Sunday, January 15, 2023 in Orange County, California

Beach at San Clemente State Park, San Clemente, California

4:46pm, pacific standard time, apartment in Aliso Viejo, California, USA, Sunday afternoon, January 15, 2023. My daughter, her friend and her mom joined me for breakfast with my cousin and her family in Dana Point this morning. We met them at the harbor because they were coming from San Clemente. Afterwards, we went to the beach to build sand castles and continue our visit. Even though the sky we still managed to have a good time. This afternoon I drove to San Juan, signed the lease on my new apartment and paid the deposit. I will get the keys middle of next month and move my stuff back from Arizona a little later. Now we are relaxing and cooking dinner before the week begins tomorrow.

Back to Dana Point

5:21pm, pacific standard time, apartment in Aliso Viejo, California, USA, Saturday night, January 14, 2023. Saw two more properties today and submitted an application for the first. I like where the apartment is in Dana Point and feel the owner is very nice. Now that a decision has been made I feel relieved. I did not realize the amount of stress associated with not knowing where I would live the rest of the year. On Monday I will submit a deposit and sign the lease and get the keys. The unit won’t be vacant until mid—February but that works for me. It will be nice to be back to Orange County in general and Dana Point specifically.

Made me a little sad

3:16pm, mountain standard time, apartment in Chandler, Arizona, USA, Sunday afternoon, December 4, 2022. It was still raining this morning when I woke up so I walked on a treadmill at the gym instead of exercising outside. Later, when it stopped raining, I went for a walk through the neighborhood. The skies have been grey this weekend, which is unusual for Arizona. The gloom makes me introspective. There are only a handful of weekends I will be here before permanently moving back to California. Yesterday, I stopped by the office to let them know I won’t be renewing my lease. I am glad I took care of that detail but, to tell you the truth, it made me a little sad.

Too small blanket

5:14am, in my apartment, Chandler, Arizona, Wednesday morning, December 15, 2021. A while ago I heard a financial planner share insight about his profession. He said the practice of allocating money is like, “a too small blanket on a cold night.” Every scenario can’t be addressed, something will always remain exposed. The lease on my apartment is up for renewal. If I stay in Arizona the relationship with my daughter will suffer. If I go back to Orange County I have no housing or job stability. Either way, I will give up or miss out on something. My blanket is too small.

Not taking blame

It is 6:01am on Thursday morning. I am writing from my apartment in Chandler, Arizona. I am usually writing from my apartment in Chandler first thing in the morning. There is not much variation in my life. For the last couple of months I am either writing in Chandler, Phoenix, Palm Desert or Dana Point. It can be monotonous always doing the same thing. But then again it can be comforting to not deal with constant variation. Things are a little different today. I am sitting at my computer instead of using my phone on the couch. I had a scare this morning. I brought up the blog site and I wasn’t logged in. I worried I was shut out because I didn’t renew my other site. But I was able to reset the password and get in. Tragedy averted. Now I need to make sure my phone is working. I thought about place and life on my walk this morning. I want to stay in Arizona a little longer. I don’t want to move until the beginning of March, 2022. I don’t want to break my lease and I don’t want to deal with movers. Today is the five month “anniversary” of starting work in Phoenix. It has been an experience. The site I took over has been in turmoil. A lot of changes in leadership. Inappropriate admissions leading to paying back past payments. I thought I could come in and turn things around. I felt good about my abilities. But our census never went up. In fact it continues to go down. Revenue continues to go down as well. So much so that the business is in bad shape. If things weren’t bad enough the company announced on my third day of work they were selling the hospice and home health division. The sale just went through at the beginning of the month. The hospice was owned by a senior living company. We have the same name as the senior living company. We got over 90% of our business from the senior living company. The senior living company sold us. We are now owned by a hospital system that does not have a presence in the market. Many of the senior living communities in the area didn’t like using us when we were the same company. Now that we have been sold they have completely iced us out. We have only had three referrals in a month and a half. We are budgeted for 20. I have disassociated from the situation though. I am not going to take the blame. Normally I take all the blame. When something goes bad I say that the failure is mine. But I won’t this time. I refuse to own the sins of other people because I am not some magical savior. The deck has been stacked against success from the moment I walked in the door. I am not giving up. I am working hard. We have marketing plans. We can get business other ways. I am not giving up but I am not taking blame.