Hello, Flow State, my dear old friend.

On repeat, I play Cave Dwellings and Subtle Breath by Desert Dwellers in the background.

Octopussy is perched on the left edge of the table, watching squirrels in the trees. Kano is perched atop my printer for now, nudging my laptop as I type. A cat fight is impending.

The cats that rule me like to command my attention as I write, er, type. They enjoy sitting on my arms as I am working, kicking me and my keyboard so I can focus on them. I continue to learn to multi-task around their needs. I wisely maintain a steady supply of cat treats to coax them away from my deadlines.

A few days ago, I spoke with David from Booksy. He is helping me with onboarding for my business scheduler so clients can book their groovy Massage Therapy and Facials online. As I typed, he paused the onboarding to ask if the sound he heard was of me typing.

Affirmative.

He was impressed with the speed of my “click-clack-click-clack.”

I am 45, he is 29. In this ever-changing world I have to remember the requirements when I was in school are different than the requirements of younger people now. I remember the 7th-grade typing drills of Ms. Jackson at Beaubien Jr. High School in Detroit.

“A-S-D-F-J-K-L-Semi…”

Over and over and over for a semester or more, one hour a day, five days a week. On a typewriter.

I giggle as I type this, thinking about that “ding!” at the end of the row, having to change the ink ribbon, white out needing to be aligned just right when typing reports in Jr. High and High School. One mistake and I had to start over on a new piece of paper.

At 16, I was in freshman year of college at Detroit College of Business. I majored in Marketing. (Go figure! I need to improve my marketing skills for my own business now.) In 1997 I took an advanced typing class. I had a typing book that stood like a pyramid, so I could look at the drills of Cortez Peters, a world champion in speed typing.

My adrenaline raced as I participated in timed drills against myself and the computer, this bulky electronic thing that was making its way to schools, libraries, and households around the country and the world. We did not have a computer at home at that time yet.

300 wpm was about my highest speed on average. When I entered the workforce, customer service and administrative jobs did not demand that high speed. Yet I was happy with myself for beating my own old records.

I’m just an Analog Girl in a Digital World.

✨

This entry is two weeks late. I have upcoming meetings and self-imposed deadlines, so I want to do better at sharing more often and more timely. I am a Citrus County Anchor of the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council (TBRPC). I am tasked with community engagement and collaboration so that I can share information from local residents and businesses with the council.

This is a volunteer position. Key word: volunteer. I have the opportunity to listen, write, and share the voices of whomever wants to contribute.

I go where I am called, I go where I am needed.

In April I attended the Earth Day Expo in Lecanto. There, I signed up to become a member of the Sierra Club Adventure Coast Chapter. From there, I regularly learn more about local, regional, and national ecology. I read about the groovy and the not-so-groovy gains and losses of the land. As someone who fell in love with the Nature Coast of Florida when I moved here, I know that I must do my part to help protect the wild.

I attended a meeting about Florida Springs at the Historic Brooksville Women’s Club. This facility was built by women, and this chapter has been around since the early 1900’s. Wow! After that meeting, I attended another community meeting at a separate Brooksville location where the topic was Flood Resilience. I arrived a little late, so I missed the slideshow presentation. I was there for attendee input on what comes to mind when thinking of flood resilience. I listened to traumatic and heart-holding stories of residents who lost much due to flooding after the catastrophic storms of 2024. Two years later, many Floridians are still rebuilding.

During that meeting, a representative of the TBRPC indicated they still needed anchors for the counties of Sarasota and for Citrus County. Citrus is the northernmost county in this 7-county council. I spoke with her briefly, then completed an application, and then I was approved. Go time!

A friend and I drove down to Tampa Bay (Pinellas Park) for my orientation. There, I saw my name at the top of the list of volunteers of anchors for each county. Another wow!
I continue to learn as I go. I relocated to Florida in December 2017, and I started hiking around fall 2019. I kayak now and then, and this is something I desire to do more often. The Sierra Club gives me the opportunity to do that.

My next meeting with the Sierra Club was “Inside World of Florida Manatees” and a presentation by Dr. Beth Brady.

Manatees are a 50-million years old species. That’s several dozen million years older than humans. Manatees and their habitats are endangered. Millions and millions of acres of protected land and shore are threatened repeatedly.

I think it goes something like this:

“The hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone’s connected to the knee bone, the knee bone’s connected to the shin bone, the shin bone’s connected to the ankle bone…”

Or something like that.

(uh oh, here comes Kano, let me hurry it up)

My home is approximately 18 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, give or take some miles. I live on a hill. Green grass is lovely and many people prefer it. I prefer the flowers and the “weeds” and the wildlife. To preserve that weed-free, green grass, homeowners and landscaping companies use pesticides and herbicides. Those chemicals seep into the aquifer, affecting drinking water, and then out to sea, affecting habitat.

Once the pH of the water changes due to chemical run off, two things happen. An overgrowth of algal blooms block the sunlight that the sea grass needs to thrive. Once the sea grass diminishes, the manatees and other animals that depend on the sea grass are threatened.

The manatees require an abundant food supply and especially in colder months, they require warm waters. In some coastal areas (Mosquito Lagoon and Banana Lagoon), the sea grass is returning. At least 13 counties have Manatee Protection Plans in place. Groovy! Coastal power plants create artificial warmth in the water that 60% of Atlantic-side manatees depend on. Florida Fish and Wildlife is researching to determine habitat restoration to reduce manatee reliance on human intervention.

But at least this is something.

Boaters, marinas, climate change, loss of food, and loss of habitat threaten the manatees. Human apathy threatens them even more.

Helping begins with awareness. So here I am! Here we are!

I look for the connections in the support that I provide and share. Although something as simple as watering grass, even 100 miles inland seems minute, it affects the land and the sea, the marine life and the reefs.

I will continue to learn and share with you as I go, and I thank you kindly for reading.

Kim
Mistress of the Groove ✨