A little encouragement goes a long way, give yourself a pep-talk, and decorate your space - to inspire you.

MEETING NEW PEOPLE

  Tonight my daughter, and I, went to a Christmas get-together, and there was great food there, and interesting people.  I haven't met many new people, face-to-face, since 2001.  The residual effects of a, traumatic, brain injury haunt me - to this day.  While I was trying to explain how I am a blogger, on the internet, and am responsible for any I.T. problems, what I was thinking and what I actually said, were 2 different things. What I said was, "I am the E.T. go-to person, and whenever there is a technical problem, I have to fix the technical problems myself."  (This explains why I am not a day-by-day blogger, if anyone has been wondering.)  Then, after that flying faux pas came out of my mouth, I stuttered and said,  " I-I-I, I mean - I'm the E.T. person".  After that, I kind of just cast my eyes down, and slowly said, "I mean - I.- T. per-son."  We left shortly after that, and  now, I'm thinking that I have a longer way to go - than I had, previously, thought.  

Holidays Have Changed For Me, Since I Moved Away From Phoenix

  Growing up in Phoenix, Arizona, I spent most of the Holidays with my Mother's, and my Father's, family.  My Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, and cousins, all came over, to my parent's house, because they had the most kids.  There were times that the Holiday parties were elsewhere, but  the holiday celebrations that I remember well, were those parties at home.  It took a great deal of work, but it was worth it.  I was the one who captured the most, on film, when I was younger, and I'm going to get  photos, and films, of the past, transferred to disks, but that will be something that will have to wait, at least until next year.  I moved away, in 1986, and now,  Holiday celebrations are small, my children, and I, have to work around tight schedules, whenever we plan to all get together, but I still take alot of  photos, and videos.  The problem that I face, is that I have to learn how to transfer, those captured moments, onto the computer, myself, and my computer is old, and the programs are out-of-date.  There are free, online, sites to help with editing, and scrapbooking,  but that is secondary to the day-to-day chores of everyday life, and sometimes the cable/internet just doesn't get paid.  When it comes to desktop publishing, online, my budget, is $0, and money is hard to come by.  Any money that I get, goes to rent, utilities,  food, and whatever the home, and family needs.  All of my online endeavors, are entrepreneurial,  but I'm told that my persistence will pay off, someday.

Free Learning, Online

All of the things that I have done, online, I have learned by doing by myself, for free, and with an old computer.  I may not see any kind of a profit, for awhile, and there may be some awkward moments, that will be online for all to see, but I'm learning at my own pace.  For more information on free online learning, visit:  1)https://www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses/full-catalogue2)http://opensource.com/, 3)http://www.gcflearnfree.org/
4)https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Online_education/, 5) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=free%20Category%3AOnline%20education&title=Special%3ASearch&fulltext=1 ,                            6)https://www.edx.org/                                               7)https://quizlet.com/,                                8)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zJGctdRVdQ9)http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses,                  10)https://online-learning.harvard.edu/courses?sort_by=date_added&cost%5B%5D=free&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hu-linkedinuniversity-general&utm_source=linkedin, 11) https://archive.org/details/mit_ocw, 12) https://oedb.org/open/ 13)  https://archive.org/search.php?query=Open%20Courses, 14) https://www.nurseceu.com/index.html AND https://archive.org/details/openyalecourses  Also, to learn more about free learning, by means of acedemic auditing, visit:  >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZmhUw8DVmo/