Apparently I’m having trouble writing for Day 12 of my writing challenge. I’ve left it too late in the day. Now I am tired. Spent the day on phase 1 of making sourdough bread. It’s a long, complicated process. To make it worse, we had a water outage from 10:30 to late afternoon. I had to stretch my water supply from my brother. Lucky he lives close by and on a different water line. So here I am, scratching my head, trying to find some words.

Someone just told me that Environment Canada has issued an extremely cold warning. Ugh! I knew something was up – a change in the weather again. I can always feel it in my bones. Here I go again, blaming the weather. I might as well. It’s nothing personal. If I blame people, they take offence. I have trouble keeping my thoughts to myself. I think it would be good if I learn to keep my thoughts to myself more. If it serves no purpose at all,  those thoughts should be silent. It is a bad habit that I talk so much. It’s a leftover fault from years of being a nurse.

It might be hard to believe but I was a very shy and quiet person. Then I became a working person – a waitress, steno and lastly a nurse. All of these professions are in the service sector. It’s obvious as a waitress that I had to be social and engaging with customers. I was a steno in the Dept. of Indian and Northern Affairs. It was a large department, consisting of 40 employees. I was a steno in the education section. My job was to issue education allowances for the post secondary students. My desk was right in the steno pool besides the xerox machine. It was a high traffic area. I got to chitchat alot. As a nurse, I worked in a large teaching hospital. Just think of the staff – the nurses, doctors, lab people, medical students, nursing students, cleaning staff, consultants, physio staff, rehab staff…… So you see, I had to chit chat with a lot of people. And I did.

Even after 6 years of retirement, I still have this gift for gab. It’s not all good. It’s not all bad. I just see now that I have to sort them out, which to keep, which to toss. I don’t have to voice everything that pops into my head or mouth. I’ve been accused of giving voice to stuff that other people would only think. That is unkind and not true. I have better judgement than that but then maybe fatigue could cloud thinking and loosen tongue. I think maybe that was a voice of jealousy and envy. But I am grateful for that voice. I pay attention.