D.V. Sheppard: portland roots

December 2012? It really has been a long time. I feel somewhat embarrassed, but I have plenty of excuses gathered up to curry forgiveness with. Chief among them, and perhaps the only one I'll take your time to share is that me and the Wombat moved - over 2100 miles!

Yes, ladies and gents, we left the "Keep Portland Weird" slogan toting land of Oregon for the "Keep Austin Weird" slogan toting land of Texas. Most every aspect of our normal life was put on hold for the past several months, but we're here and we're happy.

We've had the great opportunity to get to know some of Wombat's family that we hadn't gotten the opportunity to party with much. The Wombat is falling in love with the computer tech scene. Happy Wombat = Happy Duckie.

Me? I'm working as a personal assistant to Doctor Awesome who I worked with back in Portland last summer. To be frank: I love my job. I'm crazy busy and rocking it.

In addition, working with Doctor Awesome has re-motivated Wombat and I to improve our health even further. Nothing like a huge change in your life (ie., move thousands of miles) to help you break bad habits and change for the better. We've drastically decreased the amount of grains we're eating, making our meals out of good clean meats, and fresh fruits and vegetables. We aren't perfect and still tend to splurge on the weekends (can anyone say "Hopdoddies" or "The Salt Lick"?) - but during the week we are pwning face.

Well it's good to be back, and I had fun revamping my blog, but I have to admit, I haven't written much in the past few months. Stress and creativity didn't prove compatible. Wombat and I have been working on some projects that have been inspiring me though, and as I've begun to feel better, I've noticed an increased desire to write. Better Health = Better Writing? I think so. With that said, I think I will join my first blog hop! Get Healthy Blog Hop here I come!

Ladies and gentleman,

I have the immense pleasure to announce that I have officially sent in my resignation letter for my stressful one day a week cafeteria job. Huzza!

Me and the Duckling Huzzah!-ing it Up

I know, I know - it doesn't sound like much of anything, but I'll tell my short happy story. I used to work at this cafeteria five days a week part-time, until about a year ago, when I picked up my massage job at the chiropractic office. This bumped down my work to only two days a week - Tuesdays (because the office is closed that day) and Thursdays (because I volunteer teach teens dance these nights, and couldn't be available as late as the office would need me). We fast forward to this summer, when I was trained as an assistant for one of the DC's, and picked up work on Thursdays after all, with the understanding that I might cut my hours just a little when dance season started up.

So, for the past few months I've been working at the cafeteria for a five hour shot early Tuesday mornings. While I don't hate this job... it's immensely stressful. Lots to do, with only me as an actual staff member, and a small gaggle of volunteers to teach, keep busy, and keep from messing up in between getting the stuff done that only I could do. In addition my supervisor - though I love her - could occasionally be a struggle for me to work with. If nothing else, I can attest that I learned both to multi-task very well, and to bite my tongue.

Actually, I have to admit - in comparison to my other job - which I LOVE - I did hate this cafeteria position - but only when comparing. It was a HUGE blessing to have gotten the position, and I will be somewhat sad to leave it. But lets get to the POINT of this post already!

The real question is why. Why did I leave? Part of it was the stress. My husband was sick of my coming home irritable, unhappy, and in need of a nap (which he usually put me down for like I was a five year old. Seriously, he did.). The second reason was that we didn't really need the extra money. Picking up my assistant position more than covered what my second job was providing. But, lastly, and most importantly - and I might just shed a tear of cherish-ment for my Husby's insistence in this matter - I wanted a day that I could commit to writing. I have spare time already - but, as many of you can attest - writing at the end of a long day at work is hard- and weekends, at least for me, are the time that I run all the errands and pick up all the pieces that fell apart between then and the last weekend. So my Husby decided that I needed to take the only spare day I had to do what I have a passion for. A day that I could blog, brainstorm, and bully words onto the page. A day that would be set aside to do the research, the practice, the everything. While I'm sure I'll periodically hate this new job- ya know, because I'm human like that - I truly couldn't ask for a greater present.

So there you have it folks! I'm a part-time writer! Not a spare-time writer! I'm now an as-many-hours-as-I-can-stay-on-task-on-Tuesday writer! I am ready for the challenge :D