Just Me

  Photo Credit: Karolina Grabowska via Unsplash  In January of 2020, I got the news that my oldest was awarded a scholarship for college tuition. Supposedly, this scholarship would pay $21,000 for each undergrad year. At the time he was awarded the scholarship, he was told it was a FULL scholarship. So we were all under the impression that this meant it would cover the cost of his tuition for 4 years of college education. Around this time, he was also accepted at three universities, and he chose to attend the one that was closest to us in order to cut down on cost of room and board as well as transportation. Since he didn’t have a college fund set up for him to help pay for school, we were all thrilled that he had received this scholarship. We all thought we wouldn’t have to worry about him being able to afford going to college.   This was especially a big concern for me. I had attended college (a community college) for three years until there was no longer any fund...

Before the year started, I wanted to learn 12 new things, one thing each month of the year. I always love learning new things (which is part of the reason why I devour the news every day!), and as part of this “new life” I am living (i.e., sober), I want to make an effort to continue to improve as a person and increase my skills as much as possible.   Unfortunately, I was not able to learn all 12 things that I planned to learn this year. Alas! Because of Covid restrictions, insufficient planning and lack of funds, I was just not able to get the last of the things that I wanted to learn down pat.   Here are the things that I DID manage to learn this year:   1. Cars (the basics, anyway) 2. Exercise and physical fitness 3. Running 4. Yoga 5. Tai Chi 6. Hiking 7. Tae Kwon Do   I should add that, in some cases, I used a book to learn about some of those things. I tried to put into practice what the books taught me, but without an expert – or ...