Toosday

This past week I feel like I'm walking through life in a dream or a fog. I'm there, but nothing is clear. While that's happening I'm also very busy at work, making art in my journal, reading two books, doing a crossword puzzle daily, watching TV, playing with the dogs, talking with Frankye, cooking, spending time with friends and family, web surfing, meditating, listening to NPR, and feeling sad for the state of the world.

At work I've planned out my major projects for the next 9 months, with stop and start dates for each leg of the project. I do this every year at this time since a few of my projects are step intensive and need to occur several times throughout the school year. Aside from a trip to my parents for Labor Day and a vacation in West Virginia in November with Frankye's brothers and sister, my personal life is not that planned or specific. I know I will be going to work most days.

There are some things up in the air. Our cat Dolly is really winding down. She is old and frail and slow. She's hanging in there, and doesn't seem to be uncomfortable at all, just not energetic. There's a possibility of our best friends moving away. If Christi gets a job she has applied for they may be out of Jax by December. Their good fortune would be our loss and sadness. Of course, there are no guarantees that I will even survive long enough to complete this post, what to speak of living to experience anything on my calendar to date.

The other day I was listening to NPR and Wolf Blitzer was talking with people to get their opinions about the terrorist plot the British discovered and prevented. People kept saying, "this is a different world now," or "the world is no longer safe." The only thing different is that Americans are now experiencing the same fear the majority of people in the world have experienced for a very long time. We now live like the third world. Not economically, but in terms of the rule of law, the unpredictability of mass violence and horror or catostrophe being perpetrated against us. All this is how several billion people on the planet have lived for a long time. It's an oxymoron, but we are less free because we are in less control.

I have started an adjunct page to this blog called, My Sketchbook, which will feature doodles and drawings from my journals. It's only for visuals. I'll continue using this blog for writing.

So that's Tuesday in my world here in Jacksonville.