Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

When I first starting working as a nurse, an acquaintance at church told me my life sounded like a bed of roses. I don't think anyone's life is a bed of roses. Even celebrities. I mean, what about Tom Hanks getting COVID19? What about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's failed marriage (which I am still, inexplicably, sad about, when I don't even follow Hollywood developments)? What we see of each other's lives is only what they disclose, and it sure is a lot more fun to disclose the happy things than the sad ones. Case in point: I published an article last week in a nursing journal. I immediately shared it. Like I'm in the peak of my career or something. But it has taken me until now to share something that happened 2 weeks ago [the week before I shared news of the article]. I was laid off. Looking back, I can see a perfect alignment of coincidences that led to that moment. Finding my feet as a new nurse practitioner--> waiting for paperwork that would le

I sense I'm not alone in this, but I am struggling for motivation to do things during quarantine. Part of the problem is of course that there is less to do (can't go see museums, or travel to Virginia Beach to eat kolaches, or wander around a mall), but now that I technically have the time to read a bunch of books, instead I stare out the window and scroll through pointless "news" stories. Which means...time to think of the good things in life! now that we have a treadmill, I can watch a movie while "exercising" neither me nor my husband is sick I'm not furloughed or fired from my job, which means we still have income the pandemic hasn't diminished Mark's and my enjoyment of playing the game Pandemic we have lots of different movies available to us we live in a pretty area people in our area are, from what I can tell, taking the pandemic seriously when I couldn't find any paper towels locally, my mom shipped me some even when I