Frankly, I'm not a believer in conspiracy theories. Most of them have one of two flaws: they assume the accused are smart enough to pull off a complex cover up, or they assume the accused care when in fact they might not as much as you think. Now that's not to say that I believe people are idiots. I just wonder if sometimes we imagine that the truth is more fantastic, greater, or more interesting than it really is.

That being said, I have to admit there are some that greatly entertain me. The 9-11 conspiracy theories alone can fill up a month of your time. The government set it up! It was on purpose! Really? Why would they do that? Or is the fact that there really ARE people out there that hate America and would love nothing better than to see us fall into oblivion just too overwhelming to accept? Honestly, I don't think the government are saints. They definitely spin things to the advantage of supporting pet projects and causes. But I don't think they're out ot get us, either.

The conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook shootings fall along the same lines. There are those that say the government set it up to push gun control agendas this session. While I'll certainly agree that the tragedy has been used in support of such efforts, I really don't think the government is diaobolical enough to kill children to push their cause. That's silly. I think the media jumped on it too fast and the muched up reports with conflicting information didn't help, but that doesn't mean there was a coverup. Just people looking to get the story before it was possible to know it fully.

Not all conspiracy theories involve the government. There are some interesting theories on why we haven't been back to the moon since the 70's. There are many about cover ups for screw ups in our space program, but my favorite is the one about finding hostile aliens up there and being afraid to go back. Some even say the crew never really came back from that last trip. I like the one about Neil Armstrong finding a Decepticon up there. I bet he got a kick out of that one, too.

There's also a theory that the aestroid belt was the original Garden of Eden, and God smashed it to bits and drop kicked us to Earth. I've heard variations on this same theory, but in them Mars is the original Garden of Eden. Either way, that was one heck of a kick. But evolutionists, don't fear because we have you covered too! The "scientific" variation is that our DNA material was blasted to Earth when that extra planet between Mars and Jupiter blew to kingdom come. Or when whatever destroyed Mars happened. Again, that was one hell of a blast.

Heck, we might have even started elsewhere. There are theories that Stonehenge and the pyramids are alien landing strips. Live long and prosper perhaps, but they aren't talking to us now. Either we're awfully boring and they found a species more entertaining, or we pissed them off and they said "screw you guys, we're going home."

My all time favorite consipiracy theory, though, mixes all the elements of a good story: diabolical plots, sinister characters, and even supernatural intervention. It's the one that World War II was caused by Hitler using necromancers to take over the world. Word has it he (or someone in his camp) found a way to re-amimate the dead. I heard about the gruesome experiments but bringing the dead back to life to form the perfect army - wow. He supposedly did this with the aid of an otherworldly weapon - think the Tesseract and Hydra weapons from Captain America and The Avengers. We got through that by the skin of our teeth because atom bombs beat the undead (there's your zombie cure), but there are survivors amongst those foul creatures and their creators, and they're still out there, lying in wait for their opportunity to try take over the world again. Or at least they are according to a recent episode of Supernatural.

Gotta love it. Actually, that's one that's not only the most interesting, but probably the most likely to be true. Undead armies created by a relic from Oden's vault. Why not? Let's make it interesting, at least. I think it's more likely than the government staging their own tragedies to shape politics. Or aliens on the moon. Or fried paradice at earth's back door. Or aliens dropping us off at Earth, otherwise known as the cosmic Walmart. Eww. That's not nice.

So there you have it - my favorite conspiracy theories. I don't believe a single one of them, but I have to admit that they did make me think. For a minute, anyway.

That's all today. Take care and have a great rest of the week.

Bye!

I'd like to open this entry with a disclaimer: I have no objections to working outside the home. In fact, I believe I'd be bored and rather miserable as a stay-at-home. I have always felt that I need to contribute to the world at large, and I invested a great deal into getting a college degree so I could do just that. So to start, I don't mind working. The issue is balancing it with having a life. Because jobs take up an awful lot of your life, and you have to set boundaries with how much of your life you want to give to your work - much like everything else.

I never wanted my job to be the core of my life. There are a lot of people out there that are defined by their work, and I've known all along that I don't want to be one of them. To me, I have a job to serve my life. It's how I channel my knowledge, experience and skills to the world, and in return it financially supports my life. That's it. It's not who I am. It's not my sole purpose in life. It's not the whole of my existence. It's one part of my life, one part of the whole that makes me.
 
The challenge is keeping it one part of life because work, much like everything else, wants to be the center. The fact that it's our financial foundation is a binding factor that makes work one of the "immovable objects" in our lives, and the trick is how to keep reshaping that object into something that helps rather than hurts. Our personal lives change over time and so do our jobs - even if you work in the same place throughout your career, I can guarentee that the job itself will change as time goes on. Duties come and go, and more is always added. I can attest to this by experience. I've been working in the same job for over thirteen years, but it most certainly IS  NOT the job I was hired to do. It bears absolutely no resembelance to what it was the first day I walked in. It's even been reclassified twice to accomodate for the drastic changes over the years. Likewise, my personal life has drastically changed in those years as well. And the ongoing challenge is how to keep work in balance in your life with both are constantly changing forces.

It's tough, and it's something that constantly has to be managed. I've had to make a lot of adjustments in the past three years alone, as my job duties quadrupled at the same time that my in-laws moved to town and my writing started to get published more widely. In fact, I was under a therapist for a year to help me manage all of the changes sweeping through my life. It would have been nice if all of these things could have happened, say, over the space of five years - but it was more like five months. I made it, but I'm not afraid that I'm still on that curve of balancing my changed work situation and my changed life situation. That is, in fact, part of what spurred my resolution to work on the issue of balance. It was realizing that while the major adjustments are done (and have been for a while), some tweaking to the details needs to happen. In fact, tweaking is something that probably needs to be done, well, more frequently than I have.

I think the big thing for me right now is balancing my increased work duties with my writing. I could easily stay glued behind a computer all my waking hours between the job, then coming home to work on writing promotion and working on new projects to keep my writing in motion. While I love my writing, I realized it had elevated itself to "work" in my life, and I always said that when it was more labor than enjoyment, it was time to make some adjustments. I can't and won't work 100% of the time. I want free time with Rick and the birds, with family and friends, with occasional volunteer projects at church, or with hobbies or just being lazy, and I will have it. I need time off, and I believe that getting sick with that virus before the holidays was the wake up call that made me realize I spend too much time working and not enough time taking care of myself: spiritually, mentally, physically, or emotionally. I have a full life and that's fine, but I need to get it in order and make sure there's a place for everything - and especially a space for taking care of myself, which I neglected to an almost dangerous place a few weeks ago. I really downplayed that here and in my social media posts, but the truth is that I was a bigger wreck than I let on, and it downright scared me. I was ill and distressed to the point of being almost non-functional for about 36 hours. Not long, but long enough to get through. It was time to heal more than my body. My mind and soul needed healing too.

Thankfully, I had some time off for the holidays to take stock of how to do this, and the work-life issue was primary amongst my concerns. I can't change my job, but I can look for ways to get better organized and to get things done better and more efficiently. As for my writing, I looked into some publicity options that included writing more articles and short stories, which allows me to continue producing new work that gains publicity for my published books. It's channeling into doing more of what I love, which is creating new work. It takes the "work" out of the writing and puts it back in the place of being "fun." And that's what it's all about: being entertaining and fun for me and my readers.

I think we all get knocked off kilter every now and then, and it seems that the work-life balance is usually where it's most likely to happen. We just have to stop and take stock every now and then to make sure we're keeping work in it's proper place in our life, and not letting it morph or grow into a trap. Because when we feel trapped, that's when it's gotten too far out of balance. I'm happy to report that I do feel much better and I continue to heal from my illness of a few weeks ago. There are still some struggles, but I take it a day at a time and I believe I'm finding a better way to have my life with all the joy and fullness I'm meant to have.

That's all today. Take care. I hope you have a great week.

Bye!