I saw this post on twitter where people were challenged to mentioned all of the stuff that has gone right this year. This is going to be a short post. My private practice expanded quickly. I was financially stable enough to quit my second job. I bought a car cash. I lost 20 lbs. I have dealt with my acne. Son’s net worth hit 5 figures. He’s four. Some of these things were the result of last years accomplishment of paying off all debt (except the mortgage). Last year I took a second job to pay off my student loans. I paid off over $35,000 in 2019. Because I don’t have these large payments going out I was able to also fully fund a six month emergency fund. This year has been trying and there are still three more months to go. After stoping to see or acknowledge the parts Read more…

I has been 1 year 9 months and 12 days since I last published a post. The world looks a bit different now. The have been devastating hurricanes. There is a virus wreaking havoc around the world. 17,401,496 people infected. There are people who don’t believe this virus is real or serious. 675,167 people dead. There are protest, demonstrations, and riots on and off again most in the US, and also in a few other countries. Because we are still fighting for a world where people are not harassed, subjugated, or murdered for being different. My life looks different now. Completed the EMDR basic training course. Acquired and quit a second job to pay off debt. Paid off all of my student loans. Lost over 15 lbs. Purchased a car without financing. Worked from home for 3 months. Now worried when I seen people in the grocery store without a Read more…

Its been about five weeks since I have become more active. Every day I am either riding my bicycle or doing yoga. My shoulders are sore from the excessive down dogs and thanks to cycling my calf muscles feel more defined even under my layer of squishy. I should be happy with the progress made but I expected more. A noticeable visible change like looser fitting clothing or an obvious deficit on the scale. I got neither. I weigh exactly the same and my clothing fits about the same most days. At the moment I weigh 147.3 that is what I weighed on September 17. Of course, I keep repeating to myself that it is not about the weight and that I should focus on how I feel. I feel disappointed. The scale I have measured body fat and muscle mass. There should be an obvious change there, right? NOPE. Read more…

At the end of last year, I made this I have been updating it as I go along and now that some goals have been completed I have to make new ones.  Writing down some goals can provide direction and purpose to your decisions and behavior, especially if you feel like your floating along in life.  The most efficient way as stated by both Steven Covey and Jeff Haden is to work backward. Steven Covey called it “Begin with the end in Mind” and Jeff Haden would say “set the goal and forget it.” Both want readers to work backward from the end state. I have even heard Gary Vaynerchuk mention it, “Look at where do you want to be and reverse engineer the process.” This is a paraphrase, he uses more colorful language.  I always ask myself (and clients) the miracle question. What you would you be doing if you didn’t Read more…

Before digital When it comes to photography, I tend to overwhelm myself quite easily. I always had a point and shoot camera around before digital was big. Most of my pictures were of people and places, friends and random strangers. In my attic there are bags of 4×6 pictures that never made it into books. I was gifted a digital camera and was moved into a new world.  Buy all the gear I took a digital class in undergrad and IMMEDIATELY became obsessed. We owned a point and shoot digital that was used for snap shots. After that class I bought my first DSLR. It was a Pentax K10D. I took that super heavy camera everywhere. Then I left it on a plane by mistake. After returning from my study abroad trip, I replace my K10D with a K20D. I tried to learn as much as possible but there was Read more…

Second in the avocation series is yoga. A physical practice that was more necessity than hobby but when I was practicing I wanted nothing else.  Yoga was a game changer for me. Everyone in my life knew if I hadn’t been to the studio. Despite my profession, a yoga practice transformed me into a nicer human. A humble beginner I already told you how I found yoga. You can read that story in a past post. According to my studio account, I started my current “yoga journey” August 2012. I went regularly for about a year before I started purchasing unlimited passes. I continued to go steadily. That lasted until I found out I was pregnant in June of 2015, then I fell off of the map. I went to a pregnancy yoga class for most of my pregnancy. I wasn’t too interested in prenatal yoga. The last time I Read more…