Ok, so the fires have moved out of my area and continue inland. My place is safe and sound, air quality was crap for a while and now with some nice winds and drizzle, even that is better.
The whole experience was strange. I had my mind setup to allow me to move on without problem if my place had burned. I could live in LA for a year while the place is being rebuilt. I had everything “important” ready to go.. and everything else I was ready to let go. I had even realized that in some ways things would be best if my condo had burnt down.. the rebuild would have made it even newer, the insurance check would have allowed me to replace many outdated things with new, better thought-out versions.. of course, that’s the selfish way to look at things since all of my neighbors would have probably not had the same view.
The other twist on things… I’m glad that nothing happened and that everything is getting back to normal. Would have probably been a pain to rebuild, etc not to mention the potential losses for everyone involved.
The lack of knowing what was going to happen was definately a problem for me - but life is getting back to normal now.
Ok, guess it’s time to blog again. So, after being away for a week I should be focusing more on work, but that’s always hard - especially after an exhausting vacation like the one I just had. Before I left there was already a bit of local drama.. and now that I returned there’s more.
First off, have a friend who’s got some tough decisions ahead and is stressed about them. Strangely enough, by being more “involved” in the convo about the decisions and such I am not stressed as bad as I’d be if I didn’t know what’s going on.
Secondly, there’s another person who I’ve been helping out, but their amount of stress they’re going through is the one that I think is getting to me a bit. Their stress isn’t completely brought on by their own decisions, but the decisions have made it worse. Silly things like not faxing a paper when it should be which they KNOW will lead to a backlash from other people and will cause more stress. Just one of a few examples that come to mind. On the good side, I think this will be taken care of within a week so this will be gone soon.
Work itself would be #3 on the list.. yes, I get paid well for having little to do, but the real issue here is that I don’t know enough about how to do things within my department and internal documentation is a pain to find (or not written). This in itself makes me feel like a newbie in this department even after being on board for over a year. The optimistic part on this is the new rollout we are doing which I know more about.. so the old stuff will soon be forgotten anyway.
Time zones really aren’t stressing me - just are annoying. The time spent online/phoning each day works well IMO, so that’s “a good thing”.
I’ll try to blog again someday soon 
Wondering what tomorrow may bring. Sometimes, you just KNOW what things will be like. You know that you’ll wake up, eat, that nothing exciting will happen and that you’ll go back to sleep at the end of the day. Others you let ride on the wind and see where it will take you. And then others you look and you realize it’s not even riding the wind, the amount of random things that can happen are infinite and are of a mixed bag and you’re better off not even going there. I don’t think I’ve ever really had the “mixed bag” - everything is either “ride the wind” (if I like the direction it’s blowing) or the typical day.
Sometimes, when you watch others, you realize which type of day or week they’re having. Sometimes you hope you can help them catch the right wind to ride or help them get out of the “mixed” day and have just an old fashoned regular boring day since that’s what we sometimes need. Sometimes the winds are too strong and you watch them get blown away.
Other times, the winds that have to travel the globe are the strongest since they travel the farthest. They carry the spirit and the heart along. The wind can carry the feelings and thoughts without anyone even realizing it.. and since it’s a cycle, it carries the other spirit and heart back.
..and with those thoughts, back to work I go