And then...

Well, well, well, where do I begin? It has been an extremely *long* time since I sat down with the sole purpose of creating and publishing a new blog post. When I got everything set up here on MarshaSioux.com (changed the look, feel and profile info) I fully intended to delve back into constant blogging. I intended to move forward with my freelance career and put everything else back into the right places in my life. Life threw me a few curve balls over the past year though and I've had to really re-prioritize things and figure out what my best course of action was.

I am an extremely independent woman - I have been obstinate since I was a toddler and I have not ever taken kindly to being forced into *anything*. I finally realized this year that I had allowed myself to fall into a place of dependence and subordination. It wasn't something that happened overnight, it was a long drawn out process over a period of several years - almost an entire decade to be exact. I also realized that it was time to make some real changes in my life - not just *say* I was going to make changes and then allow things to continue on they way they have been for entirely too long.

I ended an extremely unhealthy and unproductive relationship not too long ago (actually I have ended a few of them recently, but, the one I am speaking of was the least healthy and honestly, the most destructive of them all). It was mutually destructive - we were tearing each other down and breaking things in such a terrible way, I don't know *how* it got to that place but I know that it was there and it had to end, and so I put an end to it. That was something I wasn't sure I would be able to actually do - emotionally it was extremely difficult for me to finally say what had to be said and put it all out there. I did it though and I cannot tell you how much better my day to day life has become. I have lessened my burden, I have given up something that was causing my life to be split in such a way that I could *never* get anything done for *anyone*, including myself. Now that the self imposed "rift" is gone, everything else has just kind of fallen into place - my life is "working" now. I cannot lie and say that it was easy or that it isn't hard to stick to it sometimes (everyone has a friend that they pick up the phone to call whenever something important happens or just to hear a friendly voice, someone you can talk to about anything, the person that you depend on when you need to depend on someone - this was that person for me - and they were that person for over 8 years) - but - I am confident it was the best thing for both of us - not just me. I hope that my decision helped them as much as it helped me - I really do.

Now, I also started *and* stopped attending school over the last year. I enrolled and began in my cosmo courses in August of last year and wound up taking a leave of absence in early January of this year. My family took on too much at the same time. We gave it our best shot but we decided it was just entirely too much for both my Husband and I to be in school and working at the same time, while our children were attending school (some of them also being home schooled by us). Trying to manage our finances, our household, school for multiple people, extracurriculars, it just proved entirely too much for the two of us to handle. We survived the insanity for a little over 4 months and it was an extremely difficult decision to make, I didn't *want* to walk away from school (even temporarily) - but - it was *also* one of the best decisions I have ever made. The first few days after signing out of school - feeling that burden lifted, it was an amazing feeling to know that things were going to be so much better because of that decision. My husband is now only one week away from finishing school, he already has his "dream job" (one of them - lol) and we are doing so great right now, huge relief. I'll be going back to school in August of this year to finish my hours and get my license.

We recently were "forced" to move into a new house. It has probably been the best thing that has happened to our family in a very long time. The house we lived in before this was owned by what you could call slumlords (and not be exaggerating). They never repaired *anything* in the home - the one and only time they ever "fixed" something they had to be "tricked" into doing it and then it wasn't done right. So, when the house was foreclosed on by the bank that holds the mortgage, we were forced to find another home. I got lucky and the day after I started looking for a new place to live, a new ad posted in the classifieds for a farm house surrounded by nothing but acreage and other farmland just a little over a mile away from the old house. I found the ad, talked to the landlord and looked at the house in the very first day the house was available for rent. We signed the lease and paid the move in costs the next day and we absolutely *adore* the new house. It is a perfect fit for our family - it really is. It is way smaller than our last house - but for some reason - we just feel "right" here and that in itself is worth it.

I am also currently in the process of editing a complete novel written by an author other than myself. It's been a while since I worked in this capacity for someone else. It's actually quite an amazing experience and I am loving every single minute of it. The story itself is a lot of fun - I read it in its entirety in one day - I took it with me every where I went throughout that day - I was glued to either the Kindle app on my Evo Shift or to the monitor of my Toshiba Laptop - it's a fresh, smart, exciting story that just requires a few polishes here and there to make it really shine. I am hoping I can help this Author get published quickly - I think she has strong storytelling abilities - I look forward to working with her on several more projects in the future.

As you can tell, it's been an incredible year of ups and downs, but everything has really had a "good" outcome even when initially it may have seemed like it was going to be bad. I am really glad I finally took a real step back and looked hard at the things that are important in my life - put them in the right order of priority and then made the hard decisions I had to make to get the things in my life working they way they are supposed to. I feel amazing. I am finally happy after a really long time of being *not* happy at all. I know there are a few people out there that may have been hurt by those hard decisions, other than myself, I can honestly say that some of those decisions hurt me, badly. But the healing process has been amazing and I *am* better for it.

Until next time - M