On creating this website...

Lutherans rock, as do my new friends at the Duluth Woman's Club! Without good friend Diane encouraging me to participate in the First Lutheran Church Artisan Market, who knows if I would have just kept talking about setting up this website.

A few months later, I was asked to join a group at the Duluth Woman's Club to set up the first public bazaar this weekend. The women I met are creative, passionate, and FUN! That spark also led me to new creative felt projects. I helped 8 women create unique angels/fairies/characters through the needle felting process. It brought back so many memories of teaching at UMD. At the woman's club, seeing the lightbulb go off was awfully satisfying! And you should see the beautiful creations.

The final nudge to get this going: I received an email from the UMD tech department that my website that has been up at UMD for many years, was going away and I had a November deadline to download the files. That was it! Just downloaded the files and will now work on filling in the blanks on this website. Next task -- wading through thousands of photographs. Yikes!!!

What's my point? Since retiring, I've been resistant to sit in front of the computer for any length of time. Let's just say that I had a lot of desktop "screen time" at UMD! My wise mentor and friend shared that I would get over the giddiness of being retired with the luxury of time and NO SCHEDULE -- and of course, she was right. So here I am! (Caveat: I'm still probably a bit too obnoxiously happy about being retired!)

One final thought. While I was at First Lutheran Church last Saturday, I met a Duluth woman who looked at my newly created business card, and asked, you're a writer? I chuckled while explaining that I added that at the last minute because if I'm honest with myself, my writing has been a constant throughout my life. It's the thread that has followed me from my second grade classmates urging me to write comic books and throughout my career to today. I'm not abandoning it, and after having a delightful conversation with my new writing friend, I'm back at it!