I really needed to take this time off to breathe, to fully retire from being an employee, and to fulfill a rewarding and demanding one year volunteer obligation with my church. Done! 2025 is time to take a stand on defending the First Amendment from the repeated executive assaults to diminish it.
Meanwhile, my determination to quit the embarrassing bad habit mentioned in earlier posts is as strong as ever. I now have fingernails that I must cut short and a few that may never recover from years-ago nail biting and two decades of sculptured nails with the damage that entailed. I get a manicure every two weeks. Later this year I’ll post another image to show the progress made. Much of this progress is two steps forward and three steps back but I’m a firm believer in persistence and perseverance.
For me, the month of March has proven impactful. I quit smoking cigarettes in March 2001, quit drinking alcohol in March 1996, so it made perfect sense for me to begin addressing “THE bad habit” in March 2023.
During this time, although I wasn’t blogging, I grew increasingly incensed by the moms of Liberty and other extreme right-wing groups who believe they are qualified to dictate what is appropriate to read, to think, and to believe. Motivated, I published an article on Medium titled “When Books are Banned, Who Wins?”
Now, after the huge dark-money and billionaire-fueled Presidential election of 2024, and the madness that has ensued since the inauguration of an American president in January 2025, well I just can’t sit by. It’s time to take a stand and speak out for the United States of America – the Land of the Free into which I was born. I didn’t realize fifty years ago that the necessity for me to protest would arise again. It most definitely has.
The key is to maintain equanimity in the environment of chaos that define this president and his administration. It’s a challenge for which meditation, music, loving family, and friends are perfect medicine.