Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that the keys to patience are acceptance and faith, to accept things the way they are, and to look realistically on the world around you. He also said to have faith in yourself and in the direction you’ve chosen.

I admit in the last six months to having lost all of that. All of my patience and faith, all of my ability to accept things as they are and to be objective, realistic, in doing so. And I most definitely lost faith in myself and my direction.

That would be fine if it were just me that was involved in this ‘mid-life-crisis-thingy’, but it’s not just me. It’s two girls on the edge of adulthood, it’s a tiny company with a small family of staff and authors, it’s a re-establishing freelance business that is only just beginning to get off the ground, thanks to advice from a certain young marketing exec I know.

Not to mention a guardian faery or two that are keeping their eye on me…

Today, I learned the value of patience all over again. After so many weeks fussing and fretting with the various computers and stress over whether this or that one would work today, and after my snapping her head off in a moment of frustration… youngest girl moved all the computer components from the office to the living room and put it back together, minus one RAM chip.

It’s been running, hard, for just over three hours. No BSODs. No freezes. KNOCK ON WOOD! Do it, everyone – find something wood and knock on it for me.

If this continues, I’ll have all my work caught up by the end of the month, plus have a new assignment finished which would potentially boost the new computer savings fund quite nicely.

Please, feel free to knock on that wood some more.

And Greg, etc. – get your minds out of the gutter. <|;^P So if I miss next week because my head is buried in work, I'll double up with a recipe too, maybe that'll make up for it. What little of the virtues actually sticks to me has been restored. Perhaps briefly, perhaps for a lifetime. Who can tell? Perhaps I'll be able to take Ghandi's words to heart:

If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.

It does feel wonderful to have this time again, to get back to words and work. I’ve missed it. And perhaps, I’ll be able to get back into my own writing soon, too! I’ve promised to have the last of the Sabbats series out by the end of February…

Have an exceptionally creative week everyone!
JL

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Looking for something surreal and fantastically funny this week? Check out Gina Ranalli’s Rumors of My Death:

Elizabeth Michelle Aster is having a bad day.

She set fire to her kitchen. She accidentally killed her canary. She lost her job. She lost her girlfriend.

No wonder people call her Diz-Aster. It couldn’t get any worse. Could it?

It can. She hires a guy to murder her, but ‘Bullwinkle’ bungles the job, yet he just keeps trying in one botch-up after another. The ghost of her dead canary is haunting her, and talking to her with a Spanish accent. The mysterious new woman in her life is a bit off herself, and definitely not what she seems.

It can’t get any worse than that.

At least she still has her collection of Converse Chuck Taylors.

Right?

Available now through Createspace, Amazon, Smashwords and Kindle.