Shampooing Less

Some light fare for y'all today. I want to share a little experiment with you, that I'm a month into.

I have really really fine hair. Light colored and long and super straight. One of the biggest problems I've had with it, as an adult, is that it gets really oily, really fast, and it's really obvious. For most of the past 20 years, I've been washing it every day. With a variety of shampoos, trending towards more and more of the dandruff control shampoos because itching and flaking were getting worse.
If I ever skipped a shower I could count on my hair looking like an oil slick and being itchy and flaky to boot.

This state of affairs was becoming something I was not happy with.  I did some research and came across some interesting points.  Modern Americans wash their hair more than any other culture, pretty much all the way back to when we climbed out of the trees. That's great for companies like Unilever, they make big bucks off of that. They make massive profits off convincing people they should be doing this daily, if not more.  I'm reminded of a story my mother told me about her sister washing her hair once in the morning for the pep-rally then washing it again that afternoon before the game.

So what's a gal to do? Well if you're a hippy like me, the obvious answer is to stop doing that. :-D I already make my own deodorant, and now I'm strongly considering making my own shampoo.  I thought there might need to be an intermediate step though.  Just like my homemade deodorant can't handle my stink when I've been eating eating too much processed food, I doubt a homemade shampoo could handle the crazy oil slick that is my hair 24 hours after the last shampoo.

The reason for this, I think, is that my scalp oil glands are like a PID loop. They want to keep a certain amount of oil on my hair, to protect it from UV, wind, heat, etc. Everytime I strip the oils out with my modern shampoo, they freak out and pump out more oil to replace it. Literally rinse and repeat every day and these oil glands are on overdrive trying to keep up with me.

So my working hypothesis right now is, can I wash my hair with less frequency and calm down these oil glands?  These aren't the smartest glands in the world, I should give them some time to adjust, after 20 years of the previous pattern.

The experiment:

• Wash hair only 3 times per week, as opposed to the 6-7 I have been doing. (M/W/F mornings is what I decided on.)
• Use conditioner on the bottom 2/3rds of my long hair after I shampoo. (While the roots are an oily mess, the bottom 2/3rds of my really long hair tends towards frizzy dryness.)
• Do this for 3 months, using the same shampoo I've been using most often for the past 5 years. (To limit the number of variables I'm testing at once.)

The results so far?  Well, the first week was awful. I worked from home a couple of days, and felt really self conscious about the oil slick.  The second week, it seemed a little better. I was able to do some up-do's that masked the mess a bit. I also used a bit of my homemade powder deodorant, which is mostly corn starch, to calm down a couple of troublesome areas and keep things looking presentable. The third week, last week, seemed even better still. Itch and flake were both down. My hair seemed not as oily on the no wash days, I didn't have to use any corn starch. It also had a bit more body since every other day it was a "second day" hair and had kinks and waves in it from the first day hair style.  It's definitely been enough positive improvement that I'll be finishing out the experiment.  Maybe even after the first 2 months see if I can go even lower on the washings for the 3rd month.  But, we'll see.

Once I feel like the oil problem is under control I can try making my own shampoo and transitioning away from the dandruff shampoo and see how that goes. I'll also have to see how summer exercise fits in with things, but maybe sweat and dirt can be rinsed out with water and I can still avoid the oil stripping shampoos most days. Again, we'll see.

On a positive note, if anyone noticed my extra oily tresses, they never said anything. Maybe they just chalked it up to Mom-of-toddlers. :-D

I'll let you know the final results later this year.  Has anyone else tried something similar? How did it go for you?
-Jennie

My Nervous Stomach

Yes, I have problems with my current work situation. The stress is not good for me. And I don't mean that in a may-shorten-my-life-span-someday abstraction. It's not good for me in ways that are immediate, painful and occasionally last days.

I went to my doctor about the problem, thinking maybe I was sick, or maybe there was a way to treat the symptoms so I could ignore them.  (Because that's always a healthy reason to go to a Doctor.. geez...)
He said that stress absolutely could cause the painful gastrointestinal symptoms I'd had. He said the only thing he knows to call it is Nervous Stomach.  He said there's nothing he can give me for it, but over the counters like Imodium could help quiet things. The yoga and running and gardening that I do help, but only in the evenings/mornings when I can do such things, they don't help in acute situations.  Situations where the only thing I can do is stay in my cube and try to code/email/document my way out of the stressful situation.  In between trips to the bathroom that is.

It's not a good situation.  I know I do better with stress when I can move, physically move and exert myself, but that's never the solution to the problems and stressors at my current job. The solutions always involve more screen time, more cube time, and/or travel to places with bad food using uncomfortable company cars.

I know any career I have will involve stress. I push myself too hard for that not to be true. But surely I can find a career that has more physical work to balance out the times I'll need to stare at a screen.Surely I can find a career that has solutions to stress that are physical in nature.

I can see what a career in cube-land often leads to. Most of the programmers here have a less than healthy body weight, and postures that would make my yoga instructor cry.  I literally couldn't take the pain of a sit down cube anymore, a couple of years ago I had to switch to a standing cube in order to lessen the physical pain I experience with the sedentary work style.  Even with the standing cube I still find myself antsy, pacing, occasionally on tip-toe to stare out at the slim swathe of grass and sky I can see over the cube walls.

Does the pay I receive for this work mitigate any of that? Do I get paid "enough" to write off the health damage?

No, not in my mind. Maybe others here think differently, would answer affirmative to that. Others probably don't even think about things in that light. But, for me the answer is no.

Knowing that, I'm seeking an exit. I'm not running hysterically towards the nearest exit, but I am exploring what other options could look like.

How Have Thigns Been Lately?

I know, I know, the blog has been quiet lately.
There are multiple reasons for this. I've written a couple of posts that didn't get published. They were mostly written for me. But I may publish them later, as certain break points get closer.

The short story is I'm not really happy with how my life and work are aligned right now. Dave and I have exciting goals for this year, in relation to this disconnect. We're going to make some changes. Some changes will be more drastic than others. Some changes I can't talk about yet, because we're not ready for them to be public knowledge. Most of the changes will happen in late fall/winter.

Life is too short to suck it up and deal. Not that I'm not doing some of that. But you know what I mean. If somethings not working, I'm the type that wants to try to fix it.

The high level breakdown is I want job #3 to replace job #1. It will mean turning a hobby into a fully fledged business, my own business. It's a hobby with a decade of practice and a hobby that I find myself more and more passionate about as the years pass. It's a hobby that I'm used to documenting and tracking; numbers and money. The passion will help, and I'm quietly confident in my skills.

I am doing lots of number crunching right now. We have savings goals for the next year, broken down into month goals.
I have business planning to do. I'm taking an online course in the type of business planning I need. (This is another reason the blog has been quiet, my personal online time is more focused on that class and the work I'm doing to set us up for next spring. In fact, I should be working on my homework right now. :-D) New tax forms I need to get familiar with so I document the right things this year and next year.
Moving expenses plus start up expenses. Ouch.

Is it going to be easy? No.  Is it guaranteed to work out? No.

Does any of that mean I'm not going to try? Fuck no.

So, that's how things are right now. :-D

On a lighter note, seeds are already sown for spring, I have onions and leeks in my little greenhouse doing their germination magic.
We bought a new car! Well, new to us anyway. It's a 2011 Subaru Outback. The boys have plenty of foot room, Dave doesn't hit his head on the roof of it, and it will handle more of the things that I like to haul around, and more of our leisure activities.

The boys are growing bigger by the day. Rowen is excelling at his preschool work, and we're trying to figure out how we want to do Kindergarten. We homeschooled the preschool, and since we're probably moving before next spring, we are likely to home-school the kindergarten too.  Logan is practicing all his words, learning new ones every day.

Hope all is well with all of you.
-Jennie

The 97%

I heard on the radio this morning that 97% of all American homes have cable/satellite subscriptions. The cable companies are worried, because 2 years ago that number was 99%.  My heart goes out to them.

Seriously though! My little family hasn't had a TV or cable subscription since 2009. I hardly feel "cut off" or "out-of-touch." I get 90% of my current event/news through the radio, and yea, I'll admit it, that's heavy skewed towards NPR, because I get the most news for my 30 minute drive time. Local stations do some talk/news in the mornings, but then I have to sit through the fart jokes and inane banter to learn that a local manufacturer is letting 100 people go. The rest of my news comes from blog reading and occasional Daily Show episodes.

We do watch some "TV." But, not through the legal and heavily commercialized methods. (Hulu, Amazon and Netflix streaming, things like that.) We're pirates. Straight up. We stream from independent sources everything we want to watch. No commercials, no country boundaries, we like our limited viewing time to be self directed, and free from commercial messages. We watch a bunch of BBC shows, and have been known to check out Australian, Irish, New Zealand and Canadian shows too. There are even a few American shows that have a writing level above the 3rd grade and subject matter than doesn't offend us and we'll watch those occasionally. We watch a lot of documentaries, and cooking shows, with a healthy smattering of adult animated shows, (Adult Swim type stuff, Bob's Burgers and Archer and Southpark, etc..) Come to think of it, we're not even bound by the current year of programming, Dave watches reruns of Dr Who and Red Dwarf from the 80's.

The toddler watches a lot of YouTube cartoons. He watches train cartoons in Russian, and an animated  toddler show called Pocoyo in Spanish. He loves to watch kid-made videos with Thomas the Train toys. He loves the old silent Pink Panther cartoons too. And the classic Donald Duck stuff.  Between the ad blockers on our Linux Mozilla browser, and the methods we use to watch programming, I'd say Rowen has seen only a handful of actual ads in his first 4 years of life. That does make me happy, even when I would rather see him with a book or outside. :-D

Dave and I don't see many ads either. And we don't watch any of the mainstream news.  (And yes, Fox is as mainstream as media gets.) It makes for a surreal experience when we go to a friend or relative's house and get a dose of actual TV programming. It's really weird.  The commercials seem hyperbolic, and disturbingly repetitive. The "news" shows seem more cartoonish than anything else, with their equally hyperbolic pitch and the spastic pop-ups selling other TV programming, and those weird scrolling tickers with random twits of information. I'm always itchy to turn it off after the first 5 minutes of it.

I'm telling you folks. CUT THE CORD.  If you want to live a simpler, more productive life, CUT THE CORD.  If you want more time for projects and exercise and family, CUT THE CORD. If you want to lessen the corporate and governmental influence on your life, CUT THE CORD!

You'll likely go through a withdrawal period as your brain, your habits and yes, even your hormones, adjust to the quieter, slower, more pleasant pace of self directed media consumption. It's totally worth it though. Your wallet will thank you, your butt will thank you, your brain will thank you, and perhaps someday your children will thank you.

Live your life folks; watching shows on a TV doesn't count as a life, it barely counts as an activity. Mostly, it's just brainwashing, and a waste of your hard earned money.
-Jennie

Our National Ponzi Scheme

This post should be considered an open call for comments. Is there anyone that can convince me that the 401k my company signed me up for (I was out on maternity leave or it wouldn't have happened) ISN'T a giant ponzi scheme?

I'm being told that a 401k is THE BEST way to plan for my retirement.  *blink blink* Most of this is coming from the bankers who are profiting off of "managing" my money. But even my parents seem to think that a 401k is a responsible thing to do. And in their defense, the market has worked well for their parents, and it didn't completely fail for them, so they are trying to do right by me. I just can't believe that the ginormous debt the US (and many other countries) have stacked up won't come roaring back through the markets sucking the wealth right out of everything it can. As baby boomers start taking more money out of the markets than they are putting in, how is that NOT going to contract things?  And a contracting market means any money I put in will be depleted.  Sure my "Money Managers" will play some shell games and put more of "my" money into bonds or something, but those too are largely propped up by faith, faith that governments will pay the debts those bonds represent, plus interest. And when the last of that faith is pissed away by those in power, the bond markets will find themselves short of customers. Again, there goes my money, since the bonds won't be worth the paper they're printed on.

I don't own the house I live in. I don't own the land I grow my family's food on. I don't own the business that pays for the rent and clothes and food. But, some funny-money scheme that locks up my cash and feeds it into the giant national ponzi scheme, (The Stock Market is what they're calling it) is really the best use of my hard earned money? I'm not buying it.

It's not Federally Insured, it can't be, it's gamboling. I'm supposed to have faith (hmm, sounds like a religion) that the stock market is going to keep growing for the next 50 years, and trust that a crash won't happen and wipe out my "investments" completely. The whole stock market is dependent on the influx of new money, (that's where young wage earners like myself come in) in order for the Wall Street and banker types to make their millions. No where in the whole Stock Market system are there benefits for young people like me.  Not unless I've got one of those fancy computers making the fast swap deals churning through millions of short sales a day. Which I don't have. Or unless I believe that repeated invocations of "Eternal Growth" are going to somehow make that wish a reality. As my favorite Archdruid is fond of saying, "magic doesn't work that way."

Unless someone can talk me out of it, I'm going to cash out the couple of thousand that has built up in the past 9 months. Whether it's vested or not.  I'm not saying I'll turn it into gold or bury it in my super secret bunker. But I can't shake the feeling that we have more bumps ahead of us, and a thousand dollars in my savings account is going to be much more useful to me than 2 or 3 thousand in funny money locked away in some imaginary market.

Thoughts? Arguments for or against?
-Jennie

New Resolutions

:-) I actually like New Year Resolutions. I do. So far I have a pretty good track record with them. I write them down, I make concrete plans and goals, and then in a year, reevaluate.


Resolutions for 2011
1) Finish the scarf, learn a second stitch, Purl maybe, and use that in a second project.
Done! I finished that first scarf, it's a lovely camo-like variegated green. I learned the purl stitch and I'm 3/4s of the way through a project that has a purl/knit ribbing.  I went with a headband/ear cover instead of a hat. But, I'm using that black wool that I bought, and I'm still resisting the allure of oh-so-pretty yarn. Mostly. I did buy 2 skeins at the quilt show in Des Moines, for my next project.

1b) Do some darning, with the wool socks I love so much.
This one I tried, but apparently store bought wool socks are not as darnable as the home-made versions. I researched how to darn, and got my great-grandma to send me a darning egg, but after the research I decided it wasn't worth my time to try and darn the store bought socks.  This goal will have to wait until I make homemade socks, and wear them enough to get holes.

2) Sew more clothing, focusing on work clothing for me and play wear for Rowen.
This one went well. I did get one new shirt done, and some play pants for Rowen.  He loved his pants, and just outgrew them a month ago, I need to make him some more.  I stopped sewing for me, due to pregnancy, it's not worth my time when I'm only guessing at what my measurements will be from week to week.  I may end up having to sew a cloak or something to stay warm this spring, but we'll see.

3) $2000 in savings by Samhain.
This one we came pretty close, and it's a good thing I was focused on this, because we'll need every penny of it to pay for the birth of Baby Boy.   We didn't quite hit the 2000 mark, there were some car repairs that had to come out of savings, and that's what it's there for, so I still count this one as a win.

4) Finish the Blue Quilt, (Quilt #2) by mid January. Do some actual quilting on this one!

Well, I did finish Blue Quilt, but it only got done a couple of weeks ago.  I missed the Jan deadline, and then I lost all focus on it and sewed other things for the summer.  I brought it back out this fall and finished it.  It's hanging in the living room window, looking very pretty, if I do say so myself.  I did some actual hand quilting, nothing fancy, and I think I may take it down someday and do some more, but I'll count this one a win.It's doing a great job of blocking drafts, and it looks soo cool. I brought those fabric panels home with me from India, and I'm happy to finally have them displayed nicely.

5) Start Quilt #3. At least Queen sized, 85x85" or bigger, so that it can replace the 15 year old quilt from my grandmother that needs to be honorably retired.
Total fail. I was too focused on Blue quilt, and this one hasn't even been started yet. It's top of my quilting goals for 2012.

6) Make progress with getting a Community Garden started in my new town.  The first step here is to organize a seed swap I think.
This one went well.  I did the seed swap, and kept talking to people about the goal.  Fate conspired to put me in the right place, and a church group that was looking to start a garden had my name dropped in their ear, and I was able to help them start a Community Garden.  It's small, only 8 plots, but all were full all summer, and we got some great produce out of it.

7) Regain my pre-baby muscles. I miss my leg muscles and ab muscles. I never had much arm muscles, but maybe I could work on those while I'm at it.
I don't know how well I did on muscle, I know I got my leg muscles back, but maybe not so much on the arm and ab muscles.  I did get down to my high school weight, and that made me ecstatic. I was pregnant 2 weeks after that, and it's all gone down hill from there. :-D  I kid, in all truthfulness, I'm feeling healthier this pregnancy, I think in no small part because of the work I did to lose the last of that baby weight.

8) Finish seed saving attempt for turnips. Try again with potatoes maybe. Try parsnips too possibly.
Total fail. The turnips I tried to overwinter, died. I didn't save seed from the potatoes, and I dug up (and ate! Mmmm) all the parsnips.   Maybe next year? Maybe not too, we'll see if I can find space for it, with another mouth to feed and neighbors to keep happy, there may be a line I can't cross, and biennial seed production may be that line. :-D

9) Continue food storage, work on improving grain storage.
This one was a semi-win. We have a steady rotation of flour in storage, and a lot of rice.  We didn't get a grinder, we got a large mortar and pestle instead.  More useful on a day-to-day basis, and it can moonlight as a grain grinder if we ever get to that point of TEOTWAWKI.  We did look at buckets to hold wheat berries in, but it just never materialized.

I'll give myself a score of 7/10 for 2011.

New Resolutions for 2012

1) Make a new quilt for the main bed. 85"x85" at least.  We're currently using a 15 year old quilt that my grandmother made me, and it needs to be honorably retired.  I want to machine quilt this one, as it will be the biggest quilt yet, and put to the hardest use.  I'm signed up for a class in town to learn machine quilting, next month.  I have a lot of the fabric I need, although I'll need to run some numbers to see if I have enough to make the large size that's needed.

2) Transition Rowen to his own bed AND get him going on a bedtime routine.   He's 2 and a half, and we've been content until now to largely let him set his own sleeping patterns. With co-sleeping and a stay at home parent, there wasn't a huge need for him to have a set bedtime or sleeping place.  Now that baby #2 is on the way, we need the big bed space for that one and we need Rowen to start sleeping more regularly in his own bed.  My preference here is to spend Jan/Feb working on the bedtime routine and ending co-sleeping. Then in March when he turns 3 I'd like to transition him to a "Big Boy Bed"  (i.e. the old twin mattress with little-boy-friendly bedding) and turn the toddler bed back into it's crib formation well in advance of the new  baby's arrival.  March and April we can continue the Big Boy Bed routine, and that way (hopefully) he won't associate the new baby with the loss of his co-sleeping/toddler bed/etc.

3) Stick to our budget for the year.  We have a tough year coming up financially.  We're on an HSA plan for health insurance, which means we pay all medical costs until we hit $4000.  Baby Boy is going to be $3000 worth of hospital expenses and that's assuming a natural vaginal birth with no complications.  I'm not resting on my laurels as far as that's concerned. Baby and I are super healthy, weight, blood pressure, nutrition and activity levels are all as good as or better than they were with Rowen's fetal period.  Plus, we're with a midwife, who is totally committed to natural births.  We're paying all that we can in advance, and sending money hand over fist directly from my paycheck to the Health Savings Account.  By my calculations we'll have $3000 paid to the midwife by April.  In April I'll modify my weekly contributions to the Savings account, to a much lower amount in preparation for my maternity leave. Anything that's not paid by then, will wait until after I go back to work in August.
All the money we have budgeted for medical payments means we're $50 short for January and February bills, even with the "fun" and "savings" columns zeroed out on the budget sheet.  March will have 5 paychecks instead of the usual 4, so that will help, then in April I'll put less towards the HSA and I'll have more take home pay.   That brief respite will have to buffer us for the May/June/July maternity leave. I'll get 60% pay for 6 of those weeks, but that's it.  Hopefully Dave can find a temp job to fill in the gaps that will leave in the budget.  None of us can get sick or injured until August. :-D
Plans to help with  Resolution 3:
3a) Eat out of the pantry, maybe a challenge to eat 1 week a month completely out of the stored foods? I store for emergencies, and medical bills count as that, even if it's a "planned" emergency.
3b) Limit monetary input for the garden while simultaneously expanding it, I have started planning the garden, and I think I'll only need a few packets of seeds, mostly carrots, cucumbers and parsnips, maybe some spinach. Potato and sweet potato slips as well. I don't have any money budgeted for it right now, so it will have to come out of the food budget or X-mas money.

4) Put my maternity time to good use.  Of course, birthing a baby and feeding a baby are the most important things I'll be doing, but with almost 3 months off, I bet I can do something else productive.  Start that book I've been meaning to write, or brush up on my Spanish.

5) Hunt something new in 2012. Not that there's anything wrong with pheasant, but I'd like to expand my horizons to deer or turkey. Or Wild Hogs!!!! Ok, this might not be the year for wild hogs, but a gal can dream right?

6) Finish the ribbed headband and work on some knitted booties for baby.  Booties will push me into the 3rd dimension with my knitting, so far I've only done flat rectangular pieces. (The headband is knitted as a strip then the short ends sewn together.) They are small which is good, and common enough for free patterns and youtube videos.

7) Make a rocket stove. Something that can be moved with us and won't infringe on our rental agreement.  Most of the wood I have on hand is dead fall from our trees, and while we burn some of it in our fire pit, I'd really like a rocket stove for more efficient use during emergencies. 

I'm really excited for 2012, yes we'll have challenges, but there's a new life on the way, and new seeds to plant.  A presidential election will spice things up in November and then of course the world will end on Dec 21st.  hahahaha

Awww little baby shoes

Hope your New Year is cheery and warm.  Share your resolutions  in the comments if you like.

Jobs - The Plural Form of Job

It's been quiet here on the blog front. The reason is 2-fold. Firstly, the garden is going gangbusters and I've got a lot of work keeping up with it.
Secondly my primary-paycheck job has been busy. And I've finally rounded up a secondary job in this new town. Which brings me to today's musing.

I've been working two jobs since I was legal to work. When I was in high school, I wanted to go on an honor choir tour of Europe. I worked at a Maidrite and at a PakMail in addition to school and extracurriculars to earn the ticket fare and program costs. In college I worked at another sandwich shop, plus did campus tours for prospective students. That transitioned into sandwich shop/modeling, and so on.
As with the other plurals in my life, there is a primary and secondary. The primary job pays most of the bills/food/rent/savings. The secondary job pays for fun things, hobbies, and entertainment. For the past 5 years my second job has been very different from my first job. I find it's more interesting that way. But, there is something to be said for secondary jobs that occasionally add value to the primary job.
Really, I think it doesn't matter so much, *what* the job is, as much as it matters that you *have* a second job. If you're like me, you primary job makes a fairly set amount of money. You can count on x dollars every week, balanced out by (hopefully) less than x in bills. There's savings in there, of course, (you do save, right?) but what if you need 2x one week for car repair or dental bills? That's where a second job can come in handy, something that you can schedule a few more hours with and pull in some more cash. This could be work out of your home, sewing clothing or work at the nearby minimum wage shop. Anything that can flex to accommodate the primary job, and if it brings in freebies that's even better. (The sandwich shop would give us a free sandwich for shifts over 5 hours in length, the modeling gigs would get me occasional free passes into art exhibit openings.) Online work can be nice, as that isn't bound by location and can help ease the transition when moving long distances for the primary job.

I know I can't live off of the secondary job, but I know they can expand to fill gaps, which often can't be said of my primary job. By diversifying I keep more options open. Options that are important when unemployment rates are skyrocketing and government safety nets are being slashed.

I find that organization is key when you enter the realm of multiple jobs. Most people can handle it, we organize more than that on a daily basis. But, I find that calendars and planners (I'm a paper sort of gal, but go digital if that's better for you) are essential. I have to keep track of my work load and manage expectations from multiple bosses, including myself and my spouse. It's worth keeping in mind how you'll deal with the job come April 15th. Is it a contractor/independent worker type of thing where you'll be on the hook for all the taxes? Or is it a paycheck type gig where the employer takes care of withholding every week?

I know people that can't even keep 1 job. I don't understand that at all. Jobs that I could hold down in my free time with one hand tied behind my back, are routinely walked away from because the person in question found an aspect of it not to their liking. I get anxious when I'm only working 1 job, I can't imagine being totally without. I imagine I'd start a home based business that day and carry on from there. I think it's just not in my nature to sit around and wait for the safety net to catch me. I don't have any answers for those of you dealing with a no-job situation. My belief is that everyone has the tools and the abilities to do *something.* If you can't "find" a job, quit looking for one, and just do your work from home, and find someone who's interested in paying you for it.

If you're intrigued, and want to try a secondary job, take stock of what time you have available, be realistic, and start putting out feelers. Whether it's 2 hours a week of home daycare or weekend dog walking, it can add up and it can make a difference. Don't put too many pre-suppositions on the search, be open to new opportunities, even if it's something very different from what you normally do. It may surprise you!

"I live to fulfill my purpose in life, it is a daily struggle."