Easy work. Saying her name. CLI.

11:52pm. Los Angeles. I am glad to be home. I had a pretty easy shift with my client tonight. Thank God. I stopped off at Fantastic Burgers to get a grilled cheese sandwich and a large root beer. Whatever. Judge yourself. I'm about to start a fast and wanted a treat before I did. I don't know how well I'm going to do on this fast because my start date is Friday and I'm going to be hanging out with friends at Michelle's then and what we do together is drink and eat. I guess we'll see.

So what's on my mind tonight is Jessica St. Louis #sayhername. She was released from jail at like 1am and dropped off at a BART station and was killed an hour later. The trains do not run at that hour so she was supposed to just wait around in the dark I guess. You don't even have to ask if she was black because yes she was. This is disgusting. And this is just a case we know about. There are probably others. I was talking about this on Facebook and a friend commented that that is probably where they killed her. They...the police, guards...they. I wouldn't put it past them. I will pray for her family. I'm starting to get triggered and angry at that phrase...prayers for the family. I want to do more. I want the violence against our people to stop. I want women's lives to matter. I want black lives to matter. I want the world to stop showing me that our lives don't mean anything. That's what I want.

It's midnight now. I've been thinking about something and going back and forth about it. I said I would make up my mind today. As much as I love teaching for CLI I think I'm going to take a break this year. This would be my fifth year and I just need some time off. I will sub if they need me and I'll be a guest speaker when they need me but as far as being there every Monday and the other days and times, I am just not up for it this year. Last year was kind of hard for me which is why I am thinking about a break this year. When I commit to something I really want to stick to it. So I didn't take off days when I needed to for mental health reasons and that didn't prove to be good for me. I taught right through them. Over and over I put myself on the back burner and I can't afford to do that this year. I'm even choosing to be more selective about the home health care clients I take on. I haven't told Hiram yet but I'll talk to him today. I shouldn't have waited so long but this is the time it took. Maybe more ways I can better take care of myself will show up during this fast. For sure I need to do better about what I put into my body and I need to start walking again, maybe even swimming.

Now I have to think of what I'm going to do to supplement the income from teaching. I'll have to sell more books for sure and do some more shows. Maybe I'll travel more if I can get some organizations to cover it. The possibilities are endless. I've been going back and forth in my head all this time when maybe I just needed to blog it out for it to be clear to me. I think I've made my decision. Now let me sleep on it.