Hi! My day job is a CMA in the Precertificiation Department (I work with insurance companies). I'm a mom to two young men. I've been married to the same man for 34 years. I have a lot to say about nothing. Lucky you.
Opinions. I’d like to teach people to listen with an open mind, to weigh all of the options, from both opposing fences, and then to come to a fair, logical and informed decision.
Too many times, people are only getting one side of the story. Whether that’s from media, from friends, from family … how many times have you listened to a friend complain about a spouse, or something that happened at work, or a time when they got into trouble and you based your opinion on what that friend told you? You reared your righteous indignation on behalf of your friend and automatically rallied for your friend’s predicament or side?
Only to find out later, that there were TWO sides to the story and lo and behold, your friend wasn’t as “innocent” as he/she led you to believe?
Or you listen/watch a news story and you get worked up over THE INJUSTICE of it all, only to find out later that OOPS, that news outlet didn’t exactly give you all of the details and maybe, just maybe, it’s not as cut and dried as they (the news outlets) wanted you to believe.
Nothing – NOTHING- irritates me more than to not be given all the facts.
Another example: teaching evolution in schools. Okay. Fine. Teach evolution, but also teach creationism. Then leave it up to the individual to make his/her own informed decision. It’s insulting to only give one side of the story and then to expect people to just blindly agree with that side.
Facts are pesky little things, but they’re also necessary little things.
So, moral of this post? Get ALL the facts, THEN make up your mind.
We sort of hate to board the crazy train from President Trump’s tweet this week, but we couldn’t resist giving our two cents worth. All of this crazy actually came from a portion of President Trump’s tweet and when you read the entire tweet, the portion everyone is up-in-arms about was actually taken out of context and does not mean what everyone is trying very hard to make it mean. Is anyone embarrassed? We think they should be. Also, don’t try and make something out of nothing, context is key.
Feel free to download it and use it for your journal. The image is an A5 size if you have an A5 journal. I get the pictures from Unsplash, a freely-usable image. I can’t draw, I’m certainly not an artist, but I do like pictures. I picked this picture because we will be traveling to Florida very soon.
*gasp* Yes. We are daring to travel. Don’t worry. We will be cautious and will be socially distancing as we’ll be spending the majority of our time on the beach.
That’s pretty isolating, overall.
Anyway, I’ll talk more about that trip soon.
I’m really digging my new spreads.
I like this book template a lot. And my overall mood and step tracker. Nothing new there.
I’m sticking to one color and black throughout the month. I’m liking the consistency and it looks more uniform and less messy.
Still doing the weather tracker (I’m doing a weather tracker primarily because I want proof to refer to when people start commenting on “this is the wettest summer we’ve had on record” or whatever the case may be because then I can go back and say, “Um … actually …”)
I changed up my sleep tracker. I wanted someplace to document the amount of sleep I’m getting and on what days. I don’t really sleep that well so I’m trying to track a pattern. I’m liking the layout so far.
Got my travel plan and my packing list for our trip to Florida. (Notice the travel details are blocked out because … well … it’s the Internet).
My journaling pages so far.
And the most fun tracker I’ve done to date – a productivity tracker. I DID A DUTCH DOOR! Not very well, granted, but still, not bad for a first attempt. Not sure how often I will do dutch doors but I do know that if I’m going to do them again I need an X-ACTO knife because it’s near impossible to cut close to the page without accidentally snipping the binding, that would suck.
I’m sure my activities will change from time-to-time but for now, I tried to incorporate my most common activities. There are more activities on the back of the dutch door. Those are more housecleaning and general entertainment activities.
Anyway, I was immediately intrigued about the productivity tracker the first time I saw it was a “thing” and knew I would have to at least try it once. So far, it’s been pretty fun and also sobering. I’m not really that busy, anyone who knows me knows I’m one of the most boring people on Earth, but it DOES motivate me to do more just so I can put an icon on my productivity tracker. And that’s really all I want it for – to motivate me to BE more productive in whatever I’m doing.
If you would like to know more about what a productivity tracker is and how to set it up, I recommend you watch this video.
I’m pretty happy with these spreads and I don’t really see myself changing them or adding any more on, but you never know. I’m not sure if I’ll continue to post anything about my bullet journal at this stage as it’s pretty straight forward and not very pretty to look at, but if I change things up or start adding calligraphy at some point I might post periodic updates.
I highly recommend keeping journals. Not necessarily bullet journals, but just someplace to write your innermost thoughts. It’s therapeutic in a lot of ways and helps clean out the clutter in your mind. I think journals have been very helpful to me because now that my blog has been discovered in my “real life”, journals allow me a space to write what I’m REALLY thinking as I can’t really do that on this platform because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by my “honesty.”
Anyhoo, I hope you’re having fun with your journal journey!
“In the face of a novel virus threat, China clamped down on its citizens. Academics used faulty information to build faulty models. Leaders relied on these faulty models. Dissenting views were suppressed. The media flamed fears and the world panicked.
The current coronavirus disease has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.”
Two questions: how did we let it go so far? And what can we do to ensure it doesn’t happen again?
How are you, really? This whole Coronavirus experience has been a bit of a shit storm, wouldn’t you agree? I feel like I’m stuck in a Draconian nightmare and I can’t seem to wake up. There is light at the end of the tunnel, so we’ve been told, but I wonder how getting back to normal is going to actually work. Our government has dug us into a hole, I’m not sure I trust them enough to get us out of it. And the longer we put off opening our country, the harder it’s going to be to dig ourselves out.
My head is spinning with so much data and thoughts about things I’ve heard and watched that I truly don’t know where to start, so I guess I’ll just start at the beginning. Please note, these are my thoughts and opinions. These thoughts in no way reflect how the hospital I work for, nor the people I work with, think or feel. This is my experience, it’s unique to me, everyone has their own unique experiences. You are free to disagree, it’s okay. We can agree to disagree. In return, I will work hard to remain fair and objective about this whole situation as the goal of this post is to record my thoughts and experience and to hopefully give you another perspective, or, to perhaps confirm thoughts you have but are too scared to admit out loud.
And isn’t that a sad state of affairs when you are afraid to voice your thoughts for fear of being attacked and ostracized?
Here’s how it began for me: This nightmare for me began the week the doctor I normally work with was on vacation with his family. He was out-of-the country. Two days into his vacation, shit hit the fan. The COVID-19 scare began and since none of us knew what it was or how severe it would be, we all freaked out, myself included. But still, I’m the sort of person who tends to downplay something, to not panic, until facts present themselves and the situation truly turns dire. THEN I would panic. But I would lying if other people’s fears didn’t affect me. What exactly are we dealing with? How serious was this virus? The fact that no one had ever seen anything like this before, and it was HIGHLY contagious, was … concerning.
The hospital responded the moment it became a pandemic. Most of the entrances were shut down leaving two main entrances and the ER open. We had to stop and have our temperatures taken and elective surgeries were shut down. The hospital also published travel restrictions stating that if you had traveled outside the country you had to be quarantined for 14 days either using ETO (which is estimated time off) or unpaid time, regardless of whether you tested positive for the virus.
When the cases exploded in New York, the hospital put up a tent outside of the ER and patients had to be screened for the virus in the tent first before they were allowed into the tent. (That tent is still up, by the way). A local business donated money to the hospital and they built a COVID wing in preparation of COVID patients. To my knowledge, they’ve only had a few patients use the wing, thank God.
(Update: that wing is about half full now and has been consistently half full for a few weeks now).
We all started worrying that the hospital wouldn’t allow our doctor back to work since he traveled out of the country. We were super worried when the hospital starting furloughing employees – they gave us the option of either working from home, if we could, or staying home using ETO or unpaid time. The hospital’s response to all of this was to try and protect the employees, which was actually pretty great – they worked very hard to put employees in other departments in order to try and avoid sending anyone home because let’s face it, who can afford to stay home without pay?
Oh right, millions of non-essential workers, that’s who.
I don’t know how, and it’s really none of my business on the details, but the hospital allowed my doctor to come back to work. Never one to be idle, he and his mid-level started coming up with a plan B because when he returned, we were essentially shut down and not seeing patients – at all. God bless my team because they come up with a plan to keep people working: They suggested Telemedicine.
I have worked for this clinic for almost nine years and we have never, not once, ever considered offering Telemedicine visits. It couldn’t be done, we were told. Our doctors needed to examine the patients to determine if surgery was a viable option for them. But now, given the option of either trying it or doing nothing, my team started really breaking down the details and asking questions on how we could make it happen. We were willing to try anything at this point, anything to keep the lights on.
We were especially motivated because we were hearing stories of entire departments being shut down simply because we weren’t seeing patients outside an emergent situation and we were scared we would be the next department to get the ax. We hurriedly came up with a plan and started using a program that worked, but was sort of clunky. But again, at least we were moving forward and not sitting idle. We then quickly shifted to using Microsoft Teams since it was a program that the hospital had purchased a license for and if it wasn’t for my lovely nurse and an administrator figuring out the details, how it worked and how it should all come together, we probably would have been told to stay home sooner.
Patients were reluctant at first. And setting up the visits was pretty stressful at first, but we have since figured it out and have come up with enough troubleshooting solutions that we have a pretty good handle on it now. However, it was slow going and instead of seeing 40 patients a week, we were seeing about twelve. And not all of the doctors were on board with this option at first. A few of them fought the option and refused to participate which ultimately led to management calling an emergency meeting letting us know that they were going to have to ask all of us to stay home at least one day of the week – we could use ETO or just not be paid.
It was a sobering meeting and one I will not soon forget. We all gathered in the main lobby, all standing six feet apart, of course, looking serious and crestfallen knowing what was coming but not sure how it would logistically pan out. Our director had tears in her eyes when she told us and though it was shocking to hear it was happening, none of us were surprised. We all saw it coming, and honestly, we were more surprised it hadn’t happened sooner.
When this was asked of us, the providers that weren’t on board with Telemedicine were suddenly on board. I think they felt bad for us, quite frankly. Even though it was in no way their fault, I think they felt a bit responsible for us because let’s face it, our jobs are solely dependent on how many patients and surgeries they do.
Fortunately, this new “normal” only lasted two weeks. Since we were one of the last departments to make any staff changes, it happened shortly before the hospital started allowing elective surgeries again, which was the first part of May. In the meantime, patients started being more receptive to the whole Telemedicine thing and we were “seeing” more patients at one time. In fact, in some ways, it’s been working out better than actually seeing patients in the office because it’s allowed us to really focus on the patients that truly need to be seen for various problems. I know my doctor has been getting quite a few surgeries and he’s been very happy with the process so far. And to be fair, I think the patients have been happy with it as well. My doctor has the ability to share his screen with his patients and he’s able to pull up their images and go over them with the patients so the patients can see what is going on with their spines. Our mid-level has thought of creative ways to do exams over web cam and except for being able to do vitals on the patients, honestly, our process hasn’t changed all that much. I mean, it has, but we have just found a new way to treat patients.
As of this post, the tent is still out in front of ER, we are still only seeing patients via Telemedicine but the city and the hospital are getting ready to implement phase 2 of this process starting June 1st, which means we can see a handful of patients in our clinic but everyone has to wear a mask and we have to space the patients out in the waiting rooms and/or put them in an exam room as soon as possible.
Though we’ve been given the green light to do so, my doctor doesn’t want to see patients in the office yet. He would prefer to only still do Telemedicine which … is fine with me, it means I have a job and it keeps the lights on, but it is a lot of extra work on my part to get it set up because it’s not a quick get them on the schedule and be done with it, a two minute phone call turns into ten minutes, then I have to put them on the Teams schedule, then the normal schedule. Then I’m on the phone with them on the day of their appointment for 15 minutes updating their chart and talking them through establishing a connection. Our doctor doesn’t want to start seeing patients in the office until we have a vaccine, but let’s be honest, that could be 18 months from now, or never, quite frankly. I’m sure he’ll cave once he sees his partners allowing patients back in the office. But who knows, I’ve gotten so good going with the flow lately that I’m sure I’ll deal with whatever new challenge is thrown at me next.
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. 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.
My goal for 2020 is to read 100 books – I’m currently at 68 – I’m right on track but I like to give myself a little bit of wiggle room so I want to get at least two books ahead of schedule. Also, I reserved a bookclub on Goodreads back in 2014 and have never done anything with it – I’d like to start doing something with it. So – if you’re interested in joining the book club, read more about it here and you can join here. The books we read are adult romance, mystery/thriller and literary fiction so you must be 18+ years old to participate. I’ve never done this before but have always wanted to so please be patient with me as I stumble through the process. I’d like to try and read/discuss two books every month, meaning you have two weeks to read a book and then post your thoughts about it. We’ll try and touch on theme, character development and of course, the overall story. The rules are on the group page. I’ll start by picking the books the first few months but I’m hoping when we have enough members to ask for suggestions for books and then randomly draw from that selection.
I’m a cheapskate and I ONLY read free books, meaning, Kindle Unlimited books. So if you’re not already a Kindle Unlimited member, I would encourage you to become one. (This is not sponsored by Kindle Unlimited – however – if anyone is reading this from Kindle Unlimited …hit me up!) I read from Kindle Unlimited for two reasons: one – I’m cheap, books are expensive and I can read $80 bucks worth of books per month for only $10 bucks per month, and two – I feel like authors on Kindle Unlimited are lesser-known authors and deserve a chance to be read and quite honestly, I’m more satisfied reading these books than I am reading “best sellers” so, win-win!
What happened to 2020? It started out great, then BAM. We got the wind knocked out of us and we started looking at our neighbors with suspicion, we started isolating ourselves from humanity and we had to actively come up with a strategy to find toilet paper. We all have different stories and experiences from the nightmare commonly known as COVID – here’s our story.
I got all the way to December in my bullet journal, setting it up, making it look … I was going to say pretty but let’s be honest, my bullet journal is not pretty, it’s juvenile and basic, when I just stopped. I couldn’t go on. I sat staring at my spread and just …………… lost interest. I felt like I was going through the motions. *yawn* I was bored.
So, I took a few weeks and started watching bullet journal videos again. Where did I go wrong? Why did I lose interest? Then, it sort of hit me, my bullet journal wasn’t ME. It was fun to experiment with different spread ideas but ultimately, I wasn’t using it very much. I spent more time creating spreads I wasn’t really interested in using as opposed to actually using it.
What started my bullet journal 2.0 was calligraphy. I want to learn calligraphy. Learning calligraphy is on my goals list for this year. I researched what pens and paper to use. I already had a ton of pens that would work but I needed some paper to practice on. I didn’t want to use just normal paper because writing on normal paper with all of the scratching and grittiness made my skin crawl. I didn’t enjoy writing on the paper I had … so I bought a Rhodia notebook.
And instantly fell in love.
I used to be one of those people that scoffed and rolled my eyes at people who swore quality paper was the way to go.
“Dude. It’s PAPER. How much of a difference can it honestly make?” I would silently judge.
Let’s just say that revived my interest in bullet journaling.
I bought the Turquoise one. I don’t even know why, I don’t particularly like Turquoise, but for some reason, it spoke to me. (This is what happens when you don’t really have a social life outside of work and family – books talk to you).
Rhodia journals may not be for everyone. They only have 80 pages and they are soft covers, not hard covers. But, they have a back pocket and the SOFT PAGES – need I say more??
Writing on these pages is smooooooooth. It doesn’t scratch when you write on it or make me cringe and shudder and grit my teeth in irritation.
And I can totally see myself collecting each color and filling them with my nonsense for anyone to read (after I die – AFTER I DIE).
Okay. I have a new journal. Now, what to do with it?
Here’s what I learned from my bullet journaling so far – I really only want to record a few things and I want pages to write on. No structure, just write what I want, when I want. Write as little, or as much, as I like.
And I’m only interested in recording 1. my daily steps, 2. my daily moods, 3. my monthly reads, 4. weather and 5. writing. I don’t care about monthly logs. I don’t care about future logs. I don’t care about traditional monthly trackers.
Why aren’t I making my bullet journal about the things I care about?
And I figure it won’t take long for me to get through 80 pages, then I’ll have an excuse to buy another journal in another color which will make me excited to fill it and renew my enthusiasm.
What could go wrong? (Don’t answer that).
It’s also thin enough, and flexible enough, to easily take with me. Whereas a hardback book is, well, hard, thick and bulky. I feel like a softback journal will look cool the more you use it, as well. A well used journal is a well loved journal.
Can I get an Amen?
So, here’s what I’ve done so far:
OKAY, DON’T JUDGE ME. Yes. I did a really poor job of gluing it into the book. Yes. I agree, the calendar is DUMB. But ignore that. I really like the picture and the pretty font so I will do a better job of sticking in September’s picture and will leave off the calendar. It’s a work in progress! Sheesh.
By the way, I get my pictures from either Unsplash or Pexels.
Next up – my monthly reading log. I made a fun bookshelf in my last bullet journal but I didn’t leave enough room to write in the titles so I wanted something a bit more fun and a lot more room. I bought this fun book template from Erin Floto Designs and I used an ink blending tool, dipped it in orange ink and tapped away. Again, no idea why I chose orange, (though I suspect it’s because of the sunset on my August page and the orange book mark), but I’m sort of diggin’ it. As you can see, I’ve read three book so far this month. I can’t wait to use this template in different colors in the months ahead.
And that’s something else I’m trying to do – stick with a few sets of colors at one time. This month, black and orange. And I have BOOKS of stickers that I plan on using to coordinate with my color palette as well. I mostly have inspirational quotes and again, I would rather put a quote sticker on my journal page than try and write out a quote that will take me 30 minutes to do poorly and then another 30 minutes to be depressed about because it looks like shit.
Then I have my steps and mood tracker page. Nothing fancy, just numbers. I spent WAY too much time stenciling in cute crap to color in when really, I’m more interested in the number as opposed to whether I made it to 6,000 or 10,000 steps. And I’m digging my mood tracker better because I’m not limited to a smiley face, a sad face, an angry face, etc. I can spread my wings and record all my feels.
(By the way – see my attempt to faux calligraphy on the left page? Yeah – let’s hope I get better. And if you think I wrote the August on the right page, you have WAY too much faith in me. I did not write that August – it’s a sticker).
Next up: my sleep and weather tracker.
I’ll be honest, I’m not crazy about my sleep tracker, though it’s cute. I think I’m going to do something different next month – or not. I still can’t decide if I like it but it was fun to put together. I am, however, loving my weather tracker. It’s now all on one page and I have plenty of room to write the temperature and make cute little weather doodles. I will definitely keep this one. (Can you tell I forgot that August has 31 days? *sigh*)
Here is my writing tracker (that looks like a 2nd grader wrote – I’m experimenting with different fonts, get off me! And, I misspelled writing – AHEM) and I decided that I wanted to go ahead and put a calendar in my spreads just so I can keep track of days off, days the boys come to visit, etc. I didn’t even bother to make enough spots for each day of the month on my writing tracker because let’s be real, I’m not going to write every day of the month, but I have to admit, having something like this motivated me to publish a blog post today so I think it will help me stay accountable.
And the fancy-smancy Aug 10 on the right page – (it’s okay, we can all be honest and admit you didn’t know what it said) will be where I write my thoughts for today. (I actually ended up using half the page and divided the page in half with the same orange washi tape that you see on the left side).
And that’s it. I don’t really plan on putting anything else in my journal. I really wanted to use my bullet journal as more of a journal than a planner because let’s face it – my life is so boring I don’t have a need for a planner. I’m sure (hope) it will evolve and get better with time and again, I’m looking forward to buying more journals and building a library of journals that perhaps my children (dare I hope grandchildren??) will read one day.
At some point, I’d like to try some dutch doors in my journal but I end of up hyperventilating whenever I seriously think about doing it so I’m thinking I’m not quite ready to go down that road …… yet.
Today’s question is …
Write From Karen 