Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over,

He became a butterfly.

And soon the winter will end and the days will be warm.

The life cycle will begin again.

We have 3 days over 50 degrees predicted with sunshine every day.

How wonderful is that?

Jane Pauley’s new book about reinventing ourselves rather than retiring is getting a lot of press lately. I love Jane and remember how upset I was when she was released from employment by the network. I didn’t watch that station for years because of it. She was a symbol for all the boomer women who were working in a man’s world.

After listening to the umpteenth interview with her I looked at Ron and said it was sort of a bunch of bunk. What separates my generation of women from today’s women is that we not only tried to do it all but sometimes it was expected. I don’t look at this time in my life as a reinvention at all. I just finally have the freedom to do what I should have been doing all along.

There is no more pressure to work and put the first husband through school while my education had to wait, work to support myself and kids as a single mom, work to make sure those kids had the best possible chance at college and life while my second husband [ 30 yrs!!] supported his own kids. I don’t have to work at a job or career that isn’t a good fit for me mentally just to please all those other people in my life.

It is a time of being selfish and self centered. It is really a continuation of a life interrupted that now has a chance to make it to the finish line my way.

I was not happy this morning when a blog I signed up to follow by email came with more than a page full of advertising. I was hard pressed to find the blog post. Then that same blog owner had harvested my email to add to a Paperless Post address book and I got a duplication of some of the same advertising.

I DO NOT follow blogs to get slammed with advertising or invitations. I follow my own blog so that I can hopefully know what is being sent to my followers. So far I haven’t seen any of this kind of stuff going on.

If you follow me by email, please let me know if you are getting slammed with ads. If you are, and you would prefer not to get ads, please change to a different reading service and know that I didn’t know about them.

OMG..I thought I was going to vegetate this year . Then when I wrote all this down it sounds like I’m way too busy to take on anything else!

I plan on joining SDA; sending my resume to the Arkansas Arts program ( I was a designated Illinois Artisan when I lived in Illinois); jurying for Art Odyssey which is an artist studio tour ; jurying for War Eagle Fair  ( started as Arkansas artists but has expanded past that. You still have to jury for the main ground artisan tents); participate in an international  invitational exhibt/sale in PA at a facility that has purchased from me in the past for their corporate collection; maybe jury for a local artist co-op gallery; possibly submit a plan to the Arkansas Craft School to do classes there in 2015, populate my Etsy store with inventory and continue to destash on Ebay. Oh yes, participating in a group challenge for Stretching Art and Tradition. And while doing that, continuing to build my body of work. AND  enjoying being a Master Gardener.

It will be interesting to see how much of this I can accomplish. I’ve had some unusual spurts of energy and pain free days so I’m getting a lot done right now. I have had so many years of debilitating pain from Rheumatoid Arthritis and thanks to a new supplement I started taking I feel better. I’m hoping it will continue!