The September Horizons Magazine is now online at http://horizonsmagazine.com

This week I moved some big rocks around in the yard to new places in the yard. On my laps around the property, I make sure to keep all ornamental rocks and stepping stones on top of the newly fallen leaves and deadfall, and not let it get lost underneath.  A dozen years ago, a boyfriend had created several paths with stones and timber, in areas of the yard I seldom visited.  It wasn’t long before the leaf fall covered the stones and pathway markers from view.  Several years later, I began raking up all the leaves for mulch when I saw the stones underneath and remembered.  Sometimes I let areas of my life get like that, too.  I let something useful and beautiful lie unused, forgetting about it if it’s out of sight.  Then I come across it later and wonder how I could have forgotten something so wonderful, and I am delighted all over again by what was right there all the time.

I got my electric bill this week. In June I kept the a/c on 78 and the bill was $78. In July I kept it on 77 and the bill was $81. In August I kept the temperature on 76 and the bill is $86. I have 1500 square feet under air and I’m under some big honking shady oaks.  I also belong to Florida Power & Light’s On Call Service, so I currently get a $9.50 per month credit.  I’ve belonged for 15 or more years and never once noticed a disruption in service.  I got a new a/c system in 1998 and my bill dropped significantly after that – new technology I think. I know being under the shade of the big oaks helps a lot.

2012 Update:  The June bill was $94 for 77 degrees and the July bill was $116 for 76 degrees.

I bought 100 more white plastic hangers at Walmart yesterday.  I’d replaced all my different colored hangers in my bedroom closet a couple of weeks ago and it took 100 of them. It looks so much more organized now that they all match.  Yesterday I realized I had another closet with a rack of clothes, and I counted another 92 hangers.   Believe it or not I don’t really have all that many clothes. What does it is the 4 pairs each of the same tan khaki capris, the same olive khaki capris, the same black gabardine slacks, the same buttondown shirt in different colors. Stuff I like and want to have extras of so after I’ve worn it to death I still have a fresh set.  A dozen pairs each jeans and tshirts, when I wear jeans and tshirts maybe twice a year.  Or if I’m camping.  What I have to remember is that 10 and 20 years ago I was physically in the public eye a whole lot more often than I am now, so my clothes have stopped wearing out.  What I have now could last me the rest of my life.  Since I don’t really like to shop, that feels like a real freedom.  Ah, another senseless habit broken.

Am I the only one who prefers to read an article online than to watch a video about it?  And internet radio, I have many friends who do some great work, but I am just not into doing all that much listening, especially when reading is an option.  I like the silence.  I spend so much “work” time every day talking and listening, that I anytime I have the option of silence or hearing a voice, more often than not, I choose silence.

A couple of weeks ago I was purging closet stuff and came across my little address books from the 70’s and 80’s.  It was interesting because I saw names of friends I’d forgotten, and several of them I searched and found on Facebook and we’ve reconnected.  Only one didn’t remember me, and we couldn’t remember any shared adventures other than sitting in his living room with his family one afternoon and long phone calls at night, content unknown.  Neither us of could recall mutual friends and none of the attorneys I worked for sounded familiar to him.  I didn’t recall his work and when he told me, it didn’t sound familiar. We didn’t date.  What I found interesting was that I had copied his name and number from one little address book to another each year as I updated.  My address books then weren’t all full of business and social contacts; they were people I was close to or really resonated with.  I clearly found him interesting enough at the time to want to keep adding him to each new phone book. Yet when we spoke, we both drew a blank.  I could picture what he looked like, but despite seeing my Facebook photos, he could not place me.  When strolling down memory lane didn’t ring a bell for either of us, we talked about what interests us now.  We aren’t really into the same things and weren’t clicking, so we hung up before it got awkward.  Some day 30 years down the road it will hit me where we met and I’ll get a laugh out of it all.

I have a journal I keep and I love having it in a Microsoft Word file, so I can do a word or phrase search to find particular passages when I want to.  Reading the journal is always a stroll down memory lane and an exercise in seeing how my personality has progressed through the years.  I’m pretty mellow now but I used to be very intense. I used to think I had to let everyone know what I knew because then they would be as happy as I am.  It was for their own good, darn it!  Yeah, pretty aggravating, I know.   I also used to put people up on pedestals and berate them for falling.  I do far less of that now.  Below is a passage I found that surprised me with how aggressively I was snapping at my friend. Continue reading →

A friend stopped by this week and watched me work for an hour.  I’m having a little flare up of the old carpal tunnel so I’m wearing the wrist splints that hold them in the correct position to relieve the pressure.  It only flares up maybe once a year when I’ve been overdoing the mousing.  Most of the work with the magazine is not typing, but rather copy and pasting, as is the website work I love to play with.    My visitor knows I work alone, so she asked why I don’t get someone to help me so I could rest my arms while they healed.  The answer is one of the big blessings of my life.  Since I work for myself on my own schedule and mostly from home, when I’m having a flareup, I have the luxury of working an hour here and an hour there throughout the day and evening.  When it bothers me, I stop and go do something else awhile.  There’s plenty to do but it’s all do-able and I kind of love every aspect of my work.  So I find that, as Abraham-Hicks says, if I set my mind to it, I can eat an elephant one bite at a time.

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