Farewell to a Kingly Person

Man, talk about timing.  Not two weeks ago, in my post "The Book of Men", I talked about how I had essentially used the wisdom of Neil Pear,t as set to the music of his drums and his friends, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson from the band Rush, as a replacement for whatever Dad-type wisdom...

A Quiet Year

2014 was largely uneventful for me.  Which is good.  I like quiet and uneventful.  Which isn't to say it wasn't a good year: it was.  My husband's job got reorganized and in the process he got a raise and the ability to work from home.  Which was a good thing, because I quit my job...

The Darkness Inside

A number of thoughts and emotions went through my head in the minutes and hours following the announcement that Robin Williams had killed himself.  My first thought was that the world was now a lesser place without his wit and depth of personality.  My second thought was to feel sorry for him, as he was...

Stigma

I've watched the phenomenon of the Ice Bucket Challenge with some interest.  At first I didn't understand it.  I wasn't clear as to how dumping  buckets of ice water over people's heads was raising money for ALS.  A friendly discussion enlightened me as to how the awareness had raised millions of dollars, as well as...

Transformation

I have to change a lot of things about my life, and I don't know how to do it. Maybe I should back up.  Last year I went to the hospital for chest pains, which were diagnosed as acid reflux (which is crap: I know what that feels like and that wasn't acid reflux).  About the...

Changes

Hello Gentle Readers.  I haven't posted since July of last year.  I don't think I've had much to say, really.  Even my private journal over at LiveJournal hasn't seen much action for the last few months.  Life was kind of boring.  I took the kid to school, went to work Tuesdays through Thursdays and on Saturdays,...

No Rest

**whine alert** I was struck this morning with a peculiar weariness that took a moment to identify its source. I've been doing a lot of work in recent months on managing my bipolar disorder. The frontline defense against it is medication, but the main combat forces behind it that do the real work are a...

Spiritual Nomad: Week Four

I started this post back in March, when I was really deep in Spiritual Nomad along with some other stuff.  Then most of it came to a screeching halt for a variety of reasons (mostly illness and injury), and here I am, still knee-deep in Chapter 4.  It's a fun chapter, too.  I get to...

Clean(er) Slate

When last I wrote, I was embarking on the ambitious task of transforming three different areas of my life: spiritually, physically, and metaphysically.  Let's go over how I did in all three areas. Physically, I started off well, and was then immediately hampered by injury.  It seems my hamstring tendons in my left leg get...

Thief of Memory

Most people know about the usual symptoms of depression. The malaise, the inability to enjoy things, the trouble sleeping, so on and so forth. Those who don't suffer from it might not know about one of its more insidious traits, though. It steals your happy memories. When you're depressed, you can't remember ever being happy,...

Clean Slate

It's been "make a change" week in my life.  I've had several changes I've wanted to make in my life for quite some time now.  Now that I'm in my early 40s, I'm feeling pressed for time on some of them, as though if I don't get them implemented now, they'll never get done.  Such...

Spiritual Nomad: Week Three

Ah, finally where everyone else is.  Except for the whole breathing and meditation thing.  Which is exactly where I was last year.  I'm actually getting to a really painful part of where I was in Spiritual Nomad last year.  Week Three, at least when I was doing it, is precisely when my favorite cat turned out...