Monday Meanderings...Remember This?

Good Morning Friends!

Life is in transition right now, and so I thought I'd take the opportunity to start blogging again. My heart has been calling me back to writing for myself for quite some time now, so here I am and we shall see where this takes me.

What's going on?

• I recently left my position as the Development Associate for the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture.  CCUA is my dream organization, I truly adore the people I worked with, and I'm grateful for the time I spent there.  However, fundraising is just not what I want to do with the rest of my life, and so I chose to leave so that I could find that forever job...or at least the job that's the next step along the path.  It was a very difficult decision to leave - and there were lots of tears during my last few days - but I'm growing more and more excited about what's to come next.
• Which means, drumroll please, that I'm actively looking for a job again!  I've got several options for temporary work to do while I transition, which I will be exploring in the next week or two.  That's taken the pressure off to find a new job asap regardless of what it is...which is fantastic because it's giving me the freedom to really explore and figure out what it is that I WANT to do.  
• The one wrinkle: I was in my early 20's the first time I went to a doctor to try to find out why I was so blasted tired all of the time.  I've shared a lot of my recent health journeys here on the blog, but not all.  One thing that became really apparent when I went back to work was that the exhaustion was more than just an annoyance...it's a real barrier to living the type of full life I want for myself.  Several specialists over the years have helped to fill in pieces of the puzzle, but there have never been any real answers or solutions. So....
• In order to deal with that, I'll be traveling to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN in August to see if we can for once and all figure this mess out.  I'm tempering my expectations, but I'm also hopeful.  We shall see!  
•  In the meantime, I plan on taking the next two weeks to just enjoy being with my girls.  My eldest is starting her junior year in high school, and my youngest will be an eighth grader.  Time is flying by, and I want to really focus on these two fabulous humans and just enjoy them for a bit.  

That's the nutshell version of the Life's Big Things.  As for the rest:

•  I've been running again for almost three months.  Over the winter I had the bunions on both feet corrected - a 6.5 month long process that was way more difficult than I had expected it to be.  (And I expected it to be bad.)  I've been taking my return slow and steady, and it finally feels like I'm back on track.  I still have a LOT of my fitness to recover, but it's getting better every single week.  
• Which means that I'll be looking at the calendar this week to see if there are races I want to do this fall!  
• I'm just back from my sixth year as a Spec Today Facilitator at Spectacular!  It was beyond wonderful this year - for me, and for both girls (one as a camper, one as a staff kid).  My faith is restored, I'm feeling hope again, and my heart is much lighter than it's been for quite some time.
• I continue to love the ukulele, but I'm really not progressing very well.  In fact, when I am back into regular employment I hope to take lessons.  I want to learn!  And as music doesn't come as naturally to me as my other hobbies, I really need a teacher to show me the way.
• I've started spinning again!  I can't believe I ever stopped.  (Yes I can, there were issues with my wheel and I just didn't have time..)  Feels good to be back at the wheel.
• Knitting continues at a much slower pace than it did prior to me going back to work.  I'm trying to focus on quality over quantity, but it's tough sometimes. For example, my husband and I have both had a bunch of socks finally go to the great recycling bin in the sky...and I'm not able to replace them like I once did.  Horror of horrors, we're actually wearing store bought socks sometimes....  

The truth is that this blog has meandered from time to time with it's purpose.  I'm still not entirely sure what I want to really do with it, but for now I'm going to be focusing on the things that make me, well, me.  It's fun, I enjoy it, and I love that it's created another record of my life that I can look back on from time to time.  

Tomorrow I'll take a deep dive into my workbasket to show you all what I've been working on lately.  (Ahem, and to show you what's languishing in the finish basket...)  

It's good to be back!