My life has been in a major shakeup since Thanksgiving 2013.  With the crazy holiday shopping season, the wild winter weather and, yes, Film Annex's switch to paying in Bitcoin, I have had to learn how to get used to the changes and how to change myself in the changing times.

Last Thanksgiving day, some major stores like Sears and Kmart were open not only in the evening when everyone had supposedly already eaten, but in the daytime, when they were supposed to be cooking the meal and watching the parades and football games.  My family did not indulge in "Black Thursday" and we all applauded the manager of a Sears store that refused to open on Thanksgiving Day even if it meant losing her job.  Sometimes when you do the right thing, people hate you.

I live in the Midwestern United States (in East Chicago, Indiana), so I have experienced the "polar vortex" that left a lot of my country at a bone-chilling, snowy, icy standstill.  For a substitute teacher like me, it should've been solid gold time--out-of-town teachers having to cancel due to the bad weather--but there were days when school was closed altogether and the weather was so bad that I couldn't make it to school, either.  Fortunately for me, my church's pastor helped me out during the days of barely any work (he's also a local school bus driver), and now things are getting back to semi-normal, weather-wise (more good days than bad).

Surely the toughest time I've had so far has been Film Annex starting to pay in the digital currency Bitcoin.  I've had to establish a Bitcoin wallet, shut that wallet down when it messed up my computer, find a new Bitcoin wallet, get a Bitcoin address, give it to Film Annex along with some more information...now I have to wait to get paid.  At least that hasn't changed.

I'm turning 55 years old in October, and middle age is supposed to be the time when learning new things is fun because you want to learn and as an adult, you're not "obligated" to go to school.  Well, I'm learning out of necessity, and it's tough.  Sometimes I feel resentful of all these disturbances to my routines.  But I think I've found an answer:  Learn something new on purpose!  I'll decide to figure out all the creative software on my computer that I haven't had the chance to use and want to use.  That'll teach me