If I Could Control These Things, I'd Leave Them In 2022

For almost two weeks, there was a winter freeze. I bundled up. I checked for leaks around the house and outside. I found one that the water company shouldn't charge me for. During the last winter freeze, companies actually helped us out by sending much smaller utility bills than normal. Those companies that fixed bursted pipes made a lot of money, but that's another story. This time bills will more than likely look normal.  There were no power outages, but as the sun is shining bright again prices are already increasing.

Gas prices have gone back up some. I won't notice other things til January, but I'm sure gas prices went back up because of that winter freeze. I've noticed this happening a lot lately. There's a natural disaster, so we have to pay for it. Temperatures are crazy, but we have to pay for it with utility bills and fixing problems. 

If I could control it, I'd leave us paying for the things that naturally happen in the world in 2022. 

There are some other things I'd leave in the past, but that's a topic for later. 

Dear Santa, For Christmas I Want

 *Money on an EBT card

For real. Have y'all seen the prices of groceries lately? I'm a diabetic too. After my initial diagnosis my appetite became full of extremely healthy food choices. But eating healthy costs twice as much money as eating unhealthy and prices keep increasing on food. How? Anyway, I'm gonna apply for food stamps until I finally get some help 

*Extra money in my bank account. I'm trying to pay some stuff down and I wanna start paying some stuff off faster. I guess that means a second job, huh? So Santa, gift me the perfect part time job because unlike these multimillionaires, there are no billionaires giving me checks. 

*Someone to love. Make sure he's not a hobosexual though. Then again, I might just do a Tiktok to the song and call it a year. 

*A break. I plan to start and complete a certification during my Christmas time off, but please allow me wiggle room to rest still. Back when I was unhealthy, I had weird sleeping schedules. Now my body is on a regular sleeping schedule. Deliver me a little extra sleep during the holiday or some of my favorite Starbucks vanilla Frappuccino to make waking up early worth it. 

*More creativity in 2023. Creativity in the form of music, painting, and writing. Creativity in ways I never would have thought of before. Fulfill my heart's desires. 

*Oh and although I said I'd work for that extra money, if you want to just gift me a couple hundred (or a thousand), I'll greatly appreciate it. 

Years Where Nothing Seemed To Happen

 I met a guy a week ago. 

He approached me at an event. He actually spoke two different times. The second time I figured he'd put in enough effort to get my phone number. The next night we talked on the phone. He had a lot to say. He spoke about everything from sexual experiences in college to why his marriage failed. He then asked me about my sex life. Specifically he wanted to know how many men I'd slept with. I told him, but he didn't seem to believe me. Maybe it was because he didn't even know his own number. Anyway, I told him my truth. 

I've had years where being around a man came easily. Whether it was actively dating, friends w/ benefits, or plain old sneakily link situations a man was there. But there were also years where nothing happened. During these years I focused on my writing heavily, traveled some, and looked forward to what was next. 

2012-2013 was one of those periods of time. I visited my best friend in Hawaii and the next year went to NYC to be with a group of bloggers and business owners. 

2015-2016 I planted my foot back into the dating world, but those years actually felt like years of nothing happening. I published my first book, but realized that I wasn't getting far in my writing career. I had some friends that purchased books, but no real fanbase. One thing I've learned about this industry is its way easier to encounter other authors than it is to encounter readers. 

2019 until present- In 2019 I knew the relationship I was in was no longer progressing. But something else was happening. I felt like my life wasn't progressing either. Before I was ever told that I gonna be searching for a new job in 2020, there was a heavy dread lingering inside of me. Most people look forward to the future, but I wasn't looking forward to it. I just wanted to stick to what I knew and make more money. Although I like my job now, I'm not doing good financially. 

Since 2020 I've talked to men, each for probably only a second, but nothing has progressed from the conversations. They were all looking for casual sex. It didn't matter though. 

Every year we make jokes about our bodies aching in some way, but in 2021 the aches became a real emergency to take care of. The aches came from diabetes and they came right around the time I had started a new job with no insurance attached to it. By 2022 I realized I had put more charges on credit cards than I could handle. 

2023 is right around the corner. I have a list of goals made. I have ideas of what I could do to move my career further while staying in positions I actually like. My mind is mixed with dread and hope for the future. "Everyday the sun won't shine." 

Trying to Recreate Beautiful Moments in Time

For a moment in time I really fell in love. 

A virus was going around. No one knew for sure how it formed and how it was spreading so fast. But everyone knew it was bad. For a month the government had been contemplating shutting everything down to control this spread. People would have to be confined to their homes unless they needed groceries. Clubs, bars, and even places designed for children to have fun would be shut down. 

A week before the shut down officially took place I signed papers to get a certification. I was ready to embark on a new career and I was afraid my money would eventually stop before I could get hired somewhere new. I could barely concentrate on hobbies, but the concern had been lingering since the beginning of February. But then the shut down happened and new work became less of a concern. 

Canvases, paint, paintbrushes, water, medium, varnish, and supplies to keep the floor from getting messy consumed my space. I opened myself up to really start creating. Youtube videos of artists pouring acrylic paint onto canvases consumed my phone and computer screen. Although an expensive hobby, this wasn't about the money. It was just about exploring something new without the pressures of the world on my back. 

The enjoyment lasted for months. The virus, COVID19, turned out to be much worse than our government predicted. Companies continued to lay people off more than they were hiring people. A hiring freeze occurred to unemployed people weren't expected to document how many jobs they were applying to per week. They could just click zero and go back to whatever they were doing. In my case, it was having fun with my new hobby. 

Everything seemed to fall apart the minute that extra $600 stopped coming in unemployment payments. More people were getting sick, but jobs were becoming available. I had to work. I accepted the first thing I was offered. I had to start all over again in a new industry. In that same month I lost two close relatives whose funerals I couldn't even attend. I found out another close relative was sick with an unpredictable illness. Since then I've spent months checking up on numbers of people getting sick across the country, numbers of people dying, and wondering if my own future will start looking bright again. 

Even if I don't express it (or don't do it often), I really do care about those around me. I care about my family, friends, acquaintances, and I don't even wish bad on enemies. However, even more I care about the things that have brought me joy; things that I never knew I needed in my life until I decided to experiment. I wonder if I'll ever be have a moment where I can just relax and enjoy the moment again. 

When I Started To Fall Out of Love With Blogging

I initially started a blog because it was a college class requirement. Before my college days were over, I created a new blog because I wanted to document stuff outside of news journalism. 

There was no direction with the blog. Sometimes I would post news, sometimes poetry, and sometimes I would just write about the day just to have some new content. After college I continued this cycle of endless blog posts about creativity and nothing at all for a good 6 years. Then I started to fall out of love. 

It wasn't necessarily the blogging I fell out of love with. Finding content is easy. Even when the content sucks, someone will come view it. The views didn't really matter. I wanted readers, but after several years I knew I'd never become one of those bloggers that makes money with their content (Necole Kane for instance). Throughout the years, I watched people make connections and climb business ladders that wwas out of my reach. I cheered people on from the sidelines because I was genuinely happy for them. But I was really doubting my own abilities. When I expressed my frustrations and doubts, it was returned with more mean comments than nice ones. Did anyone really care? It was time to move on. Plus I was working a full time job and curious about the book publishing world. 

Now why would someone that couldn't figure out how to gain a revenue stream from blogging move to publishing? Clearly I love writing too much to think about the business aspects before I make new moves. The world of book publishing claimed my attention overall. Even if I didn't make a lot of money, it was more beneficial than free labor after a long day of being on someone else's clock. 

However, I missed the blogging world. I was and am still halfway in it. Every once in a while I search for interesting content to read. When people share their new posts, I quickly click on the links to see where their minds are at. And I've been missing putting out random content of my own. 

I don't know if I can write the same way I was writing 10 years ago. That energy is gone. But I'm going to come back whenever my heart yearns to type something up and quickly put it into this world wide web.