Star Light, Star Bright

One thing I miss about the Arizona high country is the dark night skies.  I’ve been back up in Parks for two days to do some more work on the place and I went out tonight to look at the sky.  The stars were breathtakingly bright in the cold, clear air at 7,000 feet. While gazing up at the Milky Way, I became acutely aware of the tension that I live with on a daily basis right now.  I have been so busy running to try and get everything done that I hadn’t taken the time to just look, much less to feel.

Pursuing a new life in the Phoenix area and trying to maintain my place in northern Arizona is an uneasy balancing act. Uncertainties abound and I never know from one day to the next what new surprise will come up next.  It is exciting, that’s for sure.  I feel as if I am riding a unicycle on a high wire while juggling.  Blindfolded.  I seem to recall saying something about not having enough excitement in my life, oh a couple of months or so ago…. Nowadays, I have about all the excitement I can handle.

Actually, things are going pretty well.  My student roster is growing and so is my repertoire. I’m almost done with a client’s website in Drupal. I’ve got a possible interview for a long-term temp assignment as a web developer later this week. If that all goes as I hope, I’ll be on that full-time as of next Monday, which should fill in the gaps while my teaching schedule expands. It’ll be hectic for awhile, but doable.  At least I will have a settled, predictable routine for two months!  I’m almost done with all the various projects on the “cabin.” It’s been difficult making all the trips back and forth, but it has let me see my folks more often than I would have otherwise.

It was wonderful to be able to be outside today in near 60 degree temps, scraping paint and caulking.  I could feel the warm sun on my shoulders and smell the dusty tang of the dried grasses in the yard.  I had to laugh as I took the extension ladder down off its hooks; I could hear Cap’t. G’s voice in my ear telling me in no uncertain terms how to lift, carry and place it. Angle, brace, test, climb, anchor your leg to leave your hands free- it was fire academy all over again.  I was grinning as I went up and down the ladder at each window and door.

If nothing else sticks with me from the old firefighter days, I did gain the confidence to tackle just about anything around my place. It all seems pretty elementary after learning how to run pumps, extrication equipment, chain saws, and to repair SCBAs!  (As you might have guessed, I never was much of a Barbie doll, though I have been rather mindful of my nails lately.  I don’t want to ruin my guitar tremelo!)

Some things are falling through the cracks at the moment, however, like blogging, Flamencophile.com, and accompanying flamenco dance classes. I have to remind myself every so often that it will all still be there when everything calms down. (Famous last words.) For now, the fact that I’m keeping up with practicing and my exercise program in the midst of everything else is quite an accomplishment. And, I did take a few minutes to gaze up at the night sky tonight and just appreciate the clarity and the beauty of the stars.

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Busy, Busy

In the last 24 hours, I’ve signed up my first student at Gilbert music, delivered promo flyers door to door in one neighborhood, handed out business cards everywhere I’ve gone, and labeled a batch of 55 CDs that I sold with all of the new contact information. I also made the drive back up to the high country and have been prepping “the cabin” for the winter this afternoon. I even got an hour in writing the Prologue on the next novel. If it doesn’t rain tomorrow, I’ll mow and finish up a good share of what’s left to do before shutting the place down for the season.

Calling the place in Parks “the cabin” signals the big shift that’s happened in my thinking in the last two weeks. This isn’t “home” any more. It’s the retreat, the getaway. It’s the place that still requires quite a bit of work to have ready for winter. It’s also an asset–the leverage I have into a new life. If I can keep this bit of the past without it being a drain and transform it as I move ahead into the future, fine. If I decide to sell it, it’s not the end of the world. I’ve even had moments of thinking I would feel a lot freer for that. There are good memories here, but there are many not-so-good memories, too.

One more trip back up for a long weekend over Thanksgiving should do the trick. I’ll be able to drain the water system and shut ‘er down. Then, the only things that will get me out of the Valley and “up the hill” over the winter will be a run to get the last load of stuff when I move into my new place and family visits. (And the chance to get in some snow-shoeing and skiing…THINK SNOW!)

I’m actually enjoying the Valley, much to my surprise. Yes, it’s congested, smoggy, and there’s a lot of traffic, but there’s also a lot going on in the arts, much more opportunity and stimulation, and I’m meeting lots of great people. It’s showing me just how isolated I was before I went south. The job hunt is always a grind, but there have been many positive developments this week and I’m finding time to have a little fun, too.

Now, I just need to get back on track with my flamenco guitar practice (again) and my baile. In all the hustle and bustle, those get set aside more often than I would like. But, things are settling down somewhat and I can see that within a few weeks, I should be well into my new life.

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A Year and a Day

Yesterday was this blog’s first birthday. I was at a job fair and running all over Phoenix for most of the day. So, I didn’t get this post together before the GMT coach turned into a pumpkin.

A lot has happened in a year. Last year at this time I’d just gotten laid off from my web design job, was a day away from starting on my NaNoWriMo novel, and was a total blog neophyte. Since then, this little experiment in writing has had its busy and slow times, has gone through several visual metamorphoses, and topped 8,000 hits.

In the last month, my novel has been completed enough to be sent out to half a dozen “dedicated readers” for critique. I’ve moved to Phoenix for the winter and I’m doing music seriously again.

Today, I got the confirmation from Gilbert Music that I will be a guitar instructor for them. Woohoo! I also took a bike ride this morning, the first one in several years. It was a short ride – flat ground and under a half-hour – but it was an important test. Tonight, my legs are fine!

What a difference a year makes…

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The Great Divide

Whew! Been busy packing and practicing , writing and web designing. There’s just a lot happening right now. My brother’s wedding is tomorrow. And, I picked up a little side work as an instrument tech with my surveyor friend for Sunday.

We’ve got a boundary and topo to do on Hart Prairie, up on the north side of the San Francisco Peaks. That is going to be cool! Literally and metaphorically – for one thing, it’s at about 9,000 feet in elevation. Hart Prairie is a gorgeous area any time of year, but in the autumn it is truly spectacular. I noticed just today on my trip into town to accompany the flamenco dance class that the leaves are starting to turn in Flagstaff. I’ll take my camera with me on Sunday and see if I can find some good shots of autumn aspens. I’ll post any good ones here.

Every so often, I have a nostalgic moment or find myself dragging my feet about moving. I keep telling myself that it’s likely temporary and I remind myself of all the very real benefits of what I plan to do this winter. It should be an interesting and productive time. It will also be a big adjustment living in an apartment in a big metro area again after more than a decade in “the boondocks,” where my trip to the mail box entailed a drive through pine forests and open prairies over four miles of washboard and red cinder Forest Service road. It’s all trade-offs, decisions made on an intuitive sense that Phoenix is where I need to be and music is what I need to be doing.

I’ve learned to ask myself the crucial question, “If not now, when?” While packing two nights ago, I ran across a box of mementos that contained greeting cards from the last decade or so–a birthday wish from my dad from before dementia took away his memory, a note from my ex-husband from a time before the disintegration of our marriage, and congratulations on my graduation from Fire Academy signed by all my old fire buddies, including the young cadet who died just a few moths ago. It was a poignant reminder that disease, dysfunction, and death are the great dividers. To not live my life to the fullest right now would be to deny a number of very difficult and painful lessons from the past few years.

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Five Big Questions

I just ran across a link that I thought I’d share. It’s a fun little animation that makes some big points about life and is a different way of exploring some of the same issues that I like to write about here. Enjoy. Five Big Questions

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The Techno-Human vs. the Healthy Animal

In the last few days, I have been around several technology breakdowns. Little things, really, but enough to get me reflecting on how different things are now than they were even a decade ago, how dependent most of us are on technology in almost every phase of our lives. I live in a world that my grandparents would hardly recognize.

Tuesday, there was a power outage in my area which affected my work. Wednesday, I went to Williams for groceries and the checkout scanner was on the fritz. It took three times as long to check out and the poor cashier was frustrated and confused. Today, I donated blood and because of a software problem in the Alyx machine, I was unable to do the “power red” procedure and had to do a whole blood donation instead. That little glitch turned a 45 minute procedure into an hour and a half visit full of power ups and downs and phone calls to support by the tech, who eventually had to switch me over to the standard procedure anyway.

I wasn’t on any deadlines and, for some strange reason, have been in an unusually serene mood, so I’ve just used these happenings as opportunities to observe and wonder. What I have seen has given me quite a bit of food for thought.

In each case, the technology breakdown was relatively short-lived and minor, a mere inconvenience. But, underneath it, is the realization how extremely dependent on software, hardware, and the power to run all of these devices we have become.

It is a great metaphor for our increasing interdependence upon one another. I can’t fix most things on my car like I once could; I can’t function in my work without using, and trusting, a multitude of lines of code written by people from all over the world, using devices that have likewise been assembled in a variety of countries. We truly are connected nowadays, on all sorts of levels. What could be ignored years ago has become a daily reality for almost all of us.

I’m not advocating cutting back on technology, but I am saying we need to be aware of our choices in relation to it. I was a firefighter long enough to get the habit of “have a backup plan” ingrained in my psyche. And, living out in the boondocks like I do, I have backup plans for a lot of things; I have kept basic functions running in my household, and with vehicles, under some fairly extreme conditions – four feet of snow in 24 hours, with nighttime temperatures below zero, and a power outage that lasted for four days among them.

But, I wonder, how well prepared are we as a society for the little breakdowns, as well as the big catastrophes? Hurricane Katrina, in particular, gave this country a big wake up call that I believe has not been adequately heeded either at the national or the individual level. And most of us regard the little glitches, the small inconveniences, as just that and look no further.

My musings the last few days have led me to several conclusions:

1) I enjoy being a techno-human. I’m geekier than many and it wasn’t easy for me to shift gears the other day when the power was out. I also need to acknowledge and make it a point to tend to the healthy animal that I am. That means being physically active and taking care of myself physically, no easy task when in a sedentary occupation. It means taking responsibility for having backup plans and ways to take care of essential activities when the grid is offline, even for extended periods of time. I’ve got a few loose ends to take care of around here before winter comes back around.

2) Our technology can give us a false sense of security. We really aren’t that much different than our forbears, though we seem to have forgotten much that they once knew and were able to do. Mother Nature, other humans, or any number of other factors, can cause us to be thrown back onto the most basic of survival skills, sometimes without warning, sometimes in the matter of a few minutes. Could you handle that?

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Contact

I’ve been having a lot of fun watching my blog stats via Sitemeter. It’s been about three weeks since I added it to my blog and the thing I’ve enjoyed the most is seeing all the different countries pop up in the visit details:

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Latvia, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Rumania, Russian Federation, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States

Sitemeter even has a cool map feature where you can view where the visitors to your site are located. Too much fun.

When I was an active “ham” (amateur radio operator), I never really got into collecting QSL cards from foreign contacts, but now I understand one of the reasons that some people are so into it. It’s fun to feel like, in some small way, you’re in touch with the whole big world out there.

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Week in Review – August 11, 2007

It’s been a busy week… The monsoons have eased up a bit and there were several days of sunshine when I could get out and work in the yard and on vehicles, which was great. If the weather is good tomorrow, I’ll start mowing. The rains have greened everything up and the weeds are growing like crazy. Lots of wild geraniums blooming in the yard, too.

Blogging – I’m keeping up with my 30 post goal for August. I’ve also had two weeks worth of Feedburner and Sitemeter tracking now and am processing my stats. Geek fun. More on that in a subsequent post.
Drupal – Whew! Had to buy a book to get a better understanding of how this particular content management system works and am slogging my way through. I’m impressed by its versatility, but it will take some time to really learn it well. Doing  A LOT of content generation and “information architecture” for the websites in the meantime.
Guitar Nails – I tried some new tactics after I lost yet another nail – multiple thin acrylic layers, more careful and complete surface prep. So far, it seems to be working.
Guitar Practice – The messed up nails slowed me down a bit, but I’m back working on Como Me Ahoga, a Sevillanas, and my lesson materials. Progressing slowly. Was lax on promo efforts this week, so I need to really hit it this next one.
Lucid Dreaming Project – I’m remembering my dreams much better overall, but only successful in inducing lucidity once this week, and only for a short period of time. This is an ongoing effort.
Productivity and Organization – Continuing to sort out stuff since the garage sale – I’m finding more things to stash in the shed for a planned joint sale with my mom this spring. At least it’s out of the house…
Weight Loss and Exercise – One pound down, but very little exercise this week. I got my legs sore again with moving around all the stuff with the garage sale and changing a tire. So, flamenco dancing has been tabled for a few more days until the nerve problem in my legs settles down.
Writing – Three chapters finished in the latest rewrite and I reactivated my membership in Critters.
Fun – Ooops. I thought I was having fun with the music. According to M, that’s still work. I’m supposed to take real breaks. Oh. I need to start a new knitting project, methinks.

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If Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery, What is Plagiarism?

It was bound to happen. I’ve finally had a post scraped in toto, no link, no attribution. At least this is the first one I know about, anyway. The only way I knew about this one was through a trackback from an embedded link.

It looks to me like the scam is totally automated. There is a bot scarfing up content and spitting it back out verbatim and it’s doubtful that human eyes ever even filter it. I’m hoping that is the case, so my terse comment will pass through the system undeleted. It is currently listed as “awaiting moderation.” Ha! Fat chance.

At least the other times sites have swiped my stuff, I’ve at least gotten a byline and a link back. (Some have actually had the gall to post my name as a “contributing writer” or say the post was “written for blahblah site.” Bull Puckey.)

It’s maddening and I don’t know what, if anything, can actually be done about it. Have you had this experience? What did you do? Did it work?

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Week in Review – Aug 4, 2007

I haven’t gotten much else done with Drupal; I’ve been too busy the last two days on getting the garage sale together. I plan to get back to it tonight and tomorrow, now that the sale is over.

The garage sale was over earlier than planned today – rained out by 2:30 p.m. – but I still made a respectable amount of money and got rid of a lot of stuff I didn’t need. There’s still a bunch left over, but a neighbor is having a sale in another couple of weeks, so I’m going to see if I can go in with her to get rid of what’s left.

Other than that, not much else new. The monsoons continue. I haven’t lost any more weight, which makes me think I should just go back to my old way of doing things. I think I’ve actually been exercising less and eating more since I set a concrete goal of losing six pounds by late August. It ain’t a-gonna happen…at best I might lose four, maybe five, in that time frame.

I have set a blog-related goal for the month of August – thirty posts for the month.  I got a little lazy last month and I figured I’d better renew my commitment.

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Milestones

Sometime in the last few hours, my blog views passed 3,ooo and this post is my 100th post. It also marks the end of a week of learning a lot more about blogging and how to be a better blogger. When I started this venture back in November, it was just to try it out and play around with it, a way to write something totally different than the fantasy novel that I was deeply engaged in during November’s NaNoWriMo and beyond.

A lot has happened in the interim. I’ve learned that blogging can be a lot of fun and a lot of work; that it makes demands for consistency if one wants to gain any kind of readership. I didn’t start out with readership in mind, but that has become more important to me in the last few months as I’ve started to be more regular in my postings and to realize that blogging can be more than just a time-consuming past-time.

This blog has changed focus several times and tends to be about whatever topic I’m most interested in, or is most loudly demanding my attention, at the moment. From letting go of firefighting to rediscovering my music, it has undergone several major revisions in just a few months. It is about to undergo the biggest shift yet.

I’m working behind the scenes to split the various topics into separate blogs so that I can target my postings better, in large part to help me focus the various aspects of my life, but also to move it/them to an independent server where I can do more – upload any file types I like, utilize scripting on the site, and more.

As it has been from the beginning, it continues to be highly experimental and part of a winding, intuitive journey that shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Thanks for reading, and I hope that you come back and see how things evolve. And, let me know what you think.

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Frick and Frack Go to the Hyatt

Friend One and I finally got over to the Hyatt on Saturday to see Mosaico play. It was a lovely night and we enjoyed the great music and dance. It was also Frick and Frack’s night to shine. It all went like this…

We’d been talking about going over to the Hyatt for months to see Mosaico Flamenco, but my trips to the Valley are sporadic. I picked a great day to come down this time, though. The temperature in Phoenix topped 100 degrees on Saturday and the A/C went out in my car, so it was a very warm trip down to Gilbert. Friend Two and I laughed about how I’d sweated like I was in structure turnouts. He made the point that at least in turnouts you can rehab and open up ’em up and let some air in!

Whew! I got a shower and proceeded to get all gussied up in the little black dress that has hung unused in my closet for three years. I finally fit back into it and thought it looked pretty good, but Friend One was not going to let me out of the house with the wimpy pink nail polish I had on. Red. Definitely red. Fire Engine Red. I held up the bottle and inspected it. This stuff would have worked for the touchup job on Brush 3 after one of the guys backed into a tree, thereby earning himself the coveted “Pine Tree Award.” Too bad. We should have kept some of it around the station.

Once I got done mopping up on the nail polish incident and donned my strappy, three-inch heels, I had to laugh. I thought, “If the crew of Engine One could see ‘the Lieutenant’ now, they wouldn’t even recognize me!” (This actually has not been all that unusual in recent weeks – the web client I met with last week hadn’t seen me since the first of the year and she didn’t know who I was at first. Thirty pounds down and a much improved attitude do make a difference.)

So off we went, “all tarted up” as Friend Two would say, to the Hyatt in Scottsdale. Besides going to hear good music, there was another agenda in place as well. I’m trying to get out and about and change my anchorite ways and Friend One has been a great advocate of this program…hey, I may be living like a nun, but I don’t have to look and act like one.

Walking into the lobby of the Hyatt was quite a surprise. I’d never been inside, only picked up passengers out front years ago when I drove jeep tours. It has lots and lots of glass, and a large upper floor that looks out over a huge lounge and adjoining patio area. We could hear the strains of flamenco music clear out in the parking lot. Yeah! We were ready.

The place was hoppin’ and we found two seats in the patio area. The server took our order and brought our drinks along with a little cup of snack mix. As all the tables were taken, F1 balanced the snack mix container on the arm of her chair. The band was on break and we just people watched for awhile. I wrinkled my nose; I smelled smoke. The point of origin was a cigar held by an old guy who stood just at the edge of the lounge/patio divide. In looking for the source of the smoke, I caught his eye. Oops. He sauntered over and said, “Say there, where are you girls from?” At that moment, the server returned and, in reaching for her purse, F1 sent the bowl of snack mix flying. It’s amazing how far peanuts and assorted other small food items can travel when they hit stone tile. And the little melamine (?) bowl makes quite a noise as it clatters across a hard surface. We both bent over to grab the bowl and came a hairsbreadth away from knocking our heads together. The hair on the tops of our heads literally brushed. In the ensuing chaos, our cigar-smoking friend wisely melted into the crowd.

The band resumed playing, the next bowl of snack mix went on the arm of my chair, and we settled in to enjoy the show. Ah, flamenco! Everything was going swimmingly when “Crash!” I sent my bowl of snack mix flying. We dissolved into giggles. We were sitting there laughing our fool heads off when a couple came by, looked at the mess all over the floor, and the man commented that the birds would have plenty to eat in the morning. We laughed even harder then and I managed to gasp out, “I haven’t even had any alcohol!” Wouldn’t have known it. Friend One had barely had a third of her glass of wine. No excuses there, we’re just klutzes.

Pretty soon some chairs opened up closer to the band and we moved, effectively distancing ourselves from the scene of the crime. We looked back over our shoulders and giggled some more. We laughed out loud when the same old guy approached two women seated near us and said, “Say there, where are you girls from?”

Oh, you can’t take us anywhere! Friend Two had bailed on going with us and now we were glad. We would have never heard the end of it. As it is, he just shakes his head and says, “Poor, simple women.”

We finally settled down. Friend One and I had the opportunity to talk to our flamenco teacher, Yumi LaRosa, after seeing her dance. I especially enjoyed hearing Gaetano (my music teacher and the lead guitarist and singer for Mosaico) and getting to see the techniques I’ve been learning in my lessons applied in a gig setting. It all moves by so quickly, but I am beginning to recognize some of the various rasgueos on the fly and counted along as best I could to sharpen my ear for the twelve beat rhythms like Bulerias.

What fun! It was a great show, highly recommended. Friend One and I were all inspired, and it got us to practice our Sevillanas the next day. We’ve got some DVDs so we don’t forget our steps and have made a pact to keep practicing, so if I do move down to the Valley we can go take classes together again.

Between Saturday night’s escapade and my lesson on Tuesday, I’m determined to do more with my music. The acrylic nails are working quite well for my flamenco playing (whether red or pink!) and with my teacher’s recommendation to file them just a little shorter, I’m finding that I can get better tone and control. It’s the best of both worlds. Half way between what I used to have as a classical player and what I thought I needed for flamenco seems to be just about right. I’m experimenting with the length, shape, and playing the harp, as well. I may just be able to squeak by with the right hand nails this length, which would be great – two instruments, more marketability.

Discussions with Friends One and Two over the weekend have got me seriously thinking about teaching music lessons again and considering relocating to the Valley. They’ve been lobbying for this for five months and I’m finally starting to listen. As much as I love the pine trees, clean air and open spaces, I need more work.

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Jobs That Make You Cry

Back to square one… I had my job interview for the public relations position with the Coconino Humane Society last Thursday and withdrew my name for consideration the next day. While all my grant-writing and public education experience would have been a good fit, the interview went extremely well, and I believe strongly in their mission, I had to be realistic about what I could and couldn’t do in a job. I’ve been rapidly losing that old toughening from working in the emergency services and that is not a bad thing. I know I would not last long in a job where I had to euthanize animals. The Humane Society is so short handed at times that everyone on staff, no matter what their job description, gets called in to fulfill their contracts with Coconino County and the City of Flagstaff. No amount of “fit” in the rest of the job could counteract that, once I really grasped the full picture of the duties.

Logically, I could tell myself that my work would save other animals, but I know that at this point in my life I won’t do another job where I will go home and cry. At least as an EMT, I knew that I had done everything possible to save a life. In the case of the Humane Society, I would be trapped into a system of quotas and time frames that would dictate which animals would live and which would die, regardless of how many were saved through other efforts. An honest look into my own heart told me that it was not the job for me.

So, I’m back wondering what to do for work and where to look. I was pinning a lot of hopes on that job. I told my maggid what I had done and that now I was thoroughly confused. He just smiled and said, “Good.”

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Three Steinbeck Quotes

Reflecting on my recent trip to Monterey, I got to thinking about how much I enjoyed walking around the Peninsula and identifying locales from John Steinbeck’s novels. Steinbeck is one of my literary heroes, so I had intended to take Margie (a longtime friend, fellow writer, and my accomplice adventurer on this latest jaunt) to the Steinbeck Center in Salinas. We didn’t get there. Suffice to say, a certain writer (who shall remain nameless) pulled one of her usual miscalculations and planned way too much to do in far too short a time. Margie was rightly miffed. To console myself, I went trawling the Internet for Steinbeck quotes. I found lots of great ones, but these three jumped out at me:

“We find that after years of struggle we do not take a journey, but rather a journey takes us.” (From “Travels With Charley”)

“Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.”

“So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda.” (While traveling in Russia)

~ John Steinbeck (1902-1968), American Novelist and Writer, Nobel Prize for Literature for 1962

More synchronicity. I had to laugh when I saw my unconscious sequencing of the quotes. The journey is taking me….somewhere. And it certainly is marked by gradual, even stealthy, change. It has also not been anything like I what I ordered! But then again, who wants plain old eggs and toast for breakfast when you can have onions, pickles and watermelon, anyway? :-)

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Sweet Surrender

I haven’t gotten back to the original plan of the “AAR” as outlined in my April 4 post and am not sure when or if I will anytime soon. Life has been taking more unexpected twists. Another job opportunity has opened up – a public relations position with the local Humane Society that would use all that old PIO (public information officer) experience, volunteer training and coordinating, and grant writing from the fire department days, and in a whole new way. It sounds like a pretty good fit and I’m hopeful.

It’s all been quite odd given the events surrounding my getting laid off from my web design job (Nov. 12 post). I’ve progressed on my independent business activities, kept my eyes open for jobs, networked…and am still struggling to figure out what it is that I should be doing. Web work and grantwriting trickles in; I keep progressing on a number of fronts, but that feeling of being in limbo, of waiting for some unknown set of lock tumblers to fall into place, continues. All of my training and conditioning leads me to want to just take a halligan to the door, but I am gradually learning that, despite the old firefighter attitude, sometimes it’s best to wait.

In the meantime, the Universe keeps sending strange synchronicities and cryptic messages my way that have even caused me to change my adamant stance about staying in the Flagstaff area. After more than 15 years in the Arizona high country, I’m actually considering something I swore I would never do, which is go back to the Phoenix Metro area. It’s an internal change of attitude that has crept up on me without my even realizing it, and is a direct result of seeing just how many conditions I was putting on this process of reinvention. “Please God, help me…but I will only do this and this…” Surrender has not been a big word in my vocabulary. :-)

Ah yes, patience, faith, surrender. Those aren’t in the 10 Standard Fire Orders! I may have shed the gear, but I am still shedding the mindset…

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