June 15th, 2017
Wow, my last entry was exactly one year ago! How time flies!
In 365 days many things have happened. I got engaged and wedded to my best friend. It was an awesome party, best day ever. I interviewed several more retired nurses and published 10 podcasts in the first year of Head-to-Toe. I've. I've kept writing. I keep submitting my work for publishing. I keep on nursing, working full-time at a hospital in the intensive care unit. I left downtown solo living for married life in North Portland (it's pretty amazing I gotta say). I went on a stellar European honeymoon. I keep reaching out to different people and organizations about the podcast. I keep recruiting potential show guests. I keep trying to leap over hurdles that come my way like fatigue, lack of time and energy, a busy social calendar, and new shows on Netflix. I keep reading other works on writing and keeping a day job.
Things that ARE happening - besides packing for a weekend camping trip. My book manuscript was selected as a 2017 Finalist in the memoir category for the Pacific Northwest Writer Association's Literary Contest! I'm super excited about that. If you wanna read a snippet of my entry, find it here. The annual PNWA conference is in Seattle this July and I hope to attend. My podcast was just tweeted by the Oregon Center for Nursing - NBD. I feel like things are rolling and I'm excited to see where it takes me.
I also keep thinking - deeply - about the world we are in now, how it is changing, rapidly. Like everyone, I am affected by news - world, national, and local alike - and I try to balance the terrible shitty things that happen by producing as much good as I can, thanking God/any Deity that will listen for all the blessings in my life, telling the people I love that I love them, being kind to others when sometimes I'd rather be closed off, giving away leftover takeout to homeless, and praying for those that are in the depths of despair and pain and suffering and war and depression and anxiety and whatever else. We have to lift each other up. We have to.
And on that note, I am going to do some housework, read over a few projects on my laptop, and go out to dinner with my handsome husband and drink a beer. Because life is short and I want to squeeze the juice out of it.
Stay tuned for more things ahead!
~Marie
