Accountability.

I'm at the library and my session is about to expire. So I have about two seconds to get a blog done. I don't even know what I want to talk about...

Well, my mom got me a new blood glucose meter and a whole bunch of test strips. That was one of the best gifts I have ever recieved. Thanks Mom! In the few days since I've had the new meter, I've been testing my blood sugar twice a day. It is doing just fine, which gives me peace of mind.

I was thinking about the reason why testing blood sugar is a good thing. It's because it forces me to take accountability for my choices. If I know I will test my blood sugar after dinner, I will be much less likely to eat too much at dinner. I have to answer for my choices and that encourages me to make better choices, to be more responsible and to think before I act. That's why it's good to have the gospel, because we know that someday, we will have to answer for all of our choices. And that helps us to make better ones, doesn't it?

A smidgeon of good news.

So the hardest thing about blogging is just coming up with something to talk about. I'm at no loss to have something to say when I know what I'm supposed to be talking about.

Well, the good news is that Paul has finally found another job! It's about time one of us did. My blogging paychecks will be too little to survive on by themselves. He'll be working at another girl's group home for the evening shift. For us, it's pretty dang good news. I had given up hope that it would ever happen, after all the jobs we've tried to get.

The clothing industry has happiness all figured out.

My friend Ashlee is going into the MTC soon and she was in the area, searching in vain for a mid-calf length dress. She asked me to go shopping with her at some of the big department stores. We spent a couple hours and she tried on tons of really cute dresses, but none of them were long enough to take on the mission. I don't know what she's going to do if she doesn't find one soon!

I have clothes shopping, mostly because the industry doesn't seem to believe in making cute clothes in plus sizes. If I want to dress like I'm fifty and wear huge gawdy flowers and hideous colors, I can find plenty of things to buy. Otherwise, it becomes a lot harder. Needless to say, I don't go shopping very often.

As we were traipsing aroudn the mall, I suddenly had this huge desire to buy something myself, to find cute clothes and great jewelry. I wanted to have hundreds of dollars to blow and a great body that would look great in whatever I tried on. I was mourning the fact that I didn't have money and starting to feel really miserable.

Then it hit me how stupid it all is. These people that design the clothes are trying to make all their money by making us feel bad about ourselves. "You're not stylish enough. Come buy from us." "You're too fat. Lose some weight and then you can buy our ultra cute clothes!" "Look how happy all the girls on the posters are. Buy from us and be as happy as they are!" What a load of bull! Clothes do NOT make you happy. Real happiness comes from the inside, not the outside. And no amount of having or spending money can give you peace if you can't find it through the life that you lead. They spoon-feed us lies designed to drag us down. I don't want to buy into them anymore.

I wear a mask.

Yesterday morning I woke up early and somewhere between being awake and asleep, I saw the image of a young man sitting in a prison cell. I began immediately to weave a story around him. I knew that he would die the in the prison and that he was a prisoner of war. I don't want to give the story away and I haven't even decided the war yet, but I'll definitely be writing a book about it. I can't be sure if the story came from a dream, but I suspect it did.

It led me into some serious introspection into the nature of prisons and that greatest prison of the mind. When it comes to progression, be it emotional, spiritual, or physical, the greatest obstacle is always some error of the mind. It is impossible to change if you don't know that you need to. Those who don't accept a Savior don't believe that they need to be saved. Those who purposefully hurt others don't understand that hurting others hurts the self.

It is interesting to see the blindness of people. They walk around wearing a mask that only allows others to see certain parts of them. But the same mask prevents them from being able to see because wearing a mask always covers some part of your own vision.

I've seen this in myself. I, who value genuineness above most other traits, very rarely show my true self to anyone. By nature, I'm silly and whimsical. I love to laugh and come up with the most outrageous stories and situations to make others laugh. I could sing all day long, no matter what I was doing, and there is never a time that I am not thinking very seriously about some concept or another. My true self is a strange contradiction of the most extreme silliness and profound introspection-- almost to the point of melancholy. That's who I am.

But who do I show that self to? My husband and about no one else! My immediate family, especially my mom and sister, have seen more of me than most. But I put up a barrier between myself and most other people. With my church friends, I'm all seriousness, all small talk. We talk about daily life, school, and housework, and I enjoy their children. But I never let them see the person that I am on the inside.

What am I not seeing because of the mask that I wear? If I don't let others see me, will I ever be able to really see them? I don't want to be a prisoner of my mind.

Being a "people person" is over rated.

It's looking like I'm not going to be hired to do the data entry job. It has now been 72 hours since my interview, and I was told that I would be contacted within 48 if I was hired. And it never occurred to me to ask for a phone number that I could call. Is that like bad ettiquette anyway? "Hello. I was the totally amazing interviewee of 72 hours ago-- to the minute, seriously. And I was thinking its time that you just give me the job. Whattaya say? I told you I could start yesterday, remember? Think of the work I could already be doing for you if had simply taken the time to call me earlier. What's my schedule?"

I think I might have cursed myself because the one question I froze up on was "Are you a people person?" And there was this brief moment when I considered actually being honest and saying that the social aspect of work is often overwhelming to me and probably the hardest thing for me to deal with. I hesitated just for a second, but it might have cost me the job. Who knows? I would have thought that data entry would be just the sort of job for the socially impaired anyway, since I never knew you had to be a "people person" to type accurately.

But I still have the blogging job, which I officially started yesterday. It's got to be the easiest thing to write out some little blurb and throw it online. I'm happy to have something I can do that I actually enjoy that people will pay me to do. I just want them to pay me a little more. It's something and being really poor has its charms anyway... Right?

I'm a freelance writer now!

So I'm hired to blog. It's all stuff about health and exercise, and I've learned a whole lot about that stuff since I was diagnosed with diabetes. Right now it's all random and I get paid per blog. I'm so excited to be starting my first real paid writing job! Yippee doo!

Ok, I don't know where "yippee doo" came from, but I do have reason to be happy. It doesn't pay a ton, but most writers make very little money. It's miraculous when a writer can actually live exclusively off writing- most have their "real" job and write in their spare time. I'm happy to have the opportunity to get my career started. Someday, it will be exclusively my novels, but for now getting some freelance jobs will look good on my resume.

Ha ha ha. A writing resume. How awesome!

I'm not the protagonist!

So I have spent most of my summer looking for work and it is one of the most frustrating things in the universe. But I have some hopeful prospects, as of today. One online business might hire me to blog for them and I just landed an interview for a summer data entry job. I know, data entry sounds boring, but my friend did the same job last summer, and she said it wasn't bad at all. So I feel excited at the possibility.

I have been spending a lot of time this last week working on my latest book. I figured since I actually had time for the first time in a long time, I should take advantage of it. So I got to work and just wrote page after page. Writing is funny because I really do get rusty at it. When I do it regularly (as in every day) it comes naturally and I don't have to stop and think of how I will proceed or what words I will use in this instance. But when I'm out of practice, it is slower and takes a lot of concentration. It's like stretching your muscles before working out.

But it is already getting easier after only a week. I find myself anxious to get back to the story, thinking constantly of how the poor character is going to get out of one situation or another. I am trying to write a protagonist who is different than I am in certain key characteristics and I've been surprised at how often I want to make him do the things I would do in the same circumstances. I have to stop myself and say, "No, no. He would not react that way. Think about how he would react..."

The easiest thing for a writer to do is to go autobiographical, to lean heavily on personal experience and insight when creating the main character. I already did that one in my first completed novel (the one I worked so hard on but now keep carefully hidden away for no one in the world to read). Now I have to put a lot of attention into making my current main character unlike me so that the novel is HIS story, not mine. It's surprisingly hard to do, but I know it will get easier with practice. The characters are supposed to be like real people you could know, but not like real people that actually exist.