If a person REALLY loved you

If a person really loved you, they would support you and encourage you when you are feeling doubt.

If a person really loved you, they would be there for you and defend you when you are feeling scared.

If a person really loved you, they would move mountains and fight dragons to help you when you are feeling defenseless.

If a person really loved you, they would make time for you and reach out when you are feeling alone.

If a person really loved you, their actions would erase all insecurities and confusion when you are feeling unloved.

If a person really loved you, they would defend your name in your absence when you are feeling defeated.

If a person really loved you, they would do everything they can to help out and lessen the burden on your shoulders when you are feeling overwhelmed.

If a person really loved you, they would remind you of the good things and all the happy times when you are feeling sad.

If a person really loved you, they would include you and keep you a part of their life when you are feeling unwanted.

If a person really loved you, they would applaud and cheer for you when you are finally feeling happy again.

Please stop telling people what time to wake up

Every Saturday and Sunday, I work a 13 ½ hour shift for each day. I started this shift at the beginning of August, so I had the chance to sleep in on Monday morning during most of my summer. I had noticed that, when the weekend was over and I was able to blissfully sleep without worrying about an alarm clock waking me up to get the kids up for school in the morning, I slept, on average, about 9 hours. I probably NEEDED that much sleep after being sleep-deprived all weekend and working long hours! Then the school year began again and, despite Monday being my Friday, Monday was Monday for my kids. The start of a new week and once again getting up in the morning for school. Both of my kids are night owls, so this was a hard adjustment for them to make. But it had to be done! We were once again living by the clock! This year, though, my oldest is busy with volunteering and my youngest is busy with gymnastics. So it’s not just school they have to worry about! But, yeah, Monday morning meant once again getting up early in the morning for them and once again getting up at 5 a.m. for me.

Except for THIS particular Monday morning! I had accidentally reset my alarm clock for 5 P.M. instead of 5 A.M.! D’oh! Hey, in my defense, I was really tired when I did that. (Maybe I should ask my husband to reset it to 5 a.m. for me after it wakes him up later in the day, after I’m gone for work.)

But this incident made me think about the whole sleep schedule thing. I had slept for 8 hours, without interruption. I probably NEEDED that much sleep! And we were able to manage it okay with me getting out of bed when I did. I still got my kids up for school in time and had SOME coffee. I didn’t get to have as much coffee as I wanted to, didn’t get to have time for meditation or stretching or reading like I like to do before the chaos of the day begins. Didn’t get to do my morning routine of checking the house, but I DID have enough time to feed the cat!

But it made me think about how, lately, I have been reading articles and blog posts about people boasting about getting up at ungodly hours of the morning to get more done, and how that’s not exactly feasible for everybody. I mean, sure, if you can do it, go for it. But if it’s not possible for you to do that, then that is okay, too!

There is no rule about when we are supposed to wake up in the morning. But there ARE guidelines on how much sleep we should get. But here again, it depends on the person. Not everybody NEEDS 8 hours of sleep. I know some people who can function just fine on 6 hours of sleep. It depends on the person.

And it depends on their schedule.

Last summer, my oldest was working at the ranger station near Blue River (in Oregon). As part of preparing for this, we had to time how long it would take us to get there and back from Eugene. We added a bit of extra time to compensate for traffic. Since my husband works at night and I was not working at the time, the job of transporting our teenager to work in the morning fell to me. After some more planning, it was decided that the best time to get up in the morning was 4 a.m. so we would have enough time to get ready to go (and for me to drink some coffee!). This worked well for us.

And, right now, for me, getting up at 5 a.m. is what works well for me, in order to get enough sleep.

That is the big issue here: Making sure that we get enough sleep. It’s not what time we wake up in the morning that matters, it’s that we get enough sleep.

It depends on the person’s sleep needs and their schedule.

So I think that instead of encouraging people to wake up at 3 a.m. or 3:45 a.m. or even 5 a.m., we should instead start encouraging people to get the amount of sleep that they need. If you CAN get up at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. in order to have a more productive start to your day, then by all means, do it! But if it’s not possible for you to change your schedule so that you can get enough sleep if you do that, then please don’t feel guilty about it.

Yes, getting up super early in the morning does allow us to get more done in our day, and that’s why I like to wake up at 5. Given what time I am usually able to go to bed, even on weekends when I am working, getting up at 5 works best because I get enough sleep and I can get on with my morning stuff before tackling my day. But some people might be getting enough sleep when they wake up at 3, 4, or even 6:30 a.m.  It’s just different for all of us and our lifestyle.

The amount of sleep that we need and can get is what matters. Not the time we wake up. I think it’s better to focus on our sleep needs rather than on picking a “popular” hour to wake up and forcing ourselves to adapt to a schedule that really isn’t healthy for us to follow. Just get the sleep that you need and worry about taking care of yourself instead of worrying about following a trend.

The Unknown

Last night, while I was having dinner with my family, I was struck by a revelation. This particular piece of information that just came to me right out of the blue made me at first feel excited that I was FINALLY AWARE of this Very Important Piece of information that solves a mystery I have been struggling with, then I internally groaned when I realized just how much damage NOT knowing this information has done for my attempts to get a job.

See, I’ve been trying to figure out how to deal with this huge GAP on my resumẻ. Ever since I lost my last gig (ghostwriting), I have been trying to get a new gig. Or a new job – either from home or outside of home (despite my limited availability outside of home). But I have had no luck and it’s been very frustrating. I have recently had a job interview, and while the interview went well, something tugged at me. I was never asked about the gap in employment. I DID mention that I write books and articles, but I was never asked why I haven’t been doing anything in between the jobs I HAVE had.

Well, it’s not like I haven’t been doing anything. I have written books, written articles and short stories, and collaborated with another writer on a major book project. I have gotten caught up on things I missed out on when I was so OBSESSED with the writing. And I have worked on dealing with my drinking problem (still sober so far! Woot!) and getting healthy again.

But prospective employers don’t care about any of that. All they see is the GAP. That emptiness where nothing really job-related or work-related happened.

My last gig ended in 2015. And what do I have to show for it since then? Nothing. Nada. Zip.

And last night I realized, WHOA. I should have been spending ALL of that time since then VOLUNTEERING!!!!

Because, you know, volunteering DOES count on a resumẻ. And it would look good. And, hey! Volunteering somewhere just MIGHT have gotten me a new job! Recently, one of my high school friends shared on Facebook about how he volunteered at this place that eventually hired him. After two years of volunteering there, he was HIRED! He landed a JOB through volunteering!

It’s been a little over two years since my gig ended. I could be employed by now! But I didn’t realize that volunteering was something I should have been doing All This Time. It never occurred to me until now. Sure, I WANTED to volunteer, because I think it’s important to give back, but I always thought one thing: JOB. FIRST. Our situation is pretty bad right now so of course I put more of a priority on trying to earn money with books or getting a job that PAYS. But I write books that don’t sell. And I haven’t YET gotten a job that pays! (Nice plan, right???)

So, yeah, I was pretty disheartened that I didn’t realize this sooner. Once again, I made writing a priority, and I shouldn’t have. Once again, I chose the WRONG thing to rely on to solve our problems.

I just wish that someone had told me this sooner. That maybe, you know, someone would have suggested I volunteer because it would look good on the resumẻ. I know one of my sisters suggested it, but I said “Oh, no! I need a JOB!” and that’s where the conversation ended. (I am not mad at her for not telling me it would look GOOD on my resume to volunteer. Really. I don’t think it occurred to her to mention that. But, nevertheless, she planted that seed in my head.)

And this made me remember about how this is so often the case with people. They don’t TELL me things. There have been SO many times that I said or did something wrong, and after I was given a dirty look and that person stormed off (and out of my life), I never knew what my mistake was. I never realized what I had said or did wrong. I was pretty much left in the dark. They just ASSUMED that I knew, that I intentionally did this Very Bad Thing, and that I am a Horrible Evil Person who does or says these horrible, evil things so they don’t want anything to do with me anymore. Or first they stomp on me THEN they don’t want anything to do with me anymore.

I know what it’s like for people to talk shit about you behind your back. And that’s one of the reasons why I am not so trusting of people I don’t know. (Then again, people I knew did have done this too.)

This made me recall one particular unfortunate experience in which I became ostracized from a message board. I used to be a part of the community of writers at the Absolute Write. For years, I participated in chats and posted on message boards. I considered some people there to be dear friends. Eventually, I became a mod for one of the boards, and I even got to have my own board too (it was based on one of my books). But, later, that board was deleted due to inactivity. Still, I felt there was still a need for that particular topic, so I decided to create my own board elsewhere featuring that topic. There wasn’t much activity on THAT board so, yeah, I saw personally that there REALLY wasn’t much of a need for that topic on the Internet. (I am horrible at predicting trends. Sigh!) So I deleted that one because it was just a waste of time. Then eventually, I lost my modship of a board on the AW site. And soon after that, some of the mods I used to communicate with started treating me unkindly. Some of them were nasty to me. I even received a particularly unflattering email from one of them that dripped with snarkiness. For this reason, I left that site because I no longer felt welcome there. I eventually unfriended two of those people on Facebook because I no longer felt comfortable allowing them to see ALL of these private details about my life because I didn’t trust them anymore. And after all that went down, to this day, I don’t know why they all of a sudden hated me. I don’t know what I did wrong. NOBODY TOLD ME ANYTHING!

And that’s just it. Sometimes, people don’t tell me if I screw up. I guess they just assume I meant to do something bad? Or that I am a Horrible Evil Person? I don’t know. I may NEVER know! People like to assume things and people like to believe their own lies! Hell, some of them LIKE playing the victim, this person that Evil Dawn hurt, and soak up all the sentiment from everybody else.

I hate to break it to the world at large, but I wasn’t exactly raised with decent morals. I’m sorry, but it’s true. There was a lot of lying, cheating, manipulation, betrayal, stealing and, well, violence in my family. I didn’t exactly have a charmed, loving life before entering adulthood. And all of us kids had to learn EVERYTHING about being decent people the hard way. We had to make mistakes. We had to screw up. Some of us NEVER tried to be better people after leaving home, but some of us WANTED to be decent and upstanding citizens. And we tried. We fell down so many times but we got back up and tried again!

And I just don’t know ALL of the rules about the right way to communicate with people or interact with others in society. I look at what other people do and copy THAT because it seems to be the right thing to do. Or I just saw things differently – even the things that were WRONG! (I had to learn later that wrong is still wrong, no matter HOW I saw it!) So, I had to learn the right things the hard way. I am still learning, apparently. I just wish people would TELL me when I screw up. They don’t, and that just holds everything back.

It would be NICE if people tell me when I screw up. And, I have had the good fortune of having such people in my life. Thankfully, there ARE people who actually took the initiative to tell me if I did something wrong or I said something wrong. One person even read me the Riot Act and, after I apologized profusely, we eventually made up. We are still friends to this day! This also happened with another friend. Even if it takes blowing up at me over a mistake or being rude in an email, I STILL appreciate it that I am being told that I screwed up and WHAT that mistake was. (You guys know who I am talking about. I love you guys!) I am very, very grateful to them for telling me what went wrong AND for forgiving me AND still being friends with me. And, even better, that they don’t hold that mistake against me for the rest of my natural life. I realized I screwed up, apologized, made amends, and didn’t do that Bad Thing again. They know this. They understand this. And I value them all the more because of it. They are in my circle.

I especially value them because I know how very frustrating it is NOT to be told what I did wrong. Some people just cut me off or they hated on me first THEN cut me off because they didn’t want to discuss this mistake or they assumed I INTENTIONALLY meant to hurt them or do them wrong and decided to just hate me forever.

I am also grateful that I was told about what I did wrong or what I was not doing right or why what I had said was bad. You know, it’s good to know these things. Knowing these things helps me to REALIZE that, Oh, that was not cool. That was a Bad Thing. Don’t do that again! That’s how we learn and that’s how we grow. There is no manual or instruction book for this journey called Life. We’re pretty much thrown into the woods and expected to figure shit out on our own! Nobody is perfect! And we ALL make mistakes – even the people who decide they don’t want anything to do with someone who makes mistakes. So it’s a good idea to TELL people they have screwed up, why they screwed up, what they did, and how they can fix things! Let. People. Know. Just SAY something! Instead of assuming shit.

Or maybe they feel better about assuming shit. I don’t know. I guess they need more drama or excitement in their lives.

Meanwhile, I am pretty much left on my own to figure things out, when they DON’T say anything. And it may take me a Very Long Time to figure shit out. It may take me years before I get that “bolt of knowledge” and realize, Ohh. That is what I did wrong. Or I may never know. And it’ll just be this unresolved issue in my past that survives into the future and the other person or people affected will forever remember me with that mark on my name. They’ll be the ones who will be stewing over the mistake and being angry about it, though. Not me, because I won’t even know what it was.  

Rich man marries poor girl? Not in the real world!

Recently, I read a novel that I basically enjoyed, but one thing in that book really touched a nerve with me. One character in the story is a wealthy public figure and he’s in a relationship with a woman who is not so wealthy, not so famous, and not so widely known.

Well, he WAS, anyway. He didn’t exactly live.

But the thing that bugged me was this man’s family pressuring him to break off his engagement to the woman and be with someone else – preferably, someone with more money and fame. Specifically, someone who was famous like him.

This bothered me a lot because it reminded me of how the rich only want to be with the rich. And this man in the story was very likely to do what his family wanted him to do and break things off with that woman! It probably would have happened, if he hadn’t been killed. Rich people only want to be in relationships with rich people. Rich people will only marry rich people. That’s the way it’s been and the way it always will be.

Now, I understand WHY things are this way. I know that “people in power” and celebrities will only get close to a person who has the same degree of power or money or fame because this is how they protect themselves. Anyone under them can be unpredictable. They could be thieves, liars, manipulators, tricksters, users and, well, murderers. And, they could also pull them down to their level or embarrass them because they are not so well brought up or trained to be graceful or raised with the same morals they were. So, the rich person USUALLY gets together with another rich person because they both feel financially secure enough to have their own boundaries and trust issues in place. They feel it’s okay to trust another rich person because – guess what? That person is also rich! So they don’t put themselves at risk of losing money or anything else to that person.

On the other hand, there is the side of greed involved. Being with another rich person means they stand to gain more money, fame and maybe even a higher standing in society. They prefer to schmooze and rub shoulders with fellow wealthy and powerful people in order to get more attention and coverage in the media. They want to be noticed and talked about so they get into relationships with other wealthy people. And if they’re lucky enough to marry that person, then all the better: They’ll get more money from a divorce. This is why marriages don’t last in Hollywood: They were only after more money! Who cares about love. Love means NOTHING to them. They only see dollar signs and publicity.

And the rich would rather be selfish with their money too. They care only about themselves and they like to spend their money on THEMSELVES. They would rather be with someone who can already support themselves and their families so that they won’t have to shoulder any financial burden. Rich people only want to spend money on themselves and their happiness. Heaven forbid they spend any money on a non-wealthy person who has a kid to support! Help out someone with a kid? The scandal! The rich would rather spend the money on themselves and be selfish with their money. So, that is another reason why they only get into relationships with the rich.

And, finally, another reason why the rich only get into relationships with the rich is because of family pressure. A rich person usually comes from a rich family. The family stands to gain financially FROM that rich person. They all share his wealth. And if he got with someone who wasn’t so rich and ended up supporting that woman because, naturally, their lifestyle would be HIS lifestyle because he is used to it so much and she would try to uphold that lifestyle for him because she would now have all eyes on her, too, then that means his family would benefit from his wealth less. No more expensive vacations in Mexico, cruises, lush living arrangements or fancy clothes. They would lose out on his wealth because it is now being directed elsewhere. So of course the family pressures him to only have relationships with the wealthy.  

If someone who isn’t wealthy is even THINKING they have a chance to be with someone who is wealthy: STOP. Get your head out of the clouds. Stop dreaming. The rich only want to be with the rich. They like to play head games and hurt non-wealthy people and play with their emotions because it amuses them. That’s how they have fun. They would never, ever want to be with a non-wealthy person. It just doesn’t happen and won’t happen. The rich only want to be with the rich.