Day 127: Advancement

We've been plugging along doing the same thing every day. Elliott is getting big fast. He's about 17 pounds. He's sitting up on his own pretty good and he can stand up with some support. He's rolling over a little bit and not really crawling at all. He scoots when he's on his stomach but hasn't figured out crawling. I'm wondering if he'll be one of those babies that never really crawls. He just starts pulling himself up on stuff and ends up walking. We'll see. We've been feeding him oatmeal and he really enjoys it. The pediatricians said that he is growing fast enough that we can start feeding him real food soon. Krystal has a few books with recipes for homemade babyfood.

I've been fairly absent from work lately. Always mentally and sometimes physically. It just doesn't feel like my heart is in it anymore. I enjoy building and working with my hands, but it's something I think I'm more suited to do on the side. Like fixing up my own house (if we're ever able to buy one) or making furniture and selling it. All the dealings with the city and the customer and figuring the bids and the materials is taking a lot out of me. Plus things have changed since we had Elliott. I'd rather be at home with my family so I don't put in as many hours on the jobs. Also I've become less willing to take risks. Simple things like being on a roof are uncomfortable to me. Right now I'm working a job where there's a big hole cut in the upper deck and when I'm up there all I can think is that I'm going to trip and fall in the hole and fall down to the bottom deck and break something or die. So I'm much slower to complete jobs because of it.

I know I tried to change jobs before and it was not the right move, but that was because I jumped at the first random offer of employment that I had without thinking it through. So right now I am trying to take my construction work down a level: sticking to smaller jobs, building sheds or doing finish work. And I'm taking a couple of freelance writing classes at Portland Community College this summer. So I've been using little bits of free time to reorganize all my writing into a new portfolio and design a new website. I'm going to gradually incorporate freelance writing into my income and see if I can get it up to a full time income. Which is what I should have done when I wanted to switch careers before since being a freelance writer has always been my dream. I really don't enjoy what I do right now and I really want to show Elliott that it's important to find something you love to do as a career. I don't know. I guess I'll just take it slow and see what happens.