesn't make me miserable.

In terms of personal introspection, I've naturally been looking at time that I feel like I've been wasting.  The past is a cruel fairy tale that suggests if we had done things differently, we might somehow be in a better situation than we are now; which makes us stall. I've caught myself stalling at the precipice of major decisions rather than pushing myself forward. I'm trying to stop doing that but it's a very bad habit that's difficult to break.

The most recent issue of indecision has been the issue of kids. John and I both want them, no doubt, but it's more an issue of timing. There are some things I'm concerned about with kids in the near future, but he's brought up good health/medical arguments related to waiting as well. All I can think is, well, it's not going to be easy no matter what we decide. However, difficulty's never exactly been something to stop me either. We shall see what happens.

Morning Rituals

It's been argued that our daily habits can either help promote our success or suck the positive outlook from us before we even walk out the door. I realized recently that while I had very set morning rituals as a child, I've let most of those fall away as an adult. So I've been taking a closer look at what I do (or don't do) every morning. I think I lost some of my structure, ironically, when John and I first moved in together. It's much easier to do things in a set pattern when it's just you determining when things are done or how. 

But it's easy to cop out and become lazy, if lazy is the right word. My first cup of coffee is probably the last familiar part of my daily ritual, but it keeps me anchored. I check Facebook every morning, which has the potential of lifting my spirits or turning me into a raging ball of piss and vinegar. Then I wait for John to get up or at least for John's alarm to go off because I always wake up before he does. I start on breakfast. I feel like I'm caught somewhere between lover and mother hen as I'm making sure he's prepared for his day and hasn't forgotten something. This, of course, would be the days that I'm not working which are probably going to be more than the days I am working at least for now. 

I almost never start writing before he's out of the house. There's something about the early morning that I simply cannot bring myself to write on my stories. Maybe it's just having that focus that there's no one here but me and the cats. I know many writers have been successful with early morning writing, but I doubt I'll ever be one of them. I think my brain is not firing on all cylinders first thing in the morning and is disinclined to consider the intricacies of the written word. Still, I'm blogging, which is a form of writing, I suppose. Perhaps I can retrain myself with the early morning blog. 

Lately, I've begun a new ritual that takes place before the first cup of coffee when I'm still trying to pull myself to full consciousness. I take one card each from my oracle and tarot decks to lay on my table. I study the cards throughout the day and try to consider them as possibilities for improving the day. It's been rough realizing how often my emotional and/or spiritual health has taken a backseat so I'm trying to reclaim that a little bit at a time by changing my habits or at least adding to them. 

Lughnasadh and Camp NaNoWriMo

Technically, midnight is tomorrow, so I'm speaking about things for tomorrow rather than today. But I want to celebrate first harvest with friends and writers. We'll share food, tell stories, laugh, and write with abandon. NaNoWriMo is a party for literary artists. I think even Lugh himself would approve. May we never go hungry, may we never go thirsty but may we always strive for bettering ourselves with the reap of the harvest and the change of the seasons. May our words never dry up.

Right now seems to be a time of both leaving and returning. We return to school or we start new jobs or  perhaps return from some short family vacation. We find something that is both familiar and new at the same time to engage our time, aspirations, and skills. To me, that is hope in action. We should enjoy it with all that we have and recognize all this as remarkable rather than ordinary.