Amor Fati: Why It's All Alright

“A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.” - Marcus Aurelius

If you could go back in time, what would you change about your life?

When you look at the most difficult, pain-filled moments in your past, what wells up inside of you? Is it a deep-rooted loathing? Denial? Hate? Bitterness? Terror? Gratitude?

I have a handful of regrets in my life, some things I wish that I could do-over, like the floral turtlenecks and corduroy jumpers of my high school years, or that perm in 1993… But when it comes to the Really Big and Terrible things that have happened in my life, I wouldn’t undo it. Not because I found any pleasure in those moments or because I am some sort of a masochist, but because it was in those moments, days, years, that I found myself. The person I am today, any growth or success that I have experienced, was made possible by the obstacles that were placed in my path. The unavoidable suffering. The things I didn’t ask for. The things that weren’t my fault.

This is what amor fati means: love of fate. The deep, resonant acknowledgement that everything happens for a reason. Not every day is a good day, but even the bad ones are necessary. On the surface, it’s easy enough to say that pain and misery give us a deeper appreciation for the joy and comfort we find later, but more than that, trials and tribulations give us the complexity, the problem-solving skills, the resilience to navigate the rough water as we move ahead in life. For every broken heart, I am grateful. For every ache in my soul, I give thanks. They have made me who I am.

The hardships I have suffered in my life pale in comparison to the ordeals that many have faced over the centuries. Studying great minds from history has taught me that my misery is the equivalent of a holiday for people who have survived so much worse. The horrors of the Holocaust taught us the power of the human spirit and the responsibility of all mankind for his brother, and it gave birth to powerful voices like Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Laureate, who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps to later write “If the only prayer you say throughout your life is ‘Thank You,’ then that will be enough.” Wiesel witnessed atrocities that we cannot even fathom, and yet his message to the world is one of gratitude.

Life is a force that is, for the most part, out of our control. We buy the illusion of control with our meticulously cultivated plans and strategies, but all it takes is one breath of fate to blow us off our well-charted course into an oblivion, where it is up to us to buck and thrash against what has happened, grasping to regain our delusional sense of destiny, or roll with the wave and bob to the surface upright, looking for the new course and destination - maybe even with gratitude and excitement.

As a young girl, I fell hook-line-and-sinker for the line in the bible that promised me the desires of my heart, if I did what the lord asked of me. I did it, and more, and got shit-in-a-basket in return… far from what I thought the desire of my heart was, a fairy tale love and story book life. Come to find out, that’s not really what I wanted anyway. This restless soul wasn’t ever cut out for a happily-ever-after, turns out I am more of a choose-your-own-ending kinda girl, and it was the darkest moments of my life that have made that possible - I wouldn’t change it for the world.

So amor fati. Love fate. Bring it on. I’ve got my life jacket, which sometimes comes in the form of a bottle of wine, a beer with a friend, a road trip to reset, or sometimes it’s just really loud music on the stereo . We’re all on this ride together and I am grateful that my switchbacks have led me here, to you, and this place where we can ride out the storm together and see what’s on the other side.

Being a Girl is Hard

All I want is boots that are both warm AND cute. I want panties that don’t show OR ride up. I want hair that looks beautiful but doesn’t suffocate me. I want a bra that does what bra should do without making me feel like I’m in a straight jacket.

I don’t get to dress up very often. I bought this dress from an Australian designer last year with Big Plans about wearing it out on “date night” but after three rescheduled “date nights,” four multitasking outings to the Big City that did quadruple-duty as date/Costco/Home Depot/AllTheThings days that were not cute-dress appropriate, and a handful of skipped/postponed/rainchecked holidays like anniversaries and Valentine’s Day that coincided with Very Important Work Things and/or a Bad Attitude, the dress has remained in its pristine, $359 Price tag still attached, condition. Until today.

Because what could be a better opportunity than a trip to the Big City for a superstar concert? In sub-freezing temperatures. With a few stops for business errands on the way. And a home inspection. And a few groceries. And a meeting or two. And waiting in the car for awhile.

It’s given me ample opportunity to realize that however adorable, this dress is hella short. Also these were the absolute wrong panties to wear with a too-short dress, even though they do match the cute bra that is riding up my back. And falling down my shoulders. And pinching me in places other than where I liked to be pinched, which happens to be nowhere in sub-freezing weather.

I’m envious that Someone Else rolled straight from work in comfortable AND stylish jeans, with a laid back AND sexy flannel shirt and boots that are both warm AND hip, and looks just as good as me without any bra pinches, hair stranglehold or numb toes. It’s just not fair.

I know in a cocktail or two I’ll feel great and won’t care so much if Pamela down the bar from me can see my ill-fitting underwear under my too short skirt on a bar stool. If she complains, I’ll flash her a glimpse of my matching bra with complimentary boob bruises so she can at least appreciate the effort.

Tell me I’m not alone. Other girls look pretty. They look all cute and done up and ALSO comfortable. How am I doing it wrong? And how can ALL OF THE MAKEUP I put on three hours ago be gone already??? I used Aquanet on my face forgodssake. I curled my hair TWICE, and used Aquanet on it too, but you could never tell.

He’s so smug in his sexy pearl snap flannel, while my goose bumps are accelerating leg hair growth to Mach 3 speed. My mother would suggest tights. Which I would scoff at, but be warmer in. But then all night, struggling to hoist the perpetually sagging crotch line back to its assigned position… lord help me.

Just tell me I’m not alone in the struggle. Tell me it’s worth the fight and Mr. hasn’t-even-gotten-a-haircut-in-six-months’ effortless, sexy vibe is at least contagious. Or just buy me another low calorie gin and soda and join me in my misery.

Here’s to us, ladies. The quietly enduring champions of beauty, bearing our pain in (mostly) silence and smiling for the selfie that had better damn not make us look fat, for the love of peter.

Why the Dismal Nitch?

I’ve been predictability for a long time. I was Bendability for awhile. I’ve been many things over the years, but the only thing that is always the same in my life, the one consistent thing, which earned me my predictability nickname, is that I am always looking ahead, to the next place, the next thing, the next iteration of me. Never settle. Predictably changeable. Predictably inconsistent. Predictably seeking. Hey man, cut me some slack. I’m a gemini.

When I was a kid, and later, a young woman, my mom lectured me on learning contentment. I’ve gotten the “bloom where I am planted” speeches from various sources throughout my life, and the dozen or so different therapists I’ve had a session or two with were interested in talking about my restlessness, but I have come to love it as a part of what makes me, me. Even my mom has come to terms with it, I think. Or at least she doesn’t chide me any more about being discontent.

My itch to know what’s out there, what comes next has been built into me since I was a small child and I was tunneling through the blackberry jungles of our property in Oregon. It was there when I threw my whole teenage heart and soul into a religion that led me to a dead end and stripped me of much of my faith. It was there when I set out with four unruly girls in tow to see what else there was to do in the world, and it’s the reason those girls are so wildly perfect.

When I read about Lewis and Clark’s Dismal Nitch, it spoke straight to my soul. For three days, the explorers and their party of smelly guides and trappers and tag-a-longs (not the Girl Scout kind) hunkered down on a tiny beach with barely enough shelter and barely enough food to get by, with their ultimate destination after an unthinkably hard but world-changing journey, almost in sight. For three days they waited out howling storms, relentless rain and freezing cold, knowing their goal was THISCLOSE. They were almost there. They had nearly arrived. But the Dismal Nitch was the place that kept them alive. It wasn’t THERE. It wasn’t where they wanted to be, but it was necessary. That’s where I am in my life at any given time. Taking shelter from the storm, financially, emotionally, whatever weird weather comes my way, dug into a little beach with not quite enough of whatever it seems like would make life perfect, and not quite to the destination that might be my ultimate spot.

But let’s be honest. Did Lewis and Clark quit seeking after they left the Dismal Nitch and ran into the Pacific Ocean? After an arduous return journey, the two adventurers tried their hand at a few other occupations, politics, diplomacy, businesses… Neither one settled into a longterm profession to live out their old age, and both stories continue on with turmoil and intrigue and drama that made the Dismal Nitch seem like a distant, peaceful memory.

Even though I like life to move a little more slowly now, and I can appreciate couch time with the best of them, I don’t know that I will ever be able to tell a longterm tale of one occupation or have the secure knowledge that I have “arrived” and I am finally ok with that.

I am learning, unlike poor Meriwether Lewis, to be more careful on some counts, and with the help of Certain Individuals, I am reluctantly embracing the need to plan my financial security and my physical health around my restless quest for what’s next, and I am learning to love the Dismal Nitch.

Some days, I love it more than others, but I every year I get better about riding out the storms and enjoying the ride along the way.

So that’s why the Dismal Nitch. While I am here, I am gonna bring all the things that I love about it, about where I am Right Now, together and share them. I’m gonna funnel all the things about the Nitch that make it great into one place so that even I can go back and remember why the little beach is better than the big, angry river, no matter how close I am to where I think I want to go.

As it turns out, most of the time where I want to go wasn’t nearly as good as where I was, so it’s ok to just hang here in the Nitch, with all of you, ‘cause we’re all in this together.

The Good Ones

The morning of my daughter’s 14th birthday, as I hugged her goodbye when she went to school, I was in the middle of writing a story about the Route 91 shooting in Las Vegas. How many parents hugged their kids goodbye that day - how many husbands kissed their wives... how many friends texted TTYL for the last time that day? More than 59, at least. Each person who stood in front of that stage represented the lives of so many more. Each life lost was an echo of their parents, friends, children... everyone they loved and everyone that loved them. None of them knew it was the last time. None of them had anything in mind except a good time. None of them went to downtown Las Vegas knowing they would die, or knowing they would be asked to act heroically in the face of unimaginable danger.

My Facebook feed is fraught with adamant proponents of gun control and staunch defenders of the second amendment right now, and on both sides of the fence, they are right. It IS time to talk about the issues that are plaguing us as a nation. It is ALWAYS the right time to tackle these things. Take my damn guns away from me if you must, if you think it will solve All Of The Problems, but then can we please, please focus on the hearts and minds of our families and communities? Can we look at how we have moved away from taking care of our own and knowing when something is not right with the person next to us?

We are so interconnected on a global scale that we have forgotten how to connect with the human next to us on a bus, on the playground, at the store, at a concert. We are so good at killing things virtually, and we enjoy the rush so thoroughly, that killing them in real life has lost its meaning for us. Remove all of the weapons and see how much change we experience. Cain killed Abel with a rock. Men murder their wives with bare hands every day. The tools of our violence are not the problem. The violence of our hearts is the problem. I will hand my guns right over if you will then stop and look at what we have accepted as a culture is "normal."

Murder and mayhem have become our entertainment. We delight in the gruesome and binge on horror as if these things have no effect on us, and even worse, the young minds absorbing everything around them. We are too consumed with the drama of people who have no bearing on real life that we miss the real life drama unfolding next door. Reality TV has replaced reality. We have become content to be observers instead of actors. This is our life. That shooter was our brother, our neighbor. Maybe he went to our church. The victims are all of us.

People have been killing each other since the dawn of time. Until we figured out how to trot from one side of the globe to the other, all of our mass killings took place in tribal genocide. Then we got bigger and better at war and found more intricate ways to justify our violence. Now we don't have the tribes to protect us because we're all so well off that we don't need each other.

Then suddenly we don't know where the shots are coming from, and we don't know who and we don't know why. In that moment, everyone around me becomes either my tribe or my enemy. I will protect, I will defend, I will sacrifice or I will claw my way to the top of the pile in self-preservation. But it's a faceless, causeless war that we fight here in the United States. It is a storm of terrorism with no predictable landfall. It is unmitigated anger, pain and hopelessness. We face the ever-morphing enemies of mental illness, racism, and religious extremism. The ones who take the brunt of this onslaught, we fault for their flawed reactions. We attack our officers and authorities for overreacting while we turn a blind eye to the neighbor or family member who began crying for help long ago. We protest violently against people doing their job who had no part in making the laws that we do or do not want. We're fighting each other - it's the perfect set up.

Half of my friends say removing guns will help. Half of my friends say defending our rights is the only solution. I cannot abide the offering up of more innocent Americans as the divided baby that is King Solomon's solution to an impasse. If giving up my rights creates a pathway to a productive conversation, I would gladly do so, but do we have ears to hear the truth, or more importantly, humility to admit that our shallow entitlement has led us here? Do we have the courage to tackle it one step at a time in our communities and homes and neighborhoods? Are we brave enough to teach our children that actions have consequences and that we are ALL responsible, or will the baby be split in half in spite of my sacrifice?

I do not have answers. I do not have the specific directions that tell us each as individuals which steps to take toward healing. But I do have hope. I have hope in the good people that are there, covering other bodies with their own in a hail of gunfire. People who run into the fray as others are running out. People who value the whole over self. People who do not see in sweeping generalizations. We are not a country of haters. We are a country with a few hateful people. But we are a country rich with good people who have looked away for too long. Good People who have turned to their televisions for answers and only found division. Good People who are growing weary of the endless blur that they are fed. Quit sheltering. Quit Avoiding. Quit denying and protesting vainly and taking your issues out on the only people who are out there holding the lines of order and morality and responsibility. Be the Good People. I believe in the Good People. I hope to God I am one of them.

I Work Out... Sort of.

Going to the gym is really, really hard for me.

Not because of the workout, although that part is sucky too. In fact, just squeezing into yoga pants and tying my shoes feels like a workout most days, but lifting weights and numbing my brain on cardio equipment isn't the worst part.

I don't mind the gym when it's empty, which is why 2 AM workouts might be ideal for me, especially on nights I can't sleep anyway, but we've been going lately in the mid-afternoon, and I don't know if it's the furloughed federal employees, millennials that crawled out of their mom's basements, or a running start class at the community college, but there are always so many youngish people at the gym in the middle of the day. And I hate it.

I am digging deep into my twisted psyche to understand why I hate it, because it's ridiculous. I've been closing my eyes, and doing that mental exercise where you take the thing that is bothering you and don't try to ignore it, or kill it, but you examine it lovingly to find out why it's bothering you, but I just find myself swirling farther into anxiety and gym-loathing.

It's a weird mixture of "all those people are looking at me, judging me" and "all those people take themselves so seriously and actually look ridiculous," which is me judging them and probably the reason that I assume they are judging me. I can't touch a weight or pedal a bike without this sense of panic that the people who seem to be hovering around me like a cloud of condescension are evaluating my leg positioning and grip style, ready with a thousand helpful "pointers" about how I am doing it wrong. I have no idea what right looks like, so I know I am not judging them on how they're doing their shit, I just can't figure out why nobody is laughing at themselves when they try not to fart on the incline sit-up board.

They're all so busy making huffing sounds and looking in mirrors and it makes me feel so... something really awful that I can't even identify, as though I had endured some gym-centric trauma in my past that I can't seem to recall.

Every cell in my body wants to retreat to a corner where there are no mirrors and face away from everyone, but then I am worried they will be judging my butt in yoga pants, even with my shirt pulled down to my knees.

It's a real-live anxiety thing for me. I should be getting cardio credits for my elevated heart rate the minute I walk into a crowded (in Colville that's 5 people) gym. I want to die. WHAT IS MY PROBLEM?

The crazy part is I have yet to run into a single person at the gym that I know or care about impressing, but I am completely self-conscious about being watched or noticed at all. I try to turn my headphones up loud and drown out all of the panting, grunting people around me but it doesn't seem to help. All the girls are hotter than me and all the guys are watching the hotter girls and I feel like the whole thing is a like a flock of peacocks strutting around making obnoxious mating sounds and I am like an out-of-place prairie dog feeling like I came to the wrong party. 

It has been pointed out to me that I had a similar mental resistance to financial issues but have more or less pushed through and (pretend) to feel more comfortable with the decisions I am making about my money. It has been suggested that I will have a similar break through at the gym, and I hope to God so because it's getting worse.

I know I am frustrated that in the almost two months of fairly regular short workouts and yoga, mixed with a lot of walking on my trip and some time on the ski hill falling down since we got home, I have only gotten progressively more sore and tired and yes, even gained weight. I am trusting that I will have a break through there as well, but I'll admit my faith is shaky right now.

I also know I have a long history with narcissistic males "teaching" me how I needed to workout, telling me what I was doing wrong and going into great detail about their extensive knowledge of physical fitness and how clear it was that I had no idea what I was doing, which might have been true, but didn't feel great coming from the same men who lamented not knowing me back when I was "really hot" and thin, but were committed to helping me get there again, for the sake of our relationship and with the hope they could be more attracted to me (PSA: Don't marry guys like that. You're welcome). So sweet.

So I have some beef with the gym. And very limited knowledge and exposure, save some quick-and-dirty lessons that I was given in order to teach weight class for P.E. as a highschool substitute. I know I have SO much to learn, but I also know I am super resistant to most benevolent teachers.

I want to go to the gym with somebody who can also make fun of themselves in the mirror and laugh when they get really bad vertigo getting off the treadmill. I want to go with somebody who doesn't take it so seriously and knows they're as ridiculous as I am. I want to get healthy and strong but I don't want to have panic attacks doing it. I want to figure out how to enjoy it.

I am open to suggestions here, or psychological evaluations, hypnosis, lobotomy...  sign me up. I want to get into it like normal people. Maybe a personal trainer? I tried a few cross-fit type classes and it wasn't much better - even more personal attention and forced interactions. But maybe I should try it again.

Right now, I am forcing myself to go out of sheer discipline and commitment, and some times when it's emptier aren't so bad. But sometimes are really bad. Tonight I am going to a Zumba class with some friends and I am looking forward to being able to be ridiculous with them. Because there's no other way to do Zumba - it's impossible to take yourself seriously at Zumba unless you're Beyonce.

Let there be light...

I learned something today about gratitude. I try, for the most part, to operate out of a spirit of love and gratefulness and humility. Sometimes I suck at this, because, like all y’all, I am human and I am not always all of those things. Sometimes I am not even any of those things. Earlier this week I was really fighting ungratefulness and a mean spirit. I am not sure why. It would be easy to blame hormones or lack of good sleep or being homesick or whatnot, but whatever the cause, I had a hard time being nice.

I didn’t really feel like writing, but all the Writing People are adamant that writing is a discipline, not a whimsical option. So I made myself write. The writing that came out of me, being in a bad place was, in a word, bad. I mean it was funny, don’t get me wrong. But maybe it was funny at the expense of people I didn’t really know… based on outside observation. Maybe it was prejudiced. Maybe it was unkind.

If my words don’t come out of a place of gratitude and love, they have no business being. It doesn’t matter if they are true. It doesn’t matter if they are funny as hell. I get this. Part of me bucks against censorship and feels like I have some inalienable right to say whatever the heck I want. Nothing that I said was SO HORRIBLE or illegal or even totally wrong, but I KNOW BETTER. I know better than to let loose words of mine that come from a place of darkness. They do nobody any good.

When the sun disappeared behind the shadow of the moon for a few brief minutes yesterday morning, it brought into startling clarity, just how much I take for granted. The world was cold. Much colder than it had been only minutes before in the light of the sun. It was dark and colorless, like the light of the sun took out every hue of green and yellow and blue and red when it left. It was the dusky colorless of the last light in the evening, when the road and the trees and the herds of whitetail deer roving dangerously among it all are the same color. This is the difference between words that come out of darkness and words that come out of light. Color and warmth are in the light. It’s just how it is.

It’s not that I shouldn’t ever be able to laugh and make light of where I am and the TRULY ridiculous things going on around me, but I know when my voice is kind and when it is not. In reality, I work with a lot of great people, in amazing places, and I feel very blessed for the years that I have done this crazy cool job.

Here is what I learned: When I am where I am supposed to be (which I try to be, most of the time), I need to be grateful and kind and humble, and if I cannot be those things, then I need to be still and quiet. I learned that I don’t like a sunless, lightless world. I want to live in the sun, in the color and the warmth. I want others to live there with me.

If the moon were a little closer to the earth, we would lose the sunlight more often. It really is an amazing thing, this astronomical system we live in. It overwhelms me to think about the infinite minutia that dictate our survival. The tiny changes in temperature, atmosphere, angles and rotations that determine how we live or die on this planet are, in a word, epic. It’s like the little changes in mood, in motivation, in voice that determine the effect of a word on the world that it lands on.

All change is facilitated either through love or through hate. Real love is born from gratitude, accepting your worth and giving it back to those around you. Hate creeps in to fill up the absence of gratitude, the ugly insecurity of the lie that you are worthless. A lie I know like the back of my hand. We are such small, insignificant parts of this giant miracle of a world. I want the change that I bring to my tiny space to be rooted in the warmth and color of love and light. I want to speak love without flattery, truth without unkindness and hope without dishonesty. I want to make people smile, and laugh, and love more.

Master of None

"You're such a jack-of-all-trades," she said, with what could be wantonly construed as a hint of admiration. "No seriously, you do it all!"

I shook my head, guzzled the last third of my Flume Creek/Honey Basil mix and sighed. "But I suck at every one of them."

The reality of this has never been more clear to me than it was as I stood raking dirt back into a hole that I had attempted to dig earlier in the week. The hole is big enough to park a Volkswagon Bug in, because I dug in the wrong direction exactly three times (which is how many you need to find all of the wrong edges of the septic tank) in order to begin digging in the right direction to find the second septic tank lid. I say begin because I let my strong, young daughter uncover the second lid much as she did the first one: efficiently and much more quickly than I could have. Being young is such a benefit in so many ways, I still regret my decision to get old.

Yes, I do all of the things. I teach school. I write words. I go on ambulance calls. I work on wildland fires. I pour beer. I cook. I clean. I raise children. I work out. I pay bills. And each one of them I do more poorly than the last.

this was applesauce. once.

Case in point: How many people have you met that have DESTROYED food in a Crock Pot MORE THAN ONCE? Like, obliterated past the point of recognition? I burned apple sauce (of all the easiest things) in a Crock Pot. Granted, it was cooking for about 4.5 days while I was carefree and forgetful at work, but the poor slow cooker has never recovered.

My housekeeping skills (or lack thereof) are fairly evident and have been recently and vociferously denounced, so I don't feel the need to dwell on that.

When I open up the most recent edition of the paper that I write for and see a multitude of apostrophe mistakes and there/their/they're faux pas, I quickly let my boss know that I am fired and she insists, in desperation, on rehiring me on the spot.

It's really desperation that saves me. A rurally isolated school desperate for substitutes, a volunteer-strapped first response agency that would LOVE to replace me, starving children who have to eat SOMETHING - I get by on the desperation of others. I'd like to brag that it's my universal skill set and remarkable capabilities that make me a "jack-of-all-trades", but it's really the desperation of myself and others that has propelled me to this level of quasi-success. I suppose all I am really lacking is a desperate man to put up with me for the rest of my life.

"Master of None" should be the title emblazoned on my office door. If I ever had an office, or a door. I suspect they gave me a Bachelor's Degree just so I would stop taking classes and turning in mediocre work. I suspect I get hired at jobs not because of my revolutionary work ethic or brilliant business savvy, but because I operate on just enough of a guilt complex to always show up (turns out that's a rare commodity these days).

But the truth of it is, we are our own worst critics, and despite my lack of rip-roaring success in this lifetime (so far) nobody has died, either from my cooking or my parenting or my lack of housecleaning. Somehow even in my mediocrity we have made it (thus far) without evictions or homelessness or (very much) jail time. So I guess I need to bask in the glory of the little triumphs, like being reminded 15 minutes before my kids sports physicals that my kids HAVE sports physicals, and 15 minutes is definitely enough time to put the clothes on that I forgot I wasn't wearing when my pajamas just kind of hung around until 2:45 in the afternoon. And successes like getting out of bed at 8:00 AM without cussing at the kid who comes over to get my help with his college homework, because maybe, after all, I am a little bit good at something.

I really am not being fair to myself, because I do have a couple of landmark skills: eating and drinking. Really I am pro level at both. In fact, I am so dedicated to the craft that my calorie counting attempts all peter out at around 2:00 PM when the beer-drinking-cheese-eating frenzy begins in earnest for the day. OK 2:00 might be generous. Can we go with noon? I used to also be an expert sleeper but that skill seems to have waned along with youth and enthusiasm. Now I lie awake all night wondering what I will suck at doing the next day. The one beautiful thing about doing all the things is that I never know, day-to-day, which one I'll be doing. It's like a perpetual, exhausting surprise.

When people ask me: “what do you do?” I always freeze for a minute, unsure of what answer to give them. It depends on the town I’m in. The day it is. The hour. Which month. The weather. Track and field schedules. Softball tournaments. Like most people, I wear a lot of hats. The people that know me fall into three categories: gave up trying to know what I do years ago; maintain a mild, surface-level interest in how and if I’m paying my bills or becoming a celebrity; or assuming they know based on a conversation we had three years ago when I told them I was a waitress. Some days I am. Some days I’m an EMT. Some days I’m a gossip columnist. Some days I’m an all-the-school-sports mom. Some days I get to flaunt my firefighting “expertise” or wax eloquent about FDR’s New Deal and the socio-economic repercussions. Some days I’m worth bragging on and some days I’m a colossal embarrassment. Some days I just pet dogs. Some days I’m pushing and hustling and some days I barely get out bed. Some days I’m a sophisticated world traveler and some days I’m a naive country bumpkin. Some days I’m a dorky homeschooler and other days I’m a passably intelligent college graduate. Some days I am making the Big Bucks and Some days I’m giving my time away. Some days world changing words flow out of my fingertips and some days I’m getting fired for writing the wrong thing. What do I do? I do it all. I do what I want. I write my own story, step by step. I switch hats and shift gears with more grinding and complaining some days than others. Some days I’m in love with my fate and some days I curse God and shake my fist at the sky. Today I am a little bit of all of that. 💘 ⛑🎓👑🎒🎤🎯🤹🏼‍♀️🚑🚒🚕✈️⛽️🗺🏕🕯💰🔫🍻🐶 ........ #amorfati #doitall #takethesteps #softball #track #writer #waitress #emt #volunteer #chauffeur #gruntstyle #loverandafighter #whatdoesntkillyou #roadblocks #justdoit #talenttuesday #juggling #mom #momlife #singlemom #goals (MAY 8, 2018)