Jubilee's Jottings

 Hello, everyone! This is just an update that I'm still in the hospital. I ended up not having meningitis, but I do have a new case of Lyme's disease, just a year after getting out of bed. I am still not quite doing well. My headache has only slightly improved, and it's been nine days here so far.  Please keep me in your prayers, and thanks for your support! Jubilee

     This is Jubilee's mom. She is currently in the hospital. She has been here since Saturday (Oct. 21). The unofficial diagnosis is Lyme Meningitis. She is experiencing severe headaches, nausea, and fatigue. Many of you know that she was in bed with Lyme for many months before. She asks for prayer. God's peace, Samantha Young

           My dog started it. Well, not really. I had recently learned about this new thing called cold plunging. A cold plunge can expensive (think a spa), but cold showers are not. Although this is a current fad, the reason people do this comes from decades and even centuries of medical and common opinion. Louisa Mae Alcott's book Eight Cousins talks about a little girl Rose who has a poor constitution. Part of her uncle's treatment plan includes cold baths.            Certain groups of people around the world practice cold baths, like the Icelandic people, so the idea is neither modern nor fleeting. But we do have modern reasons for doing it, including mental health treatment, well-being boost, among other non-scientific reasons and beliefs.           So before the recent introduction, I had heard about it as a way to build self-discipline, better for your body in the winter, and then ...

  The sunset fades The heavens gray, And shadows turn to black.  Soft birdsong ends,  Sly crickets sing,  And twilight ebbs to night.  I settle in To rest my head And send my thanks to God.  For sun-filled hours, For treasured tears, And His protecting hand.  In peaceful sleep  I pass the night And waken still with God. 

I have sixty seconds to live in 8:30 AM. Once the zero becomes a one, the chance to live that minute is forever gone. There will be no October 2, 2023,, at 8:30 AM ever again.  I have sixty minutes to live the hour of three in the afternoon. Three thousand six hundred seconds of time ticking away.  I have 24 hours to live a single day. Seven days in which to live a single week. A month, a year, a decade. These only matter in the face of passing time.  In twenty years, will it matter what I did that afternoon in high school when I read for three hours straight?  In five years will it matter what I ate for breakfast this morning? In one year, will it matter if I was maximally efficient for the minimal amount time I can stay at maximum? In one month will I care if my bed was made every morning of every day? In one week, will it matter if I completed every task on my daily to-do? In one hour, will it matter how I just spent the last? In one minute, will I care ho...

   For several months, my money felt very tight. My expenses nearly matched my income, leaving just about nothing left over. Well, several weeks ago I sold my car, which freed up a lot of money. I bought the shoes and clothing I needed, stocked my dog supplies, and bought ice cream for my family. And then, I noticed how money leaves much faster than it comes, so I decided to do a no-spend week. Last Saturday I wrote a list of the things I could buy this week, namely food and gasoline. That expense would not total more than twenty dollars for the whole week. I wasn’t sure if it would be very hard, since I don’t particularly care to shop, but it was surprising. The first two days I came up with several items I wanted to buy. I wrote them in a list and forgot about them. By Wednesday, I wasn’t thinking about everything I wanted to buy, but I switched to a different topic. “I want to go write at a cafe.” Writing at a cafe would cost a three-dollar  drink, and I hadn’t ...

  I’ve been doing a lot of writing. On the days when I get everything done, I do about 1,800 to 2,000 words. On a really crazy day, I did around 3,500, because I wrote an entire newspaper article in one sitting. That was a lot. I have written between 60 and 70,000 words for my non-fiction book, generously equivalent to a 200-page book. For all those words, my story is not half written. I have written all of this in the last three months with a couple week-long periods with little writing. I have a lot of work to do before the book is ever published. They say that once you get 60,000 words into a book, you start to wonder about the project, or have some doubts. This number is definitely a milestone for me. This is the largest number of words I have ever written in three months. In the year I have spent working for the newspaper, I estimated writing 70,000 words. Over three years of publishing the magazine, my entire writing combined could equal that amount as well. Be...