Change is one of the hardest things to deal with.  My Dad says to me, you need to find a new job; what?? is he serious?  Of  course this all was because I was complaining about doing these stupid computer training inservices AT HOME and not getting paid for them, but really Dad?? A NEW JOB… I know he didn’t mean it like this, and my Mom has probably been telling him that I just need some time off-

I’ve been going going going since FOREVER it seems.  My car accident, waking from my coma and straight into rehab, home form the hospital in Charlottesville and into another in-patient rehab hospital (only at this one I got to sleep at home) after I finished my program there, I was doing outpatient rehab, then returned to high school the following year.  After high school, right into college, and after college, right into the working world.  And I’ve been going, going, going since then.  And that’s the past 17 years of my life.  Sure, I’ve taken off a month or two here and there, there’s always summer breaks from school (during most in college however, I was volunteering or doing internships in my field of study)- but I’ve been doing super good for myself.  Far exceeding expectations.  When I was in the hospital in a coma from my brain injury, no one knew what to think, or expect, not even the doctors…they told my parents everything, from if I ever awaken from my coma I’d be a vegetable, to I’d be fine…just that I would never be the same.  And I’m not the same, but who is?  Life is all about changing, it would be pretty boring if everything was constantly the same, consistent,  and not changing.

And my husband says that we can do it, if i even wanted to not work full time to focus on writing I could.  We could handle it, but I do still have a job, I just don’t work as often.  I should look at this whole work reduction issue as a good thing, working so often made it feel like full time, I was just as stressed out as working full time, when I worked 4 days a week, and pretty much 930-530.

The Metro Access service I receive is very inconsistently getting me to work at different times, and when I would take the service home at the end of the day, I would often see my husbands car driving home from work right behind me, or right in front of me on Main street.  Metro Access is a wonderful service that is offered in the D.C. area for people who are disabled and cannot drive and are unable to use public transportation or the elderly, but since my husbands arrival was near the same time the van would pick me up, I would just work until he came as opposed to sitting out and waiting for the Metro Access van for up to an hour.  I have had to wait more if the ride was late.

Since I do have a severe traumatic brain injury, I do get exhausted very easily, so waiting around an hour, and then getting on the van and seeing 2 other passengers all needing to get to their destinations, sometimes it would be another hour and a half until I got home.  By then I would be worthless, and unable to do anything but eat and then go to bed.  Maybe have one hour to watch TV, talk on the phone, read, whatever.  That’s when I lived with my parents.  Now that I live with my husband, some days I would be so exhausted from work, it would be nearly always HIM making dinner, doing the laundry whatever, and I would be so tired that on my days off work, I would just sleep, and walk our dog Chazz.  It was a big deal if I went a whole day without sleeping.  Mostly I would get up early in the morning, 630 or 7, take Chazz on a long walk, stopping at my neighbors for conversation and coffee, then returning home at 930 to take a nap until Days of Our Lives came on at 1, then returning to slumber and would wake up at 3:30, vacuum and unload the dishwasher very quickly just to tell him what I had accomplished that day.

Three years later came another change: we moved.  From a one bedroom, one bath condo with huge monthly mortgage payments, to a 3 bedroom townhouse! 3 levels, even a backyard.  Moving to this neighborhood has been a dream come true.  Improved my outlook on everything.  I’m so happy here- just as I was writing that, a big gust  of wind came up and swirled the pretty pink flowers from the cherry blossom tree on the beautiful deck that my dad built me.  That’s a good thing about change- the ability to change and improve.  It’s all about the perspective and the way you look at things.

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”     -Wayne Dyer