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Podcast Dreams

I am still getting ready to start my podcast. I decided a year ago to start. Then the pandemic hit and mine, like everyone else’s world, was turned upside down, from learning to work from home to not seeing my family and friends. About the time I was adjusting to the new world, depression set in and I could not find a balance. I’ve been depressed before. It can be debilitating or it can just derail me. I was happy to be home more, but not happy that I had to be home. Not being able to go out and just have fun was and still is very hard.

The old year ended and still I did not start the podcast. This made me more depressed. There is some fear, fear of not knowing what the hell I am doing. That’s not new. I’m always doing things that I have never done before. I now wear socks that I made. That’s right, I can knit! One the scale of beginner, intermediate, expert, I am definitely a beginner. But are you wearing socks you made? It is a fun new hobby. It is relaxing and probably that’s why I am not wearing a sweater that I made. It takes a lot of yarn to make a sweater. I think the average cost will be about $100 per sweater. I will totally look like a girl with very expensive tastes, huh?

So the fear of doing something new is just what you get when you decide that you are going to do something new. That is not a problem, just a process. I am still learning. I have found that my headset is dead. First it fell apart, then it quit working. I spend my last zoom meeting holding on to the cord at the jack and spinning it around and around to try to keep a connection. Wow. So there is still some equipment that I need. This blog is being written from my new computer. That was one goal I accomplished during all the sitting around at home. I have tried very hard not do to my work work on this one so that I have lots of memory to download whatever I need to download to record, edit, and launch my podcast.

Now I have to start looking at costs. How much does it really cost to host a podcast? I don’t have a clue. I turned 59 a week ago. I am still an old lady trying to learn all about the new digital world. Trust me, learning to knit was much more my speed. I picked a podcast name, developed my avatar, bought a new computer, a microphone, and a baby mixer board, still so much to learn and do. Baby steps I keep telling myself. I haven’t heard anything like what I want to do. I have no fear there. But what I am going to podcast about isn’t new so it’s not like I have to reinvent the wheel or anything. I’m not looking at monetizing, nor am I looking for a national listening audience. I just like to talk and oh look, here is a whole venue made just for people like me, talkers. If you want to listen, cool!

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Contemplation, journaling, Life, lifecoaching, Me, Native American Women, Nature, Writing

56 Bottles of…

I’ve been having a really hard time of things this week.  Winter does that to me from time to time.  I have claimed to be of the Bear clan.  Winter can be quite confusing.  My mind racing some days and other days, I just not sure who I am.  I eat too much, want to sleep to much.  The earth is supposed to be at rest right here in my neck of the woods, but some days, it isn’t.  Even this little bit of writing just looks like a jumble of words to me tonight.

I have had some clearer moments this week.  The cold does that to me, as well.  I see better when the cold kills the pollution in the air.  I watched some geese flying south.  I thought for a minute, how strange it was to see geese flying so late in the season.  Not that winter is half-way gone or anything…but if I were a goose, I think I would have high-tailed it to the beach long before mid-January.  The squirrels have been crazy-busy.  All those black walnuts I painstakingly raked out of my yard are now being dug up, from the middle of the yard, and spirited away to hidey-holes.  With all this activity I am not surprised at every new announcement of snow storms approaching.  Reminds me of that joke about the weatherman predicting a bad winter, because he saw the Indians cutting lots of fire wood…and the Indians cutting lots of fire wood, because the weather man predicted a bad winter….the announcements for the weather come way before either, said the geese and the squirrels.

The hills, now with bare trees looks like some old man’s balding head.  His hair sticking straight up and his scalp all white since the first snows fell.  I see houses out in the woods that I had not seen since last winter.  I wonder what those folks think when they see cars rolling up and down the highway, that they hadn’t seen since last winter.

I completed two video “how to” courses this month.  I have some webinars to attend…maybe that’s part of my problem, it feels like I have physically done something, but I haven’t.  I’ve only missed one day of work due to bad roads, but it feels like I haven’t been in a long time.  OK, so maybe it’s just the cold weather, bad roads and sitting in the house for several days.

And then there’s the 56…in a couple of weeks I won’t be 55 anymore.  I’m not sure what to do next.  I’ve never been here before.  It’s not time to retire, but I’m no spring chicken.  I love my job, I hate my job, there are so many things to do, and I don’t want to do anything.  It’s a strange mood.  I begin to understand how some of my ADHD friends feel all the time, minds jumping around from one thing to another.  They seem to handle it better than I have been.  This winter seems to be making me a bit crazy.  My upcoming birthday seems to have done the same.

Truth be told, I’ve been “a bit crazy” for a long time, I just don’t think I noticed it, or at least I haven’t admitted it to myself.  How many days until spring?  Perhaps by then my mind, my thoughts, my everything will have settled and I won’t be so…whatever this is.

 

 

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Contemplation, Cooking, getting in shape, journaling, Life, Me, Native American Women, Writing

Skinny Me

Ha!  Skinny me, my ass.  I am on the Keto diet these days.  I am actually losing weight.  I really don’t miss the bread.  Twice this week my husband had made cookies, chocolate chip and monster cookies.  I would like to say that I am mad, but I am not.  Over all, it has not been bad. But for the last two days I haven’t been able to hit my protein and fat macros.  Getting to the carb macros has been easy since I can only have 15 carbs a day.

I am thinking that for the next week I need to add a lot of salad.  I feel the need to add to more fiber.  Tomorrow will be tough.  It is time for a woman’s sweat and there will be women, so there will be food.  I will have to prepare my food ahead of time to stay on track.  I did ok today with pork rinds and beef sticks…can you imagine, pork rinds and beef sticks for breakfast/lunch?  Wow.

I have been tracking my ketones and I have been steady in Ketosis for the last two  weeks.  I think that if I weren’t seeing any results then I would just quit.  But I am seeing stuff happen.  This is exciting for me.  My body has excess ketones, my blood sugar has dropped dramatically, my weight is dropping (more slowly than my daughters) but dropping, nonetheless.  I am off both diabetic meds, one I have been on for years.  Yep, exciting.

I have started exercising, kind of…I am raking leaves and walnuts out of the yard.  There are 14 walnut trees in our yard, there are a lot of walnuts.  But, it is burning some calories.  I haven’t had a pop since Oct 1st.  I haven’t had a slice of bread since Oct 1st.  I am even starting to be OK with the stevia in my coffee in the morning.  Ever heard of Zevia?  It is pop with stevia in it.  No calories, not carbs but it tastes like diet pop, I hate it.

Maybe tomorrow won’t be too tough.  I cannot tell you how many times I just wanted to pull into a fast food drive thru today, but didn’t.  I was hungry.  I hated that I didn’t have time to eat breakfast at home.  Friday’s suck for me with all the work requirements I have.  I just can’t convince myself to get out of bed before 7am and by the time I wake up and have a coffee, write a few reports and fax them out the where they are supposed to go, it is time to leave and there I am, heading out the door without proper nourishment.  I need to plan the better.

Sometimes I do just sit around and dream about the old days and I wonder if  you can make a decent frybread with almond flour….cloud frybread?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Contemplation, Family, journaling, Life, Me, Native American Women, Uncategorized

Pressing Tears

My days had been busy with work projects which for me, generally means writing lots and lots of reports.  I can easily spend six hours a day trying to keep up with all the reports that I am behind in.  This is a heavy weight on my shoulders, being behind.  When I am not working to catch up with those reports, I am making and keeping a hectic driving schedule, meeting after meeting after meeting..

My husband has been off work for about six weeks now.  He was injured while on the job and workman’s comp pay has been trickling in.  He feels guilty.  Because my main concern was that he follow his therapist instructions and get better I had not been asking him to help more around the house during this time and so many of my home chores were also getting behind.  I did not feel guilty.  I rarely do.  There is only so much a human can do in a day and if work is taking up most of my time I can forgive me for not being the perfect housewife.

But this day he had been trying to do more around the house.  He had done the dishes and was busy working on the laundry.  He then passed through the kitchen and asked if we had a spray bottle.  I was just finishing up a batch of reports and asked him why?  He said he had some shirts to iron and needed to spray them down with water.  I reminded him that our iron had spray capability, all he had to do was fill the water reservoir.  He thanked me and wandered on his way to set up the ironing board.

For the first time in weeks I felt a little guilty about not getting to all my chores and I remembered how well he did not iron shirts.  Oh he was able to get the big wrinkles out but his attention to  detail around the collar and sleeves was a bit lacking.  I smiled and announced that I had finished report writing for the day and told him that I would get his shirts done.

There were three shirts laying across the back of a chair and three hangers thrown on the bed.  I laid the first shirt out across the board and started.  The first shirt was tedious.  I was thinking “why did I say I would iron?  I hate to iron”, and I do.  It is my least favorite chore.  Those permanent press inventors are real hero’s of mine.  The second shirt began and my shoulders and stance next to the board relaxed and I started to smile.  I was remembering that this was one of the chores I learned at my mother’s side.

There are so many things that our mother’s work hard to teach us when we are young.  Sometimes those mother’s get to know if they were able to pass on all the knowledge and wisdom they accumulate to their children and sometimes they don’t get to know if they were successful.  I am not sure if my mother knew that I had mastered the collared-shirt.  It was not one of those things where she said “here, do it like this”.  No, this was one of those “osmosis” teachings.  She would iron shirts and pants for my step-dad and I would sit or stand next to her and talk.  She would talk too but she never stopped ironing.  I learned by watching.

The longer I stood there that day and the more shirts he “found” in the closet that needed to be pressed (there were five by the time I actually got done), the more I enjoyed my task.  I took the time to remember her standing there with her ironing and I learned to enjoy my ironing.  I know that my step-dad appreciated looking nice when he got dressed for work and I know that my husband really appreciates putting on a crisp looking shirt.  I smiled more and more as I turned the shirt to the angles on the board.  I took a certain amount of pride as I hung each shirt when I finished it, making sure that each collar was in proper position and that the sleeves were aligned on the hanger.

I wasn’t so much proud of me.  I was proud of what my mother accomplished as she ironed and talked and of what I learned as I talked and watched.  I was happy that she had been able to pass on so much to me, things she did everyday as mother and wife that she passed to me to use as I became mother and wife.  By the time I had finished ironing my eyes were glassy with early tears that I didn’t let fall.  He would not have understood at that moment how very close I was to my mother.  I could feel her smile as she finally knew that she did, indeed, succeed.

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Contemplation, Family, Life, lifecoaching, Native American Women, Sundance

To Whom Much is Given…

I tend to measure my relationship with my Creator against my relationship with my children.  We say in our prayers “Heavenly Father” or “Grandfather” and that is how I look at my personal relationship.  When I come to a bump or have a query I think about how I respond to my children as a mother and I imagine that this is the way my Father responds to me.

I have a really hard time not yelling at people who mean well but who give others who are standing in pain what sounds like sage advice when they say to them “God is just testing you”.  Folks, I have never once tested my children.  I do not recall ever being tested by my own mother.  I did not have to prove that I loved my mom or dad.  I do not test my own children to see if they really love me.  I think…why would anyone say something so cruel to a child (of God) who is in pain or confused about a situation?

I have said many times “to whom much is given, much is expected”.  I said it again last night.  I stand watching a loved one bear what looks to others like a huge burden and this is the reminder that was whispered into my ear.  As I wrote those words out I knew that if he was not “given much” he would not have any real understanding of what I was saying to him.  But I also knew in my heart that these were the words he needed to hear.

All is not lost.  He is not being tested to see how strong he is.  If he were not given much to begin with, none of this would be happening near him.  He would not be expected to know what to do, he would not be able to continue to praise God for all of his blessings.  He would not already have the answer to his prayers.  The Tree would not be calling him into the circle.  The heartbeat of the people would not be calling him to sing again.

I started thinking, even last night before I went to bed, about the number of people I know who have been “given much”.  I was really amazed.  There are a bunch.  It turns out, at least in my life, that it is not rare for me to see amongst my family and friends many who have been “given much”.  There are some who have much love, much intelligence, much wisdom, much beauty, much charisma, much of so many abilities.  I smiled because I realized that it was no wonder that my own life ran so smoothly and evenly keeled, I mean, look at all these wonderful people I know who have been given so much and whether they know it or not; giving back what they have freely, as was given to them.

I was still thinking about this morning.  This past 30 days has been rough on my family.  But this is a family that was given much and we know that much is expected from us in return.  We get tired, we get weepy, we get sad but we are never without hope, truth or love.

No, my beautiful family, we are not being tested.  We are being given the opportunity to show the world where our strength comes from and Whose children we really are!

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Contemplation, journaling, Life, Me, Native American Women, Writing

Piano Fingers

I was perusing Facebook the other day and watched a video of four people playing the same piano.  They all took turns turning the pages and smiling, eight hands roaming up and down the keys as they pounded out the piece they were playing.  I liked the music and pictured the same piece being played on four different pianos by the same four people.  It would have sounded the same but would not have been as fun to watch.

What I noticed more than everything else I was watching was that they all did that thing piano players do, you know…rocking back and forth to the music as they changed tempo and raised and lowered sound of the keys from soft to loud and back to soft.  All piano players do it…as I have observed.  I am not a player so I can’t say that I do it but I notice things like that.

It started me thinking.  I could start imagining myself sitting at the keyboard of my laptop rocking back and forth as I pounded out my blog or a story or a chapter in a book.  I could imagine writing faster and slower, changing tempo as the thoughts rolled out of my head and to my hands; pounding now and lightly tapping then.  I wondered how that would look to the casual observer.  I wondered if getting so into my writing would cause me to do the same so I sat down and started writing.  My first words were tentative and as the thoughts began to flow my typing got faster and faster and mistakes were backspaced and corrected quickly then the thought would end and everything would slow until the next thought was born.  Two hundred words, three hundred words…five hundred words and so on until the piece was completed.

Funny thing is, I never once swayed forward or backward.  I didn’t lower my head and listen the tapping as I created each sentence.  The speed varied on the thought but that was about it.  My typing as always been a bit like listening to a DI walk across the room…rather loud as each heel strikes the ground as the DI pounds each step into the floor.  Yes, I walk the same way as I type…just a bit intense.  I have had to paint the letters back on the keyboard I use for my tablet twice now.  Still, no swaying to the words the same way that a pianist sways to the music that is being played.

I would stop every now and again to look back over my work. Piano players, I noticed, don’t do that.  When I didn’t like the way a sentence ended or didn’t like the way one thought flowed into the next I took the time to fix it.  Again, piano players don’t get that luxury.  Once the music is sounded it is out there and once a mistake is made the best you can do is try to cover it up with the next note or change the piece altogether and then let everyone think that you meant for it to sound that way.

These are just the things I was thinking today.  All I can say about that is piano players are not typist when they are playing and typist are not piano players when they are typing.  I think that even if I did play the piano I would not sway to they typing like I would sway to the music….

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Girlfriends, journaling, Life, lifecoaching, meditaton, Native American Women, Retreat, Writing

My Sacred Journey

I have such wonderful friends.  But even as strong as we would like to be there are times that even the strongest of us hits the wall and dang, does that hurt.  We all decided long ago (everyone in my tiny circle is not as young as we used to be) that we were not going to allow that wall to stop us even if it slowed us down a minute.  So we decided to get together and have a weekend retreat.

The crew, like any crew, as specialties.  My specialty is being a life coach so I took the lead.  I named the retreat, set the agenda, made the to-do list and lined up the teachers.

We learned some mediation do’s and don’ts.  We learned some easy-peasy journaling techniques and we studied-just briefly-the how’s and why’s of “chemical reactions to emotional inputs”.  We built a “God box” to work on faith building and….we talked!

We talked and we cried and we laughed.  We acknowledged that we are strong and that we are fragile, that we are young at heart and as old as the hills.  We heard, from our own mouths, some real wisdom and some really silly notions.

It was a good weekend!

Winter is coming and this is where we needed to be….looking at ourselves, getting ready to get into hibernation mode.  We are not bears so we cannot sleep the winter months away but we are women and we can take this time to slow down and look deeply into our mirrors.  We can use this time to really think about everything we went through this weekend….to think about our Sacred Journey, about the women we walk with, about those we have left behind, about what we learned and what we want to learn next.

We will open our “God boxes” next spring after we have filled them with our prayers to see what has transpired in our prayer lives and see our how our faith as grown.  We will have laughed and cried even more when the winter is done and the spring has started again.  We have so much to look forward too.

Now I am sitting here thinking about everything that happened this weekend and find that rather than be physically, emotionally and spiritually drained I am excited and energetic.  It is so wonderful to be with such wonderful women all weekend and to know that we have fueled each other, built each other up and took the time to remind each other how much we really mean to each other and to ourselves.  I am filled with gratitude.

My sacred journey continues….

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Contemplation, Life, Native American Women

No Show

To the rest of the Friday afternoon Starbucks crowd I realize that I look just like another yuppish hippy girl ticking away at a teeny tiny keyboard enjoying a vente mocha but I  am not.  I am, in fact, a frustrated supervisor who had an interview scheduled to start half an hour ago.

I want to say that I am angry but I really am not.  I just wonder, you know?  I wonder about the people I hear who sit around complaining about their lives and who don’t do anything to actually change their circumstances.

She has a job.  I know she has a job because I read her application.  When I set the time for the interview she specifically asked for a time after her shift at her current job.  I think…wait, I thought it was admirable.  So many people just walk off the job leaving current employers hanging that it is actually refreshing to speak with someone who appeared to have some work ethic.  I suppose that this has not changed, work ethic she has….courtesy she does not, and here I sit.

There are a lot of people who say they want better jobs or better lives that can be attained by better jobs but I am just not so sure anymore.  Perhaps there are some people who really do need work and would like to have anyone meet them for an interview but not here, not today.

The coffee/frappuccino crowd wains and wanes, the professionals, the students, the expected and the “never thought he/she would enter this place” kinds of people purposefully and aimlessly order drinks as I sit here watching.  If I had any guts I would ask a few if they need jobs.  Afterall, I did come her to conduct an interview.

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getting in shape, Life, Me, Native American Women

Not very Brave

I had hoped that by this day I would be 1) a non-smoker and 2) could swim a mile without stopping. Here is where I am-can’t claim either. Is that sad?

I was talking to a friend and we were discussing her life and her life choices. She said “I wish I was strong enough, maybe someday I will be that strong”. I told her then that she was strong enough, she proved that everyday. She was a divorced mother of two, raising her babies without any help at all from her ex. That she had strength and she exhibited plenty of it, everyday. I said “what you need is to be brave”…brave enough to tell him (her ex) NO when she needed to. Like when he showed up on her doorstep unannounced and started telling her how everything was going to be. She was very happy with me for telling her she was strong and decided that being brave was something she could definitely work on.

This is, I have decided, where I am as well. The first of the year came around and for a week prior I was thinking about how I was not going to buy cigs anymore. Then the actual 1st came up and I did not stop smoking. I know that this is so bad for me. I know that if I could expand my lungs a bit further I could accomplish a bit more, physically. I have the strength required for the commitment, I lack the bravery required to actually stop. What will I do when I think I need to smoke? What will I do with my hands? How much more will I eat when I can no longer hold that cigarette between my fingers? These are not hard questions…just a little scary when I get to the nitty-gritty of actually getting things done.

I also had decided that since I ended the year able to swim 1/2 mile without stopping that if I kept at it, by the time my birthday came around (end of January) I should be able to swim an entire mile (70 lengths of the pool) without stopping. I had my schedule all mapped out on the calendar. I would swim every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and keep adding a few laps each week and…ta-da…by the end of the month….goal accomplished. But work has been constant and I am far enough behind that it is just too easy to use it as an excuse to not leave my house to head to the pool. Then I actually made it to the pool one day this week, mistimed “open lap” by 30 minutes and did not bring any regular workout clothing with me. I decided just to take a shower, head upstairs and hang upside down on the inversion table for a few minutes. I totally counted it as a full workout seeing how I took my gym bag to the gym and changed clothes during that time. Needless to say, I have not increased the number of laps I can swim.

I have to admit, I am disappointed in myself. I have managed to almost get caught up with my paperwork for my job but not to get my personal goals one step closer to ideal. I will be 52 at the end of January. I thought about this stuff all day today. It is almost midnight (EST) and I am just finishing up my work for the day. At some point I will have to be brave enough to make me my number one priority.

This is something that I can actually work on….

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Contemplation, Life, Native American Women

Mirror, mirror…

I found out that a young man I know will spend the next 45 years of his life in prison. I am troubled. My exact words to another friend was “I hate seeing our young men suffer so much”.

I understand the penalty for the crime. I understand why a crime like this was committed. I understand why supporters of this young man are so very upset. These are not my problem, these things I understand.

I have said to more than one person, do not take anything I tell you as gospel. Take everything I tell you to prayer. Ask God, ask Him is I am right. Ask Him if I am telling you the truth. I say this to people because most people have become so very lazy, so much like sheep….just following along with what everyone else is doing without thinking for themselves. I find this to be troubling, to say the least.

My problem is trying to understand why our young men choose to suffer so much when it is needless. There are choices to be made and all choices you make bear consequences you must pay. Some choices are easy and some choices are right. Unfortunately the easy choice is not always the right choice. Often times the right choice is most difficult and that’s where the thinking ends, no further exploration of consequences. The end result? Rarely is it the happy ending you were hoping for.

My next question was “what can we do to help?”. My friend said, “I wish prayer was the answer”. I liked that answer, he was honest. Prayer obviously is not “the answer”. if it were then all of our friends and family would be happy and healthy and rich and full of life. There is a missing key, I think.

Yes, you know what I am going to say….making the right choice. That part is on you. I know that if I want my life to be happy, if I want to be healthy then I must make those choices that end in those consequences. If I want a different end then those things I mentioned then all I have to do is make different choices. So simple. Please notice that I did not say ‘so easy’….because it is not.

I told my friend that there was one thing we could do immediately and consistently and that is to be an example of not suffering so looks like. Be an example to others of what making good choices looks like. Be the mirror for someone who is looking for that one person who is not paying consequences of bad decisions.

The good thing about being a willing example is that it does not mean you are perfect or that you think you are perfect. It simply means that you are ok with others looking closely at your life (today, not your past life) and seeing that you are making choices that bear consequences you are proud to bear.

I cannot make choices for you, as much as you would like for that to happen. I cannot bear consequences caused by your bad choices, those are yours to own. But I will be an example that you can look at when you wonder what happens if you make the right choice over the easy choice. I will continue to pray for you so that as you make your choices you know that you are not alone when facing those hard choices.

I know that I am not perfect and I am just fine with that assessment of me but I do like what I see when I look into my mirror.

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