This week begins with an announcement.

I’m embarking upon a major life change. For many years, I’ve been searching for the right fit. This journey has led to me giving notice at work this week.

Come September, I am returning to school to retrain. I will be studying Therapeutic Recreation. It’s entirely reasonable if you don’t know what the profession is about. I’ll be talking all about it and more on my Ko-fi blog where some posts will be monetized. That’s announcement number two.

My other blog will have an entirely separate purpose than this one. It will be structured as single topic posts rather than updates on my whole week. Content will include life as a mid-40s student, therapeutic recreation, and other health related topics. It will have a health focus, so if I talk about other pieces of myself, they will be from a health perspective.

You can find my Ko-fi blog here: https://ko-fi.com/thewritebuttons

Posts will begin in September.

Onto the regularly scheduled programming…

On Monday, I was feeling a bit frantic. Some of the last things I was having to arrange before the whole school adventure, especially the second half of my financing, were not going according to plan. More on that on Ko-fi, the new home of Rae’s Record.

I calmed myself down and figured out a different path that will hopefully work out. I really hope this comes together!

Next up was the daily ear drops for the ear infection. I’ve gotten used to reading on my side or watching TV during this. This was done as of Monday evening though my ear still felt a bit off. I hoped it was all truly gone because I was out of drops.

The rest of the week flew by on tasks for school like bank conversations and ordering my equipment. I also began transitioning my work items to the colleague who will be taking over my portfolio. It’s a weird feeling. I’m super excited for school, but it will be odd not talking to all of these people regularly.

Having finished my rewatch of Bones, I began watching The Crown. It’s my first time and I find it well made. The acting, filming, and writing are all top tier. It’s making me want to read some of Churchill’s speeches as he is depicted as a fantastic wordsmith. Far beyond what most leaders do today. The writer in me wants to gulp those words in greedily and learn what I might from them.

I’m also rewatching Community because I thought that would be fun as I get ready to go back to school.

On Friday, I dropped off some items for donation before heading to a friend’s place for the last time to check for basement flooding. This time it was much better than the previous times and barely any water had come in. I relaxed a bit while airing the upstairs out and got a bit lost in Reddit. Suddenly, they were home. I had meant to leave sooner, but it was good to see them. I didn’t stay as they had been travelling for many hours and I hadn’t had dinner.

On the DIY front, I finished painting a storage crate to match another I own for holding items underneath my new loveseat. Eventually, there will be a third, but it’s not a priority yet. It’s there, unpainted and full of paperwork I need to sort through once I have my countertops in place. I have another crate to paint at some point. I’m trying to declutter my fitness related items for my workout area. With my condo being so tiny, I need to fix some of this up before I can make room to cut my countertops. And I want to get this phase done before school. I’m hoping the final phase won’t take too long to do, but at least with proper countertops, I’ll be able to use things like my air fryer, instant pot, toaster oven, and hot plate while my oven isn’t in the room more easily than I otherwise have been.

I finally got back to martial arts on Sunday. It was a good practice. We went through every kata once then Sempai demonstrated some ways to combine them for a more intense workout. I learned Eishin Ryu is the set I am most confused about for standing kata. Good thing there is a seminar coming up that will help with that. After that was second dojo at a pub to celebrate our Sensei’s retirement from the office grind.

Sunday was also a marathon of the Lord of the Rings trilogy with some friends. Because it was the extended editions with some breaks in between, I only missed part of the second film.

This week, I tried Valheim. Why? Because it keeps appearing as a possibly cozy game option on some blogs. IT IS NOT A COZY GAME AT ALL!!! In a cozy game, I shouldn’t have to worry about dying unless I do something really dumb. The coziest games, like Disney Dreamlight Valley, don’t even have the possibility of death. Valheim is a hardcore survival game that eventually lets you build some things. It’s not remotely the same thing as a cozy builder game like Tiny Glade. I promptly returned it for a full refund on Steam. But I felt the need to put this information out there to stop others from being duped into trying it out. I personally don’t enjoy survival games with the exception of Stardew Valley and Minecraft because they are typically more cozy than survival. Especially Stardew Valley. You are given a house. Unless you stay out until 2AM or are quite a high level, it’s actually really hard to die.

Rant over.

The construction in the areas attached to our parking lot continued this week. It will be interesting to see it all come together. Here are the latest photos:

I have no idea what the digging is about in the final image. As far as I knew, that was supposed to become parking. I suppose, time will tell.

Overall, this week held some key milestones I had been planning for a long time, so it was a relief to finally reach them. My course schedule releases next week, so I’ll be soon able to get to planning everything out.

Catch you on the flip side,

Rae