There is a lot to cover today. It seems like the world continues to get more “woke” and crazy every day. I guess my biggest question is – we all know this stuff being forced down our throats is crazy, WHY are we allowing it to happen? Are we afraid to speak up? If you don’t speak up, does this mean you agree with these agendas? It’s something to ponder. Do you think the experimental injectable contains a microchip? Why are magnets sticking to COVID injection sites? Book review is science fiction this week: The Solar War by A.G. Riddle. Take a moment to remember our brave men/women who have served our country this weekend!
One of the questions that Kevin and I talked about in our podcast, (coming tomorrow), was how do you deal with stress? One of my answers was, I physically remove myself from the situation, whether that’s hiding in the bathroom for a few moments to deep breathe or take a walk around the hospital because …. people. Ugh.
But another big thing for me is reading. I read to escape my reality, to temporarily shove my thoughts and problems into a closet allowing more space and energy for my imagination to freely roam.
If I could read for a living, I would, in a heartbeat. If anyone knows of any book reviewer jobs let me know! (I may be looking for a new job, very, very soon).
Also – IT’S JUNE, YA’LL! Twenty-twenty one is nearly halfway over!
You can tell which book I’m currently reading by the Goodreads widget in the sidebar.
I’m all about Kindle e-books. I’m a hard core e-book reader. I haven’t read an actual book in quite a long time and I find that when I hold an actual book, it feels large and clunky. I much prefer my Kindle e-reader than an actual book. With that said, I get all of my books from Kindle Unlimited – I rarely, if ever, spend money on a book – it all goes into the $10 dollars a month I pay for Kindle Unlimited.
So, if you’re interested in reading lesser known authors and want to save a ton of money in books, join me!
I rarely read anything lower than a four-star review on Goodreads – I’ve come to trust the reviews of Goodreads readers. I stopped reading for a long time simply because every book I read was stupid, or disappointing and ultimately, a waste of time. (I feel the same with movies – haven’t watched movies, or TV, in about a year). I’ve had great luck sticking to this philosophy and most of the books I read are pretty good.
I really don’t know when I started not caring about what people thought of me. Maybe high school. I remember not really belonging to any one group, or click, I just … existed. I feel like I was “friends” with a lot of different people from those clicks, but I never allowed anyone to get super close to me, or really get to know me at all, hence the reason I put “friends” in quotations.
I had a best friend in high school. We have since lost touch. We connected briefly on Facebook but when the Zuckerberg Zombies started playing god and censoring free speech, I disabled my account and haven’t been back.
(Though typing this makes me want to jump on to see if she’s still around. I wouldn’t mind reconnecting, actually).
But other than my best friend, I didn’t really have any other close friends. I kept people at arm’s length. And if we’re being perfectly honest here, I feel like I kept my best friend at arm’s length, too.
I know why I have this …. aversion to allowing people to get close to me. I can really trace it back to two incidents, one I’m not willing to talk about on this blog but the other … was a boy.
I fell head over heels in “love” with this guy when I was in high school. I don’t even know if you could call it “love,” but it was strong, however you want to slap a label on it.
He wasn’t a student at my high school, he had already graduated from a neighboring school so he was older and worked at a Skateland, or whatever it was called back then. I can’t remember if his parents owned the rink but he was like a manager, or maybe he was simply popular because he was cute and all of the girls had crushes on him.
And yet, he expressed interest in me. This was a huge boost to my ego because I was never one of the popular girls. I didn’t belong to their group, but we were friendly, (remember the whole friends with different clicks thing?), so I belonged, but not really. I was one of those people with my face pressed to the glass but never allowed into the store, if that makes sense.
And in a lot of ways, I was perfectly okay with that. But the fact that this cute, popular guy took an interest in me … went straight to my head.
And I fell hopelessly in love with him.
Or so I thought. Or whatever you call the feeling you experience the first time you’re in “love.”
We dated for a while, I want to say weeks, but it felt longer, until I found out he was “cheating” on me with a girl I DESPISED.
I didn’t even try to salvage the relationship. There was no way in hell I was going to grovel at this man’s feet – if he didn’t want me, he didn’t want me.
But I was heartbroken. In fact, I would dare say the experience broke something in me. I’ve always been standoffish my whole life but after that experience? I never allowed anyone to get to close me again.
Even to this day. (Kevin is probably the only human who has been allowed to get to know the real me and even then, there is a deep, dark, part of my heart that I will not allow him access to – I honestly couldn’t tell you why – self preservation, I guess).
I wouldn’t say I’m cold, I have a lot of compassion and empathy for other people, but at the same time, I could give a rat’s ass if someone likes me or not. Well, that’s not entirely true, if I like/respect you, then it bothers me if I feel like I’ve disappointed or upset you, but since I don’t allow very many people to get to know ME, that number is quite small.
The majority of people? Meh.
I don’t say this to brag, I’m not even sure if this is a healthy behavior to subscribe to, but in a lot ways, I feel it’s preferable when compared to people who only want to please others or wear their heart on their sleeves. That must be an exhausting head space to live in. Because people are mean and cruel and can manipulate you into doing something outside your comfort zone, either unintentionally or purposefully.
I guess, if you want to psychoanalyze this, I don’t trust people. Again, I know why I feel this way, I can trace it back to specific incidents in my life, which helps me understand myself a little better and deal with disappointments that come my way. It’s just easier for me not to trust someone and allow them to get close as opposed to opening my heart and having that person betray me and open myself up to feeling vulnerable, disappointed, and foolish.
And before you feel sorry for me, let me stop you right there. I’m GLAD for these experiences and LIKE who I am as a person. Because the alternative breaks my heart a little bit.
I’ve worked with countless people over the years, all sort of personalities. And the personality that I feel the most sorry for, and the most impatient with, are people pleasers.
I TRULY don’t understand people with personalities that can’t handle criticism, constructive or otherwise, people that get upset if someone is harsh with them or clearly doesn’t like them. I don’t understand why anyone would CARE what others thought of them. Now, I get people that you know, love and respect, of course, I’m not completely cold and unfeeling, but strangers??
Why?!? Why does it matter if people you don’t know judge you, or call you names, try and manipulate/bully you into doing something you clearly don’t want to do?
Who cares what these asshats think?
Case in point – masks.
I work in healthcare – I don’t think our mask mandate is going away any time soon, unfortunately, but when we talked about our local city finally, FINALLY, lifting the mask mandate for our city, my coworkers got a little freaked out. I understand that they are comfortable wearing them, and if they want to continue wearing them, okay, but when I mentioned that Kevin and I haven’t been wearing masks for weeks, I got deer-in-headlights looks and gasps of shock.
“Oh. I can’t do that. I don’t want people judging me.”
I feel like this is a common response whenever people are put into situations where they have an option of swimming upstream – making decisions against the majority. I get that it’s difficult and takes courage, but if the biggest reason someone doesn’t want to make a decision is based solely on how others will perceive you? I can’t get behind that.
My response? JUDGE AWAY. I don’t care. You don’t know me. Your judgement is based on your own personal feelings and is not, in any way, a reflection of who I am or what I feel. I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think of a decision that I’ve made for ME.
Now. If this judgement is coming from someone I love and respect? Let’s talk. Tell me why you disagree and let’s break it down, but if you’re a stranger? Or someone I dislike or don’t care to get to know?
DON’T CARE.
I think this is a topic that everyone should think about. I think there might be less sheeple if people accepted the fact that you WILL be disliked, that you CAN’T please everyone, all you can do is make the best decisions for you and your family. There is no one size fits all. There is no my opinion is the ONLY opinion. It’s OKAY if people don’t like you.
Truly.
This guy is a little too “new agey” for me, but his message is spot on. I like what he says, “allow others the FREEDOM to disagree with you.” This means, it’s FINE if someone disagrees with you and/or makes choices you don’t agree with. This does NOT mean you have the right to jump on the cancel culture train and actively try and destroy his/her life.
How do you respond if someone disagrees with you and/or your choices?
NOTHING. You simply move on with life.
I also like what he says about people that don’t like you are really struggling to like themselves. BINGO. I feel like this summarizes this topic exactly. I’m betting, most of the time, people don’t dislike YOU, they dislike an aspect of you because it’s something about THEMSELVES they don’t like.
“And they can say whatever they want and it only affects them, it doesn’t have to affect you at all.”
If there are aspects of you that you don’t like, take an honest look at yourself and work on it. The more you feel confident on who and what you are, the more you will care less what others think of you and the happier you will be.
Hey! Finally! It’s the long awaited update on our cargo trailer conversion!
Let me just say, at the outset, that I’ve been ZERO help. It’s all been Kevin. LeRoy has helped but the majority of work has been done by Kevin. He has though long and hard about how he wants to configure everything and I’m really impressed with him! This is the first time he’s really done any carpentry and he has customized the pieces he bought, for pennies on the dollar at places like thrift stores and Habitat for Humanity, and made it work for the space. He has spent a lot of time on the kitchen and I couldn’t be happier.
I can’t wait to take it on the road!
It’s not ready yet, obviously, but now that the kitchen is pretty much done, he feels like the rest of the work will go faster (famous last words?)
He is buying the air conditioner/heater unit to put in next and I’m on the hunt for a deal on our “half” fridge. He actually painted the cabinets under the bed, (you can see them in the thumbnail) today.
A cold wind blows across the snow-covered desert, a chill that oozes through my parka like water soaking in, never drying. The frigid air bites at my exposed neck as I watch the sun peek above the horizon. The sky grows more clear each day as the particles from the asteroid ejections are removed. As the haze fades away, the sun shrinks, as if it’s a light slowly drifting away. That’s what living on Earth feels like, a desolate planet constantly growing darker and colder, with no hope of it ever stopping.
Story blurb:
We thought the war was over. We were wrong.
They decimated Earth during the Long Winter. Now the grid has returned, and they won’t stop until the human race is extinct.
On a ruined world, humanity’s last survivors fight against impossible odds. In their darkest hour, they discover a new hope for survival. But it comes at an unthinkable price, with consequences that will change everything.
I don’t read a lot of science fiction – not because I don’t like the genre I just prefer mystery/thriller, but once in a while I like to dip my toes in an alternate universe and try something different.
“The Solar War” is book two of the trilogy and so far … it’s interesting, but not earth shattering. The first book of the Trilogy starts with humanity struggling to survive on Earth because for some reason, the sun seems to be fading away. Less sun and warmth is making its way to Earth thereby causing a deep freeze and in a perpetual state of winter. NASA gets involved and sends some people out into space to find out what is going on and they soon discover some alien force seems to be harvesting the sun’s power and leaving Earth in the cold and dark.
I won’t give book one away, but suffice it to say, the humans severely piss the aliens off and they come back in book two for revenge by raining asteroids down on Earth and killing 99.9% of the population. The few remaining end up making a deal with an alien form – leave Earth or they wipe out the human race.
I’m about 56% way through the book and I’m not quite sure what to think about it yet. There is non-stop action and the story alternates between James and Emma’s points of view. James and Emma are married, they have one small daughter and Emma is pregnant with baby number two.
Riddle’s writing style is … different. Riddle is almost telling the story as opposed to showing the story to readers but it’s not overly obvious and it somehow … works. Riddle covers a lot of ground and yet he is somehow successful in drawing the reader into the story – almost as if the reader is a historian and writing about the series of events. It’s hard to describe the style and I can’t decide if I like it or not.
I’m not super invested in the main characters and in fact, I tend to like the minor characters more. They have more of a personality than James and Emma, in my opinion.
The relationship between James and the alien is almost stilted. Like they are both going through the motions and are not really invested in what their decisions. It’s like Riddle skims the surface of the story instead of taking the time to really dive under the surface. The story almost feels like reading a textbook, in some ways, if that makes sense. It’s informative, interesting, (most of the time), but dry. It’s like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, without the jelly.
I have a college degree. I graduated from college in 2003 with a Bachelor of Science in Technical Writing and a minor in creative writing.
I went to college for two big reasons:
— I wanted to prove to myself that I was smart enough to finish it. And I’m proud to say, I graduated Cum Laude. (Contrary to popular belief, I’m not that smart when it comes to book smarts. What saves me is I have LOADS of common sense).
— And I wanted to set a good example for our boys, to show them that you’re never too old to go to college, (I was one of those annoying, overachieving older students you see sprinkled throughout campus), and that if you wanted to make something of yourself, you needed to go to college.
I have since changed my mind on that.
College nowadays is not really about educating you and/or preparing you for the real world, it’s about indoctrinating you into a specific mindset and teaching group think. And for that completely worthless lesson you get saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of debt.
Whee!
When our boys graduated from high school, we didn’t really discourage them from going on to college but we certainly didn’t encourage them, either. We didn’t have to worry about that, actually, as both boys were firmly against going to college, primarily because they didn’t want to start life off in debt.
Smart kids, I wonder where they get that mentality? (*cough*)
At first, we were like, “but you’ll never get a good paying job without a college education! How will you be successful?” but now, I’m SO GLAD they didn’t go as I wouldn’t want them to be brainwashed to believe the sh*t that’s being taught now.
True. If you want a job in a specific field, accounting, law, medicine, you’ll need a formal education to pursue that goal, but it’s totally possible to be successful without a college education. And if the boys want to go to college at some point, we’ll certainly support their decision, (with some financial counsel, for example, take it slow, pay as you go, don’t take out loans and CERTAINLY don’t expect someone else to pay your bills for you). In fact, I think going to college later in life, when they are more mature and serious about what they want to do is preferable as opposed to right after high school when they are impressionable and easily manipulated – kids need to learn to navigate the real world first, get to know who they are as people first, before encountering pressures to learn and/or live someone else’s ideals.
I have a college degree, but I haven’t done anything with it, I’m ashamed to say. Primarily because
I’m too scared to try
I don’t think I’m good enough
Technical writing is BORING
I know Kevin is disappointed in me. He has never come right out and said that, but I can see it in his face at times when it comes up.
Like now.
We had a “huddle” at work the other day, and my manager mentioned that she heard a “rumor” that the hospital was going to mandate the experimental injectable, i.e. COVID vaccine, this coming Fall. It will likely coincide with the annual flu vaccination, which, for the record, I HATE and don’t believe it and only get it to keep my job fully convincing myself that whatever poison they are injecting is not affecting my long-term health, at all.
Anyway, I was disappointed and sad, but not surprised. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to deal with this issue for at least another year, but it doesn’t sound like I’m going to get the luxury of time here. And it’s only a rumor at this point, maybe I won’t, but I think it’s going to happen, largely because I hear the hospital is requiring new hires to get the “vaccine” before starting.
So, it’s coming. I need to stop holding out hope.
I’m not going to lie, I have been waffling back and forth on whether to get it, or find another job. Let’s real talk here, I’m not getting any younger. I have about … ten working years left in me before retirement and do I really want to start over? Start from scratch? Learn something new and deal with the stress of that?
And the Johnson and Johnson vaccine is one jab and it at least resembles something like a normal injection in that it has a little bit of the virus in it as opposed to the Moderna and the Phizer which is the mRNA technology that is still …. pretty experimental.
The thing is, the hospital will make me sign a consent, (even though I technically DON’T consent), thereby releasing them from any liability if I have any sort of adverse reaction. And I know that according to OSHA guidelines, an employer could potentially be liable for any adverse reactions if they mandate the vaccine, though that wouldn’t apply if I’m forced to sign that damn consent, but it’s food for thought.
And I LOVE my job, I really do. It’s stressful and exhausting, but I’m good at it and the people I work with are pretty amazing, but is all of this worth my health? Remember, I never, IN A MILLION YEARS, thought I would find myself working in healthcare – I never wanted it and quite frankly, I could walk away from it without losing much – I don’t have a dog in this fight.
However –
There’s already talk of an annual COVID “booster” and where do I draw the line? I have to put my health and freedoms first.
I. HAVE. TO.
So now what? What are my options now?
I have my degree. Perhaps it’s time to pursue something in that field. What do I have to lose? I’m going to have to find another job anyway, I might as well see what’s out there. And honestly, NOW is the perfect time to look for a job since employers are practically begging people to come work for them.
That may not be the case in the Fall when people lose their unemployment checks and have no other choice but to get back out there and find work.
This situation is TEARING me up inside. I’m reaching a crossroads in my life and I don’t want to make the wrong decision.
Luckily, it’s only me and Kevin on my insurance now but quite frankly, when the boys dropped off my insurance, they found some pretty sweet deals on health insurance, which wasn’t an option ten years ago when Obama stuck his nose into the whole business, so I know we CAN find affordable health insurance (and quite frankly, it will likely be better than what we have now because contrary to popular belief, health insurance is not that great for healthcare workers).
So. I think I need to move forward. I need to think ahead and prepare myself for the very real possibility of not having a job this Fall. Where do I start? I haven’t been on a job interview in ten-plus years. I’m a bit rusty, to say the least.
I need to start with my resume. I will put that together and then I will dust off my LinkIn account and post my resume to my Indeed.com account. I’ll cast my line out into the employer waters and see what I can catch. Who knows what will come of that, if anything.
If that doesn’t work, then I’m not too proud to apply places like Wal-Mart, Hobby Lobby … whatever I can get. And quite frankly, I’ll likely make more money because again, contrary to popular belief, healthcare workers don’t make that much money.
Which is sad and wrong considering all they do for the public, but it’s just an unfortunate fact.
I haven’t made it a secret at work where I stand on this issue so if anyone from work reads this post they won’t be surprised to learn how I feel about this, but I definitely feel like someone turned an hourglass over and now my time at this hospital is running out.
To say I’m bitter and resent the HELL out of having to make this choice would be putting it mildly. Once again, I’m being forced to adapt to a situation not of my making and THAT PISSES ME OFF TO NO END. But I will NOT conform to something I don’t believe in. I just won’t. And if that means that makes my life harder, or I have to rearrange my life to accommodate the madness, so be it.
I don’t know. Won’t it be ironic if my college degree ends up saving my ass after all?
Write From Karen 