the writer who also works at a day job

The curse of being a writer who also has a full time job to support the family.

Every time I left work for a week of writing, or a week of research trips, or a week of speaking to a series of schools and libraries, the staff at work would say, "have a nice vacation."
I'd reply, "No.  I'm just going to my second job."

My favorite flowers

It's May.
Time for my bleeding hearts to be blooming at my old house in Maryland.  
I haven't tried growing them here on the west coast, but I don't think I'd even be able to find old-fashioned bleeding hearts here.

And more Inspiration

“Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven’t half the strength you think they have.” Norman Vincent Peale

“The only path by which another person can upset you is through your own thought. Just keep your conscious mind busy with expectation of the best.” Joseph Murphy

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” Dr. Seuss

“Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.”Emily Dickinson

The past is behind, learn from it. The future is ahead, prepare for it. The present is here, live it.”    Thomas S. Monson

Here are more quotes

Abraham-Hicks and Inspirational Daily Quotes -

“How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.” Wayne Dyer

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”   Guatama Buddha 

“Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make.” Eckhart Tolle 

“I can’t say this strongly enough, but our feelings about ourselves are actually the most important barometer for determining the condition of our lives!” Anita Moorjani

“You can turn your life into paradise, but the only way you can do it is to make the inside of you a paradise. There is no other way.”Rhonda Byrne

“Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Eleanor Roosevelt 

“There are plenty of difficult obstacles in your path. Don’t allow yourself to become one of them.”    Ralph Marston  

Even more inspirational quotes

Abraham-Hicks and Inspirational Daily Quotes -

 “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” Maya Angelou 

 “The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.”   Eckhart Tolle 

“No one can depress you.

No one can make you anxious.

 No one can hurt your feelings.

No one can make you anything

other than what you allow inside.”      Dr. Wayne Dyer 

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”  Aristotle 

“Be happy for this moment, this moment is your life.”   Omar Khayyam

“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”   Epictetus

Inspirational quotes

Abraham-Hicks and Inspirational Daily Quotes -

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” Aristotle Onassis

“The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”  Bertrand Russell

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”   Mahatma Gandhi

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill

“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”   Aristotle

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” Helen Keller 

even more Inspirational quotes

Abraham-Hicks and Inspirational Daily Quotes -

We cannot focus upon the weaknesses of one another and evoke strengths. You cannot focus upon the things that you think they are doing wrong, and evoke things that will make you feel better.

What holds bad things in your life is always your attention to those bad things, always.

If you intend to be of assistance, your eye is not upon the trouble but upon the assistance, and that is quite different. When you are looking for a solution, you are feeling positive emotion— but when you are looking at a problem, you are feeling negative emotion.

The greatest gift that you could give to anyone you love is the gift of positive expectation. 

Appreciation and self-love are the most important tools that you could ever nurture. Appreciation of others, and the appreciation of yourself is the closest vibrational match to your Source Energy of anything that we’ve ever witnessed anywhere in the Universe.

Your happiness is the most significant contribution that you could make. In your reaching for happiness, you are opening a vortex which makes you an avenue for the Well-being to flow through you. And anything that is your object of attention under those conditions, benefits by the infusion of your Well-being.

Every time you praise something, every time you appreciate something, every time you feel good about something, you are telling the Universe, “More of this, please. More of this, please.”

If you can let anger subside, and let fear be replaced with more hopefulness, you will easily tap into a momentum of Well-being. It will seem so easy, you will wonder why you don’t do that more often

No matter what the issue is, don’t try to justify why you don’t feel good. And don’t try to justify why you should feel differently. Don’t try to blame whatever it is you think the reason is that’s keeping you from feeling good. All of that is wasted effort. Just try to feel better right now.

Let your alignment (with Well-Being) be first and foremost, and let everything else be secondary-- your dominant intent is to be joyful.

Get out into the sunlight — out where everything is — with a vibration that is so dominant that those who annoy you; those who don’t agree with you; those who make your life feel uncomfortable don’t come into your experience, because your vibration — through your practice — has become so clear, so pure, so clean, so in keeping with what you want, that the world that revolves around you just feels like that.

When you reach for the thought that feels better, the Universe is now responding differently to you because of that effort. And so, the things that follow you get better and better, too. So it gets easier to reach for the thought that feels better, because you are on ever-increasing, improving platforms that feel better.

If you will let your dominant intention be to revise and improve the content of the story you tell every day of your life, it is our absolute promise to you that your life will become that ever-improving story. For by the powerful Law of Attraction—the essence of that which is like unto itself is drawn—it must be!  Abraham -Hicks