Good Friday and April Fools

I admit I am a serial problem solver, my minuscule engineering molecule that I was gifted with blissfully functioning in a practical methodology-except at 3 in the friggin' morning. Lately I find myself waking from restless sleep far more than I would like to admit, wacky dreams I briefly recapture for dysfunctional clues to what is going on in my sub conscious before falling back to sleep. Constantly reevaluating the waking dream I am living -sometimes becomes a challenge in itself. In all honesty it seems like every fifteen years my gypsy blood rises and wants a change, my life feels routine, my muse desires another palette.
These days I am not feeling creatively challenged enough and I throw myself-ass over tea kettle, into the smallest of assignments apparently unable to determine the clients who want quality results and are willing to pay a fair compensation, from the ones who I become a willing doormat to be taken advantage of. If there is a Cinderella complex for artists I am in the proverbial trenches.
I want to be working with other creatives, part of a team, yes, working a job, with a boss who appreciates the hoops I jump through and the passion I have for the process. I want to get up, get dressed... go to work and create, I want the daily grind to be the job I love, and love the job I do.
I don't want to waste precious sleep time waking with stressful thoughts about money and maintenance around the property...my problem solving molecule in overdrive focused on the solution.
Today is Good Friday and here is what has been good, if not great about it, I finished reworking my website, expanding and updating my online portfolio, and now in earnest I will start applying for design jobs. Top of my list is Google, I know... good luck, I hear they only look at twenty something applicants, but I can dream. San Diego and Austin are also on my radar, another bleak winter here is all I need to send me over the edge, if I pull off a geographic I want it to be to a warmer climate. Hoping, praying and lighting candles in the spirit of write it down make it happen that next year at this time I won't be having another 'Groundhog Day' experience on Good Friday and feeling like another April Fool.

Fogged IN

The weather these days has been vaguely reminiscent of life in the Bay Area at its worst, fugly and cold. Its been a totally depressing two days and the burning desire to head out of the fog became the voice of reason and motivated a picturesque drive to the Illinois valley. I could have skipped the insanely narrow road that zigzags down the side of the mountain to the river, with a suicide drop off the side that takes your breath away, were you not holding it in, praying another vehicle is not coming around the curve in the other direction. Each time we head down that road I swear its my last... and fear its my last.
No matter how you turn this kaleidoscope it can take your breath away.
At the top of the mountain, in the midst of some solid sunshine, we discussed the fact that this weather picture plays out every year around this time, and then, in no time at all its 110 in the shade and we're floating down the river.
Time flys wheter your having fun or not, and its all relative to something I just can't get a handle on. Like, fourteen years since I moved here, a year since I started at the hospital ( I got my one year certificate this past Monday), I still struggle to remember how old I am, and still wonder what I will be, if and when I grow up. And the seasons turn turn turn around it all.
There is a distinctly serene advantage to the change of seasons, but as I get older, the reason I appreciate that fact becomes dimmer and is eventually off the radar entirely. I find myself longing for the kind of blissful warmth that makes me turn my face to the sun and melt, ahhh....year round. Each winter more than the last, I long to head somewhere, anywhere south, kind of like some of my body parts these days...
I tell myself, THIS is my last winter here, and then, here I am again, a year later, wondering where the past twelve months have gone. Its like one of my very favorite movies, Groundhog Day, except its not hysterically funny. There is snow, I have one of those generic clock radios, I am from Pennsylvania, but can we cut to the Hollywood ending complete with romantic music? And can I rewrite the ending to be on a beach with a Margarita in hand?
Reality check. Maybe its time for a new life plan complete with a geographic, a creatively and financially rewarding job, or maybe just a few days escaping cabin fever here in paradise.