You can’t get to my age without having noticed that life is one big balancing act and that is never more prevalent when love is involved. We enter this world helpless yet surrounded by people who love us unconditionally and, it seems most of us leave this world in the same way and that was evidenced by my own family very recently. Within the span of one week, my small family gathered to say goodbye to a loved one and welcomed a soon to be new family member.

It started with the funeral of a widowed, elderly aunt who at the end of her life needed the support of her family to get through each day. Plagued by a myriad of health problems in her waning years, dementia became another cruel blow for someone already struggling.

She passed away a few months ago, but living in another state, it took some time to make arrangements for her funeral back home.  My family is indeed small, but hers was even more so and as I arrived at the cemetery I realized that I didn’t recognize anyone.  The cousins I should have been close to had become virtual strangers to me, yet by the time the day was done, I had reconnected.  The children I had last seen were now adults with lives and families of their own and the day that started with sad tears ended up balanced by laughter as stories from our childhoods were exchanged and the family was reconnected.

The sadness of her passing weighed on me until just seven short days later when my family joined with the family of a young man we had come to know and love in celebration of a niece that is soon to be his bride.  As with the funeral, the faces of the soon to be in-laws were unfamiliar and small talk about the weather and lack of rain dominated the conversation at first.  It was to be a long day of trying to say something of interest to complete strangers until the bride began to open her shower gifts and as each lovingly wrapped present was unveiled, stories were shared until soon the entire room was awash in smiles and laughter. 

We will wait until the fall to see the true balancing act when this lovely young man becomes part of our family, and when he does, we will have gained an extended family in his mother and siblings and their families. 

Looking back at this past week I reflect once again about the balance of life. A week that began in sadness and tears has been balanced by love and joy. It is the way of life and something to remember when sorrow overwhelms us or when our lives seem to be perfect. As with spring and fall and summer and winter, life is a balancing act and the best we can hope for is that we experience more good than evil, more highs than lows and more happiness than sorrow.

As we begin a new week, a week when none of us knows what happiness or sorrow awaits, I wish for each of you peace and tranquility, happiness and laughter and more than anything – love.

Be well my friends….

~BAL

Today is the Fourth of July; a national holiday celebrated with parades, picnics, family, friends and fireworks.  More specifically, today is our Independence Day.  The day the refugees from a tyrannical king crossed the ocean in the hopes of finding one nation, united under God, where all men were created equal.  Sound familiar? 

As a nation we have come so very far, but now it seems we have hit a roadblock and while it is easy to blame a certain person or a certain political party, I believe the fault lies with all of us.

After centuries of being the most powerful country on earth, we have become complacent. Our national identity has become eroded and the unity we now so infrequently display is disappearing. America united, when it was us against the evils of the world, is becoming hard to find. We are so consumed by the infighting between the left and the right that we have forgotten there is another option – the middle.

The middle is not sitting on a fence, it is the art of compromise where those on either end of the idealistic spectrum give a little so that while some lose a little, even more gain a lot. It is reaching across the aisle to work with those of opposing views for the betterment of the entire country. It’s letting the democratic process work so that when you are outvoted, you graciously accept that the majority felt another way. It’s being strong enough and good enough that you look inside your soul and do what is right rather than what is easy or profitable. It’s remembering that our allegiance should and must be to our country and not to a political party or someone with even more power.

Is this the last Independence Day for the United States of America?  Of course not, yet I can’t help but wonder what the future will bring for us as a nation.  In the past couple of years, our nation has been tested in ways that should have been unimaginable.  We have a good process for making change, yet for many it seems, the process either doesn’t work or isn’t worth the effort. 

If you are unhappy with the way this country is going, you have two legal and powerful ways to make change.  First, if you think you could make better decisions than those in office, fill out that affidavit of candidacy and plop down your filing fee.  Second, and this is something each of us can do at no cost, vote! 

Before you cast your ballot, do your research.  Remember that not every campaign ad you see or hear is truthful.  Remember that just because an incumbent voted against funding for schools, doesn’t mean they are against funding for schools.  What else was buried in that massive funding bill that needed to be voted down?  Does your chosen candidate truly respect and believe in the issues that are important to you and your family or is it simply that they had flashier ads and a brighter smile? 

Finally, remember few candidates if any, will meet all of your requirements. Your chosen candidate will more than likely have a different view of something that is important to you. The challenge for us as voters, is to find the candidate who will work with everyone else in power to find a solution that works– a candidate that will give a little in order to gain a little. The country can’t continue to flip-flop or worse yet, come to a complete standstill every four years, as power switches between red and blue. Progress must continue and the only way to do that is to work together.

As you celebrate today with parades, streamers and flags flying, please remember that democracy is hard work and we can’t take the liberties we have for granted.  It takes good people of all points of view to stand up and work peacefully together to make this country strong.  We must agree to disagree on some things and celebrate our achievements in working together even when we disagree. 

May your Independence Day holiday be fun, but may we all remember what it took to get here.

Be well my friends….

~BAL

There is a saying…something about when good people do nothing….that I haven’t been able to shake since watching three of the January 6th Committee hearings the past couple of weeks.  That’s usually the sign that I need to get my thoughts out by writing about it.

Those of a certain political party will almost assuredly have a different take on what the Committee is revealing.  Either they believe it is all fake or they just don’t care because in the grand scheme of things, they believe what happened that day was the only way they could preserve what they felt they deserved.

As an Election Official myself, I have a much different opinion and have had since way back in the 2016 campaign when a candidate for President of the United States started laying the groundwork for a loss by repeatedly and very publically stating that if he were to lose, the election would have been rigged.  (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald-trump-s-rigged-election-claims-raise-historical-alarms-n667831) Lies, when repeated often enough, often become the truth for most people.

While there certainly is never an error free election, to believe that an entire country of election officials had somehow banded together to rig an election is ludicrous.  Those are statements made by people who have no knowledge of how the system works and the checks and balances that are in place to prevent such a scenario.  It is an affront to every single Election Judge and local and state Election Official who works so hard to follow the laws of their state and ensure democracy is preserved.  But I digress.

As the planning for what eventually happened on January 6th progressed, and it became clear the President was desperate to stay in office even after a safe, secure and quite legal election that resulted in him losing, many of those in the White House, including those in his inner circle, said nothing at all to stop his lies about the election being stolen. Some even became complicit in spreading the lies and fueling the divisiveness that was spreading across the country based on those lies. It seemed currying favor of the man in the oval office was more important to them and their future careers than doing what was right. The people who every President needs to keep him/her on course, cared more about themselves then they did about their country.

When they said nothing at all, going way back to those comments in 2016, they gave away their souls, but for what?  A job?  A career?  The prestige that comes from working in the most historic building in the country?  Was what happened on January 6th and what is happening since worth it to have said nothing at all?  Can they sleep at night?  Unless they are truly bad people, I don’t see how that is possible. 

Watching the hearings, I have shed many tears over how such a great country, how such a great democracy, could have fallen so dramatically. When, in 2016, that president promised to “drain the swamp”, it appeared he was doing so in order to fill it with even worse creatures who, like lemmings, were expected to do his bidding no matter what the cost. Those sycophants – the ones who said nothing at all when our country’s constitution was in jeopardy – those people are the ones we should fear the most.

I have often said that it doesn’t really matter how smart a President is as long as they surround themselves with smart people – people who will not hesitate to tell the President what is right and what is wrong. The 2020 White House just proves how true that is.

Not everyone in the 2020 White House was bad. Greg Jacob, the Vice President’s legal counsel and one of those who has testified at the hearings, struck me in particular.  He gave thoughtful and sound advice about what the President asked the Vice-President to do on January 6th and, while it was ignored, he spoke up and repeatedly pointed out that the Vice-President did not have the power to decide who the next President was. 

When I reached out to express my appreciation to Mr. Jacob for doing the right thing, his simple response was, “We just did our duty…”  It’s too bad other people in that White House forgot that their duty was not to the man in the oval office, but rather to the country they all served.

If what happened on January 6th and probably well before then teaches us anything, it’s that when good people stand by and say nothing as bad people do bad things, evil wins.  Our nation can boast many people who spoke up when evil was at hand even though doing so came at great personal cost.  I hope and pray that if that day comes for me, I will be among them and maybe this post, as insignificant as it is, can be the first step on that path.

Be well my friends….

~BAL

I’m one of “them”- the thousands of people who post on social media and then stew over responses. Years ago, when I resisted entering the social media fray, I scoffed at those people who lived and died based on how many likes or clicks or retweets they received. Now, I am one of them.

It started out simply enough. I wrote a book; a book that needed to be marketed during the time of COVID lock downs when the mere thought of book signings and author events or even speaking face to face with a store manager about carrying my book was a mere pipe dream. Having people talk about your book is how book sales happen and so I turned my fledgling and little used social media accounts into marketing tools. I started an author Facebook page and an Insta account and converted my personal Twitter, something rarely used and even less understood, into my COVID “word of mouth”.

The accounts grew in fits and starts and then stagnated when it appeared I had nothing much to say other than “please buy my book”.  I get it and totally understand.  After so many posts about the same thing, it’s easier to snooze someone or block them completely rather than have your feed filled with things you have already seen and dismissed.

Then the second book came out and, because my publisher is big on social media presence, I became more creative and tried ads targeting audiences outside of my admittedly small social circle. Other authors offered tips and tricks and while the marketing of my second book is still in its infancy, and the coveted reviews on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Goodreads are still in the low numbers, the book is selling. It was incentive enough to try a boosted Facebook post containing what I think is an attractive ad aimed at the summer beach crowd. Thousands of people have seen it and done the Facebook thing of liking in one of the many categories.

However, this is when I knew I had become one of “them”. My boosted post has thousands of blue thumbs up and hundreds of those coveted red hearts and…………..three of the angry face emoji’s. Three out of thousands and for the life of me, I am beyond frustrated by it. How could an innocent post these three complete strangers saw for one brief moment have elicited an angry face?! How did I so offend them that they clicked on that emoji that appears so far to the right that they had to move their finger to do so?

Worse yet, why am I not focusing on the thousands of positive responses to the post?  Why am I not happy about that? 

Probably the single most painful part of being an author is critique. Hearing negative things about your work is painful and certainly not for the faint of heart. When those responses become public, the pain is only magnified and that’s what happens with social media. One three star review among dozens of four and five stars can become a knife in the heart.

That’s the way it seems to be for those who are really into social media.  An innocent post, taken the wrong way, leaves you open to anger, spite and vitriol that defies the old adage of “when you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all”.  People hide behind their social media accounts and say the most hurtful things without remorse or remembering that there is a living, breathing human being on the other end of that account. 

Of course, the immediate reaction is to post a retort, but I learned something back when newspapers were the way to express opinions.  “Never argue with someone who buys their ink by the barrel.”  Don’t get into arguments on social media.  When you’re outnumbered by people who believe differently, you’ll never win and in the end, you’ll feel worse and it’s important to remember there are consequences to this very public way of arguing.

In the extreme, those who are subject to such undeserved anger may harm themselves rather than continue to deal with the posts that never go away. On the other hand, like me, they may lose a couple hours of their life stewing about a negative response before remembering that life is not lived on the pages of a social media account but rather through face to face interactions with other people who may have different opinions than ours.

To the three people who responded to me with angry face emoji’s, I apologize if something about the ad you saw for my books was difficult for you.  I hope whatever you were feeling the moment you clicked on that angry little face has passed and your life is better today.

For myself, I will try to remember yet again that everyone is different with different likes and dislikes and in the grand scheme of things, social media is not the real world. More importantly, the next time I don’t like something or have an extreme response to something I see on social media, the best response is to say nothing at all and to simply move on.

Finally, if you have begun to feel like social media is ruling your life and you can’t put your phone down for a moment, it may be time for a break.  Give yourself a month without social media and, if you can’t go that long, try it for even a day.  Rediscover the physical world around you and the people in your life.  Rediscover how wonderful your life could be without the lure of social media and pick up a book!

Be well my friends….

~BAL

If you have read other posts on this website you will have seen my attempts to write about serious topics in an uplifting manner, at least until recently. The school shooting in Ulvalde , Texas seems to have changed that for me. I am heartbroken for the families; angry at the misuse of guns; and stunned by the United States inability to collectively find a way to do something to prevent this horrible tragedy from happening again.

I’ve been been binge watching a lot of old Grey’s Anatomy episodes lately and what I realized as I watch the weird and incredibly serious illnesses the characters on this TV show deal with every day, is that life is truly fragile. Of course every time something happens to somebody that I love I’m reminded of that, but like most of us I suspect, the realization that life could end in a millisecond is just too enormous to deal with on a regular basis.

Each morning I get in my car for the short drive to work and from the moment I put on my coat, there are any number of ways my life could end. I could get caught in the sleeves of my coat as I’m heading down the stairs and stumble and break my neck. Upset about the near fall I could be so distracted that I run through a red light or swerve into oncoming traffic. I could get struck by lighting or my car could explode in a ball of flames. And all that doesn’t even take into consideration what others could do to cause my death.

So what is it that keeps us from leaving our houses and living our lives? Why don’t we all just lessen our chances of death by curling into a ball on the couch wrapped in cotton wool praying 24-7 that we make it through another day? What is it that propels us to take risks to drive fast, to not wear a seatbelt, to jump out of a plane, to hurtle our bodies down a snow covered hill at 50 miles an hour?

It seems obvious that the answer is we need to live our lives and for life to mean something, we can’t do it from the couch. Life has been a risk since the Garden of Eden and humanity will always find a way to inflict sorrow on each other. Yet the moments of joy when a baby is born, when a father walks his daughter down the aisle, and when nineteen children and two of their teachers are remembered and loved are what bring us off that couch and into the world.

We are eternal optimists. We believe that the world can change and we can somehow make it better. But believing is not enough. It takes action and making hard decisions. Words are not enough and solving this epidemic of mass shootings will take all of us to give a little and remember what we are here for.

Life is not a tv show. We all deserve a chance to get off the couch and live our lives in peace and safety. Let’s work together to find a way for it to happen.

Be well my friends…

~BAL

It happened again.  Another shooting.  More lives lost.  More outrage.  And nothing will change.

Even as I write these words I can’t help but wonder what is wrong with the United States of America that we can’t see something has to be done.  Gun control?  Mental health services? What is the answer? 

While the initial and visceral reaction is to control guns, that may not be the only solution to the mass shootings that are happening around the country. 

When you were a kid and you were playing with matches what did your parents do? They took the matches away so you wouldn’t hurt yourself or someone else. When someone has been drinking too much what do friends do? They take their friend’s car keys away so they won’t hurt themselves or someone else. Taking away what could hurt someone is the responsible thing to do. When we allow deadly weapons to get into the hands of someone who is unstable enough to willingly fire those weapons on innocent people, we are not being responsible.

But it’s a multi-pronged approach in my view that will solve this issue and we need to recognize and get help for people who are struggling mentally. We need to stop marginalizing children and adults who may not fit in and treat everyone with kindness and inclusion. And, knowing full well that there will be people who slip through the cracks of mental health screenings, we need to tighten up the rules and regulations related to purchase of a gun.

We are told the shooter in Uvalde, Texas legally purchased the weapons just days before. If there had been a three month or six month or even a one month waiting period before he got his guns, could tragedy have been averted? We’ll never know of course, but taking time to do a really thorough background check and allowing for a cooling off period for someone who is having a mental health crisis seems a logical requirement does it not?

There is no easy answer especially when our constitution guarantees the right to bear arms, but consider this.  In 1787, when our constitution was established, could they possibly have known that those arms would be used in such a manner?  Just because something is a “right” doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have to meet certain standards to have that right.  We have the “right” to vote, but there are conditions.  Just because you have a right doesn’t mean it has to be easy to access.

That brings me to my last point in this multi-pronged approach of dealing with these shootings. It comes on election day. Each of us has the power to cast our vote for someone who can change the law so that these tragedies don’t happen again. Harness your power by voting for someone who will do something to stop it. Don’t vote for someone who will simply stand in front of a microphone and express their sympathies. All the platitudes in the world will not bring a loved one back. It’s time to elect legislators who will act no matter how powerful the lobbyists are and no matter how much they lose in campaign donations. We need legislators who will do the right thing.

There is no easy answer to solve these massacres, but solve it we must. Lives depend on it.

Hug your loved ones and be well my friends…

~BAL

This weekend I went to a funeral. When my alarm clock went off at what for me was an ungodly hour on a Saturday morning, I wanted nothing more than to snuggle deeper into the mound of blankets and spend my Saturday with a steaming cup of coffee, reading the paper with no deadlines or appointments or obligations.

As tempting as it was, a phrase that caught my attention a few years ago popped into my head.  Always go to the funeral.

Why you may ask? It was the same question I asked when I first saw the story. The author told a story about a teacher from grade school who had passed away; a teacher who had meant so much to her back then, but one she hadn’t seen since. The funeral was on a busy Wednesday at work and because the service was hours away, attending would mean taking an entire day off work and paying the price for that absence with lots of overtime in the coming days. She picked up the phone to call her father to let him know she wouldn’t be able to come home for the funeral only to have her father tell her, “you always go to the funeral.”

Her father’s words were brief and without further explanation, but when your father tells you something you do it and so she drove for hours, arriving just in time to slip into the pew next to her family.  Her father gave her a knowing nod of the head before opening his hymn book as they rose in song.  As she stood beside him, she saw what she hadn’t seen when she rushed in….a nearly empty church.  It seems she hadn’t been the only one who thought she was too busy to attend and catching the eye of the grieving family, she was rewarded with a shy smile from the widower. 

As the sparse crowd gathered in the church basement for the obligatory ham sandwiches and potato salad, she made her way to the family intending to offer her personal condolences and share how much their loved one had meant to her as a young girl.  Before she could even open her mouth, the teacher’s husband rose from the table to envelope her in a strong hug.  “We’re so glad you came,” he said with tears in his eyes.  “Her students meant everything to her and she would have loved that you were here.”

They exchanged a few more words before the author returned to her own family. Her father, without looking at her, whispered in her ear…”That’s why you always go to the funeral.”

That story resonated with me so strongly that I have never since missed a funeral. I believe that in this busy life we lead, the most important thing to do is to be there for those who have touched our lives. Whether it is the person who has passed or the family they left behind, taking the time and making the effort to show you care and that they were important to you is what matters. You can send a card or a spray of flowers, but those will be quickly forgotten. It’s seeing the concern and caring on your face, feeling the warmth of your body as you exchange hugs, or telling a story about their loved one they had never heard before that the family will remember and thank you for.

Always go to the funeral.  A life lesson for when a life is lost.

Be well my friends….

~BAL

Today is Police Officer Memorial Day in Minnesota. Twenty years or more ago, this day had special meaning for a lot of people. Then the misconduct of Officers across the nation came to light and for many Americans, the phrase “Police Officer” took on an entirely different connotation.

I have been extremely fortunate to know dozens of excellent Police Officers in my career in local government and indeed one of my very closest friends is a Police Officer. He is the epitome of what you would expect in an Officer; willing to run into danger while we are all running away, intelligent, intuitive, caring, empathetic, dedicated, hard-working, and the type of law enforcement official you want in your corner when things go wrong. As my friend, my perception of him is indeed tainted, but by any measure by any person in our community, he is seen as the model officer. Today and every day I salute and applaud his efforts to keep us all safe and find the bad people.

If I didn’t have this sort of experience with my friend and the men and women of our local department, I too may have a completely different opinion about Police and this special day that recognizes Officers across Minnesota who have lost their lives in the line of duty.  It makes it difficult for me to fully understand what anyone who has had the opposite experiences with Police feel and think when approached by law enforcement.

It may be, however, that in that recognition lies the key to being human.  We are all different.  We all have different experiences that shape who and what we are and how we perceive those around us.  And more importantly, there are good and bad people in every line of work.  Good secretaries and bad.  Good priests and bad.  Good bus drivers and bad.  Good Police Officers and bad. 

When the bad versions of any particular position do bad things, they taint the goodness of their counterparts and it’s a stain that is difficult to get off no matter how many good things you do. Each time a municipal government employee does something wrong and people talk about it, in the minds of some people all government employees are bad because one of us was.

When the one person we are taught to trust above others, a Police Officer, does wrong, the stakes are so much higher. People lose their lives. As people began to lose their faith in the goodness of Police Officers, they no longer call them when they need them and that puts everyone’s life in danger. If we can’t trust the people who are supposed to protect us, what is the alternative? Anarchy and chaos.

I can’t claim to have the answer to how to weed out the bad cops, but that’s exactly what we must do.  Doing away with the mentality of cop protecting cop or rookies not being able to speak up when they see something being done wrong is a start.  Only by holding themselves to the highest of standards and getting rid of the chattel that taint the good work a Police Officer does, will the trust for Police Officers be restored.

Until that day comes, I will remember the Police Officers, and the families they left behind, who gave their lives protecting others. I will honor and cherish their memories as I will for those who died at the hands of a bad cop. But more importantly, I will pray that we find, train and mentor new Police Officers in the mold of my friend.

Being a cop is a hard job but there are good people across the country doing it well and today I recognize each of them and those good cops who went before them.

Be well my friends…

~BAL

Right off the bat I’m going to admit that this is definitely not going to be some high brow intellectual article about women. If that’s what you were hoping for then you’ll need to set your standards a bit lower my friends!

It’s been a really tough and long week; I mean really long, and I am drained. As I get older, these types of weeks become a bit harder to recover from, but looking back at what happened this week I had a thought.

What is the measure of a woman? The answer can be any number of things, all true probably, but for me, after this week, it has to be the ability to accomplish forty different things all at once while the people around you sit on their hands and do nothing.

That’s what my week has seemed like. While I have been pulling my hair out of a head that is spinning around a hundred times faster than Linda Blair in the Exorcist, those around me have been going about the day as normal… playing games on their phones, going for walks, gossiping, talking about weekend plans, taking breaks….well you get the picture.

Every once in a while I become annoyed that while I am overwhelmed with deadlines and expectations, those around me seem totally clueless to it. This is a phenomena that I have experienced several times during my working career.

I have a job that I love, but it demands a lot. One of my really important responsibilities comes up only a couple of times a year, but when it does, it’s on top of everything else I normally do and no one else is qualified to help me with it. That occasional responsibility involves thousands of people and a lot of state and national laws. I like to say it’s planning a party for 10,000 people and not knowing who will show up.

I’m in one of those occasional periods now although this time the event was unexpected and the time frame for getting it done was only two months versus the normal six months or longer period. It comes on top of any already heightened workload caused by any number of things and it’s a lot of stress. While I try to keep my cool, it’s difficult to watch people around me, people with far fewer responsibilities, completely ignore what I am going through without even a modicum of assistance or understanding. Every time I am interrupted by one of them for something that has nothing to do with work, I want to shout, “Read the room people!, until realizing I don’t even have enough time in a day to explain to them why what they are doing is so offensive.

If work were the only thing I had to deal with, it wouldn’t be so bad, but there are family and friends to care for, a house to take care of, a pet to take care of, a writing business to keep going, and let’s face it….life is stressful for even more reasons.

It makes me all wonder if I am up to it, but then you know what? It’s 5:00 p.m. on a Friday and I know I am one week closer to being done with my big project and in the middle of that work, I ticked off a few of the smaller ones on my to-do list. I got through it and though I’ll be pulled in every which direction this weekend, Monday will come and this woman will start it all over again with a smile on my face and hope in my heart!

That my friends is the measure of a woman. Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

~BAL

Tomorrow will be the last day for one of our longer-term employees. Each time someone leaves, through retirement or just moving on to other opportunities, I can’t help but wonder what they must be feeling. Submitting the resignation notice must be exciting, but as the days go by between their resignation and their last day, I’ll bet there is a lot of fear that begins to creep in. They are leaving something that is safe and familiar; a secure form of income; a social network; and for people like me, they are leaving behind their identity to others. Will they have enough money? What will they do all day? And, when my time comes…where will I get my feeling of achievement and satisfaction from?

My first job was working as a cook at the local A & W restaurant just a few short blocks from my house.  Not yet quite 16, it was intimidating walking into the restaurant as the returning staff were having their first meeting of the summer.  All eyes were on me as I opened the door, received the application and sat down in a small corner booth to fill it out while they began discussing how the summer would go.

Learning how to be an adult began with that job as I moved from cook to a supervisor position. I learned how to concentrate and work hard (something that came easy since it was expected in our household). I learned about customer service and how to manually count change. I learned about inventory and staffing and ordering. I learned about business, but more than that, I learned how to work with others of divergent personalities and styles and behaviors. And I learned that when I am good at something, even if it is being a lowly cook at a drive-in restaurant for $1.62 per hour, I enjoy work. Donning that orange and brown polyester uniform top and chocolate brown corduroy pants became part of me. I was good at that job and proud to be employed by owners Jake and Lorraine.

For many people, work is simply a necessity; a task you must perform to pay bills and feed your family.  It’s the lucky ones that find jobs/careers that fulfill their soul and give them purpose; jobs like the A&W was for me back then and my current job is now.

I have loved my jobs, most of the people I have worked with and the life those jobs have given me.  I am one of the lucky ones who gets up most every morning happy to go to work and knowing that when I do, I will be darn good at it.

Family and friends aside, if your validation as an adult comes from doing well in your chosen career, where do you get that same feeling after you retire?  Maybe you’ve seen it too, but for some people, those without hobbies or outside interests, retirement becomes the beginning of the end rather than the new chapter it should be. Their reason for getting up each morning is gone, and they flounder without a purpose in life and without the support network their ex-colleagues provided.

As retirement creeps closer for me, I might have been one of those with few hobbies that would take me out into the world. Then I discovered I could write and suddenly life without my day job will literally be the beginning of my next chapter as I continue to write. As enticing as a successful writing career is, even if I never sell another book, I will continue to write and share those stories with family and friends. Telling a story through the pages of a manuscript allows me to share a part of me that others never see. It fills my time and if I may be so arrogant, those stories become my legacy.

The legacy that previously would only have existed in a few words on a tombstone can now be found in a Google search. Search my name today and there are over 36,000 hits. Not all me certainly, but more than I ever had working at the A&W or even the City. If a legacy is the ability for people to look me up years after I am gone, I have one and hopefully it will all be good.

What will my legacy be? Daughter, sister, City employee, author?  Will it say that I made the most of every moment of my life?  I can only hope.

I hope your legacy is everything you want it to be. Until we meet again dear readers, be well…

~BAL