I must let the words you wrote do their work. I will let you know what happens.

Congratulations on your anniversary.

And, David and Irene, you’ve made me consider what differences there are between being alone and being lonely. I’ve rarely been alone for the past 25+ years, due to my large family size and my being the mother. But I have often felt lonely over the past 8 years. So there’s a difference for me that doesn’t depend on having people around, even people who love me and whom I deeply love, and people with whom I’m intimate. We have a close-knit family of mostly awake people. And yet I often have felt lonely. So I’ll be thinking about this and see what I can find out. Thank you for responding and helping me to sort myself out, just by your comments.

How can I not do this? I need a job to support myself. I made a commitment to my boss to finish this training, which is costly, and come work for her. A large part of my mixed emotions is not following through on something that I said I would do, even if I don’t like what I’m doing.

It’s not that I dislike dialysis nursing but I find the focus is on the machine and not on the patient but maybe that’s just because it’s all new. I don’t know.

I do know that I miss my time for daily reflection. I’m trying to do it on the fly now and it doesn’t feel as good.

Thanks for making me think. I’m keeping so busy I’m not thinking about what I need to think about which is why do I do the things that I do. Why do I get so defensive when criticism is offered? Why do I judge so much? How can I change that? And a thousand other questions that I’m too busy to attend to right now which also makes me irritated. I was making progress, learning to understand myself and accept my imperfect self and I feel as though I’ve stalled again, too busy to finish what I started two years ago.