Up to the challenge

Do something for yourself.  Challenge yourself.  Your sense of self-worth will thank you.  

I was afraid I was becoming an old biddy.  You know, the crabby old woman in the neighborhood that seems to boss everybody's kids.  The one that has her face in a snarl (and her panties in a wad) all the time.  I blamed it on menopause, but have decided instead it was this mini-pause that I've been going through in my life.

I was 43 years old when the company that I had run for 11 years moved across the state.  It just so happened that at the time they moved I was 7 months pregnant with our lovely daughter, Kaitlin.

The thought of leaving my precious little darling with a babysitter was more than I could bear.  So, I worked a couple part-time jobs over the next few years and finally decided I would stay at home and babysit.  I had two of my own kids still at home, nieces and nephews, and my first grandchild on the way when I started watching kids. 

Kaitlin was about three years old at the time.  In the three years prior to caring for "my kids" I had still had some residual confidence from being president and general manager of a company.  During those first few years of Kaitlin's life I had continued to write and kept trying to get something published.  I also challenged myself to learn hyper text markup language (HTML) so that I could do some work from home for a web page designer that I knew.  There are so many online sources that it was fairly easy to learn.


And, in the course of doing web page design, I learned a little about graphic design.  I had one of the versions of Paint Shop Pro at that time (still have a version of PSP, just a little newer one now).  There are tons and tons of tutorials out there to help you learn mouse-drawn graphics.

Some were used to make graphics for web pages, as the above, but a lot of the graphics were just for fun.  I had some server space available with the Internet provider that we used and started working on a personal web site.

But, then I "paused" ..... for several years!  I took the time to enjoy my family,  It got to the point I really didn't have time to work on any of my exciting new challenges.  And, they were "put on a shelf."

Now, with all of this alone time, I've begun challenging myself again!  I'm trying new things again.  I'm working on Sue again.  Hang tight, my friends!  My arrogance is starting to show again!  I'm starting to think I'm all that and then some again.  And, I believe that I just might be ...... up to the challenge!