The Sun Came Up After All

How about that? The election is over and we're still upright and breathing. The sun rose and things are moving along just as they did yesterday.

From where I sit, and where I think a lot of my fellow countrymen sit, there is a profound sense of relief. Relief and a looking-forward feeling that we're not about to fall off the edge into a downward spiral of more regulation, higher taxes and greater government control over our lives. It IS hopeful in America because, after months and months of struggle, door knocking, phone calls, hard work and hoping, we have a man with a positive, hopeful, uplifting message for America.

Donald Trump has said repeatedly, in front of hundreds of thousands of witnesses, that he will be OUR president. That he will work for US. That he loves America. That he will do all he can to protect our country and our best interests on the world stage.

I look forward to that. I look forward to looking up instead of down. I look forward to having a chance for a better quality of life, a thriving economy with higher employment. This is, truly, a new day and it is full of hope and the prospect of change we were promised more than eight years ago.

No matter what the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) says, there are tens of millions of people who are and who have been sitting on the sidelines, sometimes for years, who haven't been able to find work. They are the truly disenfranchised, the hopeless. Now, because of the programs and ideas Donald Trump has publicized, they can hope again. They, too, can look forward to getting back to work, to digging in and feeling that sense of well-being that comes from contributing to the greater good through the effort of their own labor.

It won't happen immediately, but you can already see the sense of relief, of looking-forward in the stock market.

Companies that engage in construction and infrastructure, the equipment manufacturers, the material suppliers, are seeing a bounce in their stock prices. There is anticipation that those will be needed - and those companies will again be offering employment opportunities. In a matter of months, I think a lot of the un-employed, the given-up, the under employed will begin to see the budding of a new economic boom.

The coal industry, the broader energy industry, the lifeblood of our country will start to resurge. Jobs will open - the high paying jobs that have been promised for years and years - will start to open up and that will benefit the workers, their families and their communities. People will have money in their pocket, not because of government largesse or theft from others in the form of taxes, but because of their own labor. For the honest, the willing, there is no greater sense of satisfaction than going to work, working hard and, when the day is done looking back and saying, "I did a lot today" or "I had a good day."

It has been a long time, too long, since America has had an opportunity like this. I am glad we finally do. I am glad the sun rose over America this morning and there is change in the air.

And, in the spirit of the day, the hope and the expectation, I'll leave it there.

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

It's Just Life - So It's Okay

I grumped the other day, and then I whined, and now things are back under control. Sort of. I'm pretending, anyway.

Really, things haven't changed. I'm just accepting that there are certain things I can affect and others I can't. If I can't affect them, worrying and fretting and grumping and whining won't change them. It just diminishes my pleasure in other things. I'll let them go.

It's cold here today. It was cold enough overnight that the road crews were out spreading sand over the roadways. When I came over the ridge and started down into Calistoga there was snow on the palisades above town. Not a lot - just a touch here and there in the shadows, and Mt. St. Helena looked a bit paler than usual - not her usual dusky self.

We are supposed to get "rain" here, although it's so cold it probably won't rain. If we do get precipitation, it will probably come down as snow - a light dusting would be all since we're so low in altitude and relatively near the coast. That'll no doubt be enough, though. Enough to get us Californians seriously messed up and in the ditch because most people around here haven't a clue how to drive safely in the rain (slow down and leave more space between you and the other guys). The snow, if we get any, will be a real adventure (slow down even more and leave a lot more space between you and the other guys).

I did get good news and satisfaction today, so that's a plus.

The project about which I was grumping the other day is done and turned in. That's the satisfaction.

The good news is that the carpet I've ordered for the conference room here will be delivered and installed on Wednesday - in time for year end. Another bit of good news came via e-mail - a release from an obligation that is a rather pleasant surprise considering surrounding circumstance.

Now, I have a couple of phone calls to make, and get the year-end billing wrapped up (yeah, good luck with that!). But! If I get those done this week will be off to a good start.

It looks like our vendors want to get their year-end billing wrapped up, too. I got a boatload of paper today - all of which need to be reviewed and coded and entered and passed along. By ten o'clock tomorrow morning.

(So why are you writing this, Phil? Because I'm on my lunch hour, silly.)

Besides, whatever doesn't get processed (I'll take care of the big ones first) will be accrued - just like every other business.

Then I get to turn my attentions to The Stack. It's the pile anyone who works has. It's the catch-all and I don't care if it's an In-Tray, a Pending Box or just a corner of the desk, it's The Stack since you, just as I, probably deal with the easy stuff first. I don't even have an In-Tray because it's going to be The Stack whether or not it's contained. So I let it spread out and get comfy until I get to it.

Most of it will be straightforward. It's just those documents - a hefty portion - that are written in Asian characters. I haven't a clue whether it's Japanese, a form of Chinese (I have some documents from both Taiwan and Mainland China) or Korea - but I have to group them together somehow. That'll be interesting and that's the thing that's really kept me from diving into The Stack before now.

Unfortunately for me, my Stack is inherited and I'm not quite sure what it includes. Some of it I'm familiar with because I put it there after touching it and looking at it. A lot of it, though, arrived in the same boxes in which it's sitting. Someone left, I get The Stack from their desk. Someone moved, I get The Stack from their cube. Then there are the hefty portion that are in Asian characters. Hmm. If it were French or Italian or even Cyrillic I might stand a chance - change my keyboard and start entering letters (typing) and see what comes up and match, then translate. Unfortunately, with the similarities between the several and my total lack of code deciphering skills...

Last week I dreamed I would have this week to whittle The Stack down to size. Hah! Then I got my project. Then I thought, "Yay!" Then I got the mail. "Damn."

Oh well. That is the Truth about Stacks. Never mind if you clear it up this week, it will start to regrow (kind of like a mold or something) next week. It's like dust - inevitable and self-recurring.

As for me and my other world, I'm giving it over. I cannot keep worrying about things over which I have no control. If I can control it, even a little, I can fix it. If I can't, then worrying is a waste of time, attention and energy. I'll set it aside and deal with it when the time comes.

I even wrote a little (about two hundred words) this weekend. The first time I've felt like writing anything in several weeks, so maybe there is a bright horizon out there. We'll see.

In the meantime, I'm going to get started on the billing and then dive into The Stack.

Have a lovely day!

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

A Woman Exercising

Okay. I ended up taking yesterday off from this, too. Guilty as charged. Although I seriously doubt anyone really missed this drivel, but I'll pretend hard that they did.

Mind changing is said to be a woman's prerogative, but we all know that it's equally in the purview of men. It's just that we women talk about it while we think things over and guys don't. They just do it. Just like I did mid-stream yesterday.

I sat down here and started off yesterday in a philosophical mood. Grateful for the things that I have and wishing everyone could have at least the basics. Shelter, clothes, food, you know, the basics for a life that can be worked on and grown and developed into something more.

Then I started in again on politics and terrorism and got depressed. Yes, I actually developed a case of depression that's still with me this morning.

I do have a lot for which to be thankful. I am not "lucky". I work hard and strive to meet my responsibilities and obligations and do reasonably well at it. Of course there's room for improvement. There always is, so that is something I can strive for.

I'm healthy. I have a healthy daughter who is happily married and who is going to make me a Grandma in a couple of months. I saw her and her hubby yesterday. He is as he always is, a bit reserved. She looks marvelous - baby bump and all.

Then I had to race home again because my hubby isn't happy. He was downright "bothered" (as in sulky) when I got home because he expects that because he doesn't want to have a relationship with daughter, I shouldn't either. * Shrug * Well, good luck with that.

But it was bothersome. All the time I was talking with daughter my stomach was knotting and churning because I knew when I got home I was going to face some form of a pissed off hubby. Sometimes, as yesterday, he's just silently grouchy. Other times he gets downright nasty. One time, when daughter took me out for breakfast for Mother's Day, he went off on a two hour tirade. In that, he threatened me with divorce because I had spent two pleasant hours in the company of the young woman whom I am proud to call daughter.

And that's one reason I'm depressed. In fact, thinking of it, it's the only reason I'm depressed. The life I live is "challenging", at the very best.

Between MIL and hubby. I'm constantly trying to wobble along the sharp edge of a razor blade, striving to meet the balance between happy and tolerance. Right now it feels as if I'm standing on one foot, arms extended, staring at my feet and fighting to find my balance so I don't fall.

There's a lot of garbage there, a lot of history and background and it's not worth bringing up here. Take it on trust, and that's what's affecting me.

Now this isn't a depression that's going to make me do anything stupid or irredeemable. It's just a depression that I know I have to work through. It's a case of minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour and one day at a time until some of the things I'm waiting for come clear. And that, right there, is the genesis of this. I just do not cope well with uncertainty and things are about as uncertain as they can be. The things on which I'm waiting keep moving so I can't identify a date-certain and say, "then". It's ambiguous and fluid and I don't deal well with stuff like that, so I'm less than pleased.

This too shall pass and it's another case of that which does not kill me will make me stronger. As I've said a few times since 2012 started, by the time I hit eighty I'm going to be about the strongest woman on the planet. I just have to keep my eye on the prize, focus on the future - perhaps fifteen or eighteen months off. That gives me time to plan, to decide what and how and so on.

Then, thinking of me in my little microcosm, I feel guilty because I really don't have it all that bad. My "misery" is self-centered and pretty damned unimportant when I think of the broader world.

So many people have lost homes and families this Christmas. Between the wildfires in Australia and Southern California and the horrendous devastation there, the tornadoes in the Southeast - Texas in particular. I have the news on while I'm writing and the horror of the tornadoes that whipped through Dallas last night, picking up cars off of an overpass and dropping them straight down onto cars lined up on the roadway below, killing the people in both vehicles.

There's all the crap going on in the Middle East and the fighting that are leaving dozens of people dead every day.

And I'm worried about this stuff? Really? Well... It's not a prideful time, but yes, really.

I can't do anything for the people in the Middle East. I cannot do anything to affect or alleviate the wildfires or tornadoes. I feel badly for those caught up in those crises, but I can have no direct affect on them except to donate blood or money or both. While my feelings are selfish, they are also real, front and center. So I'll focus and plan. I'll look up and forward instead of remaining as I am, staring at my one foot that's so wobbly.

So, yes, really and probably not all that different from many other people. I'm not proud. I'm not happy. But I am, as always, honest and, like other people who are in similar circumstance and situation, striving for that balance.

Don't worry, though. I'll find it. In the meantime, I'm going to go play Farm Heroes Saga and see if I can't beat that next level.

Have a lovely day!

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

NOO-O-O-O-O-O!!!

The sad word came down yesterday that Harper Collins is closing down its Authonomy website come the end of September.

Personally, this is like losing a really good friend. Authonomy is the site on which I first came out of my cocoon and made my writing public. It's like losing my crib or something and for the past twenty-four hours I've run the gamut of despair to resignation to acceptance and back. Which is why this post is arriving so late in the day - I'm back in denial and flailing for answers that just aren't there.

Autho and I didn't always see eye-to-eye. It didn't always like me and I didn't always like Autho, but it's been like a drug. I kept going back for more and now, come midnight (I guess) on 09/30 it will go dark - and that's sad.

There are a lot of great people there - some I will miss more than others, but all of whom have enriched me in one way or another. They have held up the mirror and revealed my own warts, or they have supported me when I've stumbled.

We users may cross the river and gather on the other side. Discussions came up, after the gasps of shock, about how and where and I hope at least some don't burst like soap bubbles on a windy day.

Yes, there are other sites. Yes, there is Scribophile and Book Country and Wattpad for the writers, but they aren't nearly as interactive or exciting as Authonomy has been.

On Authonomy there were stamping feet and flying objects (mostly imaginary) when people had sharp disagreements, which was part of its charm once the tempest died down. It was like being in a bar before, during and after a John Wayne-type brawl.

Scribophile, for one, is far more civilized and disagreements are frowned upon - heavily moderated - which reduces the popcorn munching interest of standing on the sidelines and watching two or three or several people going at it.

I haven't been on Scribophile for nearly a year, so maybe things have changed.

I also have an account with Book Country, but I haven't been there for nearly as long as Scribo, and the last time I was there it was just about the least friendly / most unusable site I've ever seen. Have things changed? I don't know but I guess I'll find out.

Well, this goes to show, yesterday was, indeed, one of THOSE days.

As another one of those comeuppance moments, I misspoke on my Twitter post the other day - my post came out: Boycott Philippa Stories which was NOT my intent at all, and I got poked for it in a Tweet I discovered yesterday morning. One of those cases of 'unintended consequence' and not seeing the problem until after the fact - so I just smiled, deleted my original and re-tweeted.

Then I discovered Autho is biting the dust.

A sad, awful, distressing day indeed. But yesterday passed and I'm into today. I've re-upped my account at Book Country and will try that. I'll re-up my account at Scribophile, too. Another site, absolutewrite, has my name and I'm just waiting for them to unlock the door.

Some members on Autho are discussing ways and means to create our own website - which would be marvelous and cool, but I suspect that as such things do, it is more doomed to failure than likely to succeed. The first blush of crisis is wearing off and some members are starting to shrug their shoulders and say 'oh well, it was fun while it lasted'.

I guess, as with everything else, time will tell. In the meantime, I hope your past two days have been marvelous, and I wish you more of the same, tomorrow.

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

The Importance of Dreams

I'm not talking about the midnight visitors that show up to tell us a tale - scary or sublime. These are the self-created dreams, the ones to which we can hold fast when the world around us seems to be too much to bear.

Perhaps ten or twelve years ago I had reached The End. Fed up with my existence (no stretch of the imagination would let me call it a Life), not seeing anything ahead of me that was any different than the darkness around me, I was ready to throw in the towel. To kill myself.

It's a despair that steals in, a thief of self-esteem, of self-value, self-determination, self-anything. It is anathema to Self, the important part of us that makes us who are, what we do and love and look forward to. I had no dreams, no goals except to make it through the day in which I was existing.

There was the tree alongside the freeway just past the Marin-Sonoma County line. I passed it everyday, eying and evaluating its worthiness. Its base is perhaps eight-feet below the surface of the road, approximately twenty feet in a straight line from the edge of pavement, an ancient eucalyptus with a diameter of at least seven feet. With enough speed, I could bridge that gap.

A bit farther was the concrete bridge abutment. At the end of a cut, separated from earth by a triangular sliver of sky. Steer for the gap, the driver's side would hit the concrete, old and solid, the car would either come to rest or squeeze through that space and plummet fifty feet down a hillside. Either way, I wouldn't care.

Enough. Enough of that, of old hopelessness, the life without dreams. I live.

For months, many months in that period, I fought the demon that stood on my shoulder, at my side, followed me through my days whispering to me, 'Do it, come on, do it. You're miserable, unhappy, nothing will change.'

To him, I said 'No! There must be more, there's got to be!'

And I was right. There is more, so much more if only we stop and look up, imagine, ask ourselves 'what do I want and how can I get it?'

They can't be impossible dreams, unachievable dreams, or they will become self-defeating and the demon will win because despair will surely follow. They must be realistic - within reach if only you climb high enough and stretch out your hand to pluck them up and are willing to shift your life story to meet them.

Most honestly, I didn't survive that time for anyone but myself. I didn't do it for my husband, my daughter or my mother-in-law. I did it for me. It had to be for me, or I would be back where I was, stuck in a swamp of hopelessness and misery.

I began to dream. Small at first, just little attainable wishes. So small that now, nearly ten years later I can't even remember most of them. One I do remember, was a little one. I wished that my husband would stop calling me 'mom', as if I am his mother, his nanny and caretaker. I already felt like that in many ways because, in many ways, he's helpless just as I am in some ways.

I wanted to separate from him, to create a life where I was my own person, able to do and decide for myself but I wasn't quite strong enough to break away. We went to counseling. We talked to each other through the counselor. I expressed my frustration with 'mom'. He expressed his about other things. We're still together and I still have my dream.

What is it? Ah! Speak your dreams and they might not come true, so I won't say, not here. Only inside where I can fan the flame, keep them burning and, when the time is right, set them free to expand from dream into reality, and then my fight with the demon will have been well and truly won.

Dare to dream. More importantly, hope to dream. Even if you can't see the way today, maybe you will tomorrow and it's that, that bright and shining Tomorrow toward which you need to guide your steps.

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories