Reflecting

Good Last Saturday morning of the year!

     I cannot believe how fast time has went, and after almost an hour of looking back at the past year, I can't believe how much stuff was packed into it. And I guess my biggest thing is looking back at my post from a year ago; I cannot imagine the changes that happened- Good and bad.

In January, we hosted Donna Beegle, she is probably one of my favorite motivational speakers for low-income families. She lived it, and overcame it. She was a product of generational poverty. When you work in my field, you learn there is generational poverty, and situational poverty. Generational is a lot harder to overcome, but Dr. Beegle is living proof and inspiration that it can be done.

In February, I did my Family and Community Development Recertification. We spent most of the days studying goal- setting. I came home with the tools to set SMART goals ( talked about more in this blog post: Got Goals? it is a good time of year to review this.)

In March, the President released his budget and it proposed zeroing out LIHEAP. I wrote another blog on that, it happened to be the most read single blogpost I have ever written (Whats' on my Heart) . I am working on another project right now where I am doing some in-depth studying of Community Action roots. I don't know how many times in my studying I come over, "and the President proposed cutting Community Action. In my homework this week, after talking about a coalition that was formed, I just put, "we learned to fight". Sadly, it is a constant battle.

As I was reading over April's blogposts, I noticed one of them mentioning that in one day, I had my hands on 31 computers. I remember that day. 31 was only about a sixth of the ones I really needed to "put my hands on". Those days are over, for the most part. And will be totally over in the next few months.

May through September, I quit blogging. There were a lot of reasons, more of them God knew and I didn't, but it was right. It was good to come back to though.

In May, I got to speak at our annual IACAA conference on social media outreach, we started our Facebook page for the agency this year (Embarras River Basin Agency).

June was filled with good and bad things.
     My friend's son, Logan (one of my other kids) got married
     My friend Glenna had surgery
     Andrew spent 4 days in the hospital
    Glenna died
    I had my first meeting with Mike Miller regarding IT stuff.

I think the thing I think of most in that is Vaneta, Amy and I all felt a very strong pull to go see Glenna. We knew she was not awake, but we all knew we were supposed to go, and we did. It was very much God telling us to do this, and I am so glad we did.

I keep saying there is going to be a longer post about my meetings with Mike, and there is, because once we get the entire project done, I want to record everything in one place but this is something I have never really put down here.

The night I met with Mike for the first time, all I was doing was trying to find someone to take over as my IT support. I dealt with a different company and had been feeling for the last couple of years that I was an afterthought to them. I know how to do a lot of stuff on my own; most offices don't have that unless they have a real full-time, in-house, IT tech. I always had the feeling that my IT support company thought if they ignored me long enough, they wouldn't have to make a trip because I would figure out how to fix it myself. 9 times out of 10 this was true.

Ironically, the week AFTER I met with Mike, I went to Florida. I missed the first morning of my conference because our computers were down and my current IT support told me they didn't have time to get to it that day. After me saying some not so nice things, they started at least trying but were using people that didn't know our setup. I ended up fixing the problem myself with one of the bookkeepers face timing me, and being my hands as I told her what the problem was. That was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Anyway, onward:

I spent July working on my ROMA implementer credential, and working with Mike on getting a plan for an IT upgrade in place. Once we had all of what we needed to do in place, he could start working on an estimate. We met with Cathy the end of that month and laid it all out for her, next step was board approval.

The highlight of July though was spending time in St. Louis with Dani and Tammy. We celebrated our 50th birthdays. We went to see Mama Mia, spent time in St. Charles, ate at the Spaghetti Factory, but the thing I treasured most was the time spent together. We were supposed to get together again on the 28th of October, the day I cracked my head open. I have had dinner with Tammy once since but haven't seen Dani at all :-(. We have to get something planned!

August brought a trip to Chicago, which was much needed by the time it came. It was the week after Andrew spent another few days in the hospital and the week before the board approved our project. It was the last weekend I would spend away from the office for several months.

September was busy doing all the prep work for the actual changes to computers in our own office. I was also back in Energy Assistance mode, so we were prepping for that as well. We installed the actual terminal server in our office on the 23rd.

In October I finally finished all of my homework and exam for ROMA certification. That same month I started my work towards CCAP, the Certified Community Action Professional. This is the highest designation inside my profession, strictly for my profession. And of course, we continued working on the IT project.

November 8th, we installed the first VPN, or Virtual Private Network, in Olney. Our field office was now directly connected to our main office. We have done 5 since, and have 2 more VPN's to put in, and then we have the office that is connected by radio, so it isn't really a VPN, it is just adding them to the direct network. My plan was to have that done by now, but we hit some snags and now the goal for that is the end of January. Cathy asked if I could have the project 100% by the end of March, I wanted it so badly to be the end of this year, but yes, the end of March is realistic.

November also brought my friend Amy's dad passing away, my own dad passed away in November, so it just hit closer to home for me I guess. This was also one of the men that stood in the gap left by my dad as Granddad for Robert, so it was hard on him as well.

The bright spot was that I finally found my car and everything fell into place for it to be right. I really wanted to wait until my IT project was done, but buying a convertible in March was likely to be more expensive than buying one in November. I have not been this in love with a car since my 1988 Cavalier Z24, that I bought brand new.

My December was awesome. Lots of celebrating the Christmas season. I had my first ever Christmas party and I thought it was really nice. The Alumni Band and "future" Alumni band members played carols on the square, we went Caroling with our church, it was just a good season.

So, that is my year, and what have I learned?

I think the most valuable lesson I learned is to keep those people that God puts in your life close. Everything else will come and go, it is what it is, and "this too shall pass" but those PEOPLE that God GAVE you to help you through it, that's what counts. And you never know when they won't be there anymore so treasure them.

One other thing that happened in December was we had a success strategist come and talk to everyone in the agency. He was VERY well received. His name is Jonathan Edison; some of us had heard him before and were very impressed. We were that day as well. One thing that I want to leave you with as you start into the new year is one of his little sayings:

What you focus on the longest becomes the strongest. I think this is going to be my thought for 2018,
I see so many people in the world that tend to focus on what is wrong with them. We need to be focusing on what is right-- and concentrating on making those things stronger.

So, this is not a devotional today, just a thoughtful blog.

And back to treasuring your friends. I am leaving you with Charlie Puth's One Call Away.

I LOVE this song and I hope and pray ALL of my friends and family know that if there is anything I can do to help them through something, I truly am one call away.