A New Year, A New Me?

The driving force of your life 
Three things I’d do differently this year

I've never attempted to address two writing prompts to the same post, but 2017 is going to be a year of challenge for all of us.  A President will be taking office on January 20 who is determined to make a lot of changes, and some of these changes may not be good ones for our family.

So today, I am participating in two linkies.

As my readers know, my husband and I are responsible for "Bil", a man in his late 50's who has autism.  Up to now, Bil has followed the courses that society has set out for a man with a developmental disability.  For many years, Bil worked in a sheltered workshop in the county where he grew up in downstate New York.

But, when my mother in law, who is in her late 80's, needed to be closer to family, Bil ended up living several miles from us in a small city in upstate New York.

Now, it is time to seek new directions for him in this new year.

Right now, the driving force in my life is an attempt to find some balance between working full time (as I approach retirement age, I have no interest in retiring), blogging, and helping my husband with the need to help increasingly with both Bil and his mother.  I can not be totally swallowed up by this, and I can't let my husband be swallowed up, either.  I am determined to do what is necessary but remain my own person.  It won't, obviously, be easy.

With sheltered workshops being phased out, Bil hasn't worked since mid 2015, and it now appears that he never may work again.  But, at the same time, new opportunities may be opening for him.  He has been participating in a day program two or three days a week, where he engages in various physical and mental activities.  You can see him starting to question things.  In the last Presidential election, in fact, he voted the opposite of his mother (something she wasn't happy about, I could add.)

So these are my three things I will do differently this year.
1.  For myself, I will educate myself more in how we can find help for Bil in finding increased independence for himself.

2.  I will take better care of myself.  I allowed myself to gain 10 pounds, and am on the verge of becoming overweight once more.  For the sake of my health, this must be reversed.

3.  I am going to reevaluate what I want from this blog.  Do I want to try to use it to blog a book?  I only have limited readership, so increasing the readership may have to become a goal.  I may find myself joining the Blogging from A to Z Challenge - more on that in the coming

Starting today I will join with Corinne at Everyday Gyaan in writing my heart out.  I won't do the entire Challenge but will participate in the weekly feature if I can. There is a lot more to the Write Your Heart Out event and I invite you to go to Corinne's blog to get the full details:

Write Your Heart Out #wyho is weekly feature that appears every Thursday with a linky that will be open from Thursday to Sunday.

1. Write a new post in which you free write.
2. You’re also welcome to write on the prompts offered in current post and/or add links from your posts from the week.
3. Visit and comment on at least two posts before yours.
4. Use the hashtag #WYHO to share posts and you’re welcome to grab the badge too.

Linking with #WYHO and #FridayReflections.