Before you start reading: go to the video at the end of the post, then click play, start reading...

Updates:

Hi there, I'm still here, did you already now? Although I don't post long ago, I keep my faith in this ecosystem and I'm still being active in different ways.
My life changed drastically more than 4 years ago. I decided to study again at university and started the music grade, online. Meanwhile, my daily life got more complicated due to my family duties. To sum it up, I'm the one responsible of doing anything at home, since I'm the only one capable at home.
If you add to it my daily job, you get no free time at all, hence you have to juggling in order to get things going without getting mad... it's not easy at all.
However, I sometimes find a little "gap" to scape and change the view. Then I love going to Cádiz (More info here) :

These short scapes provide me the energy and spirit to keep going when I'm back at home and face again a challenging routine.

My Hive activities:

I don't post as I said before. This is not completely true since I really do it in a weekly basis but with a different account, a charity project's one, some of you already know, most of you don't. I put my 2 cents on charity by managing a weekly draw on behalf a South African registered NPO called The Papillon Foundation (More info here). Every Sunday (unless major real life issues) I publish the results of a weekly draw using @combination account. If you are interested, here you have a link to our last post: https://ecency.com/hive-149312/@combination/give-to-win-with-combination-results-of-week-193-week-194-open
Although it's a big effort for me sometimes, due to requirements on my real life, it brings me peace and a great feeling of relief by thinking I'm doing something beyond my scope to help out others in need.

Curating those that support our project is another daily activity for me. It's an added way to reward those that keep with us regularly and also has curation rewards for the project account.
I have also to manage comments and answer those that participate in our posts as well as keep account of all transactions made to us in a separate google sheet that I keep updated daily.

I curate in a daily basis with my personal account and sometimes I manage to comment on some interesting posts or those I think are worth the time that I must steal to my duties.

My real life activities:

I have to manage a house with an old father and my brother, an UN/NATO yugoslavian conflict veteran who has some mental issues. Both of them have a lot of limitations and although they do their best to help, when possible, the hard work sticks with me. It couldn't be otherwise, I don't complain, I try and do my best for them to feel I'm doing it with love. Sometimes, though, I get burnt but I keep it on my own if possible. Sometimes they notice it and it hurts me cos It brings me guilty feelings. I wipe those feelings out and keep going forward. Every day is a challenge and new stuff comes up unexpectedly. This makes you ager and adapt to whatever it may appear.

When all gets grey and I'm feeling exhausted, Cádiz memories give me relief:

They both are a blessing to me despite the challenges I'm facing to keep them healthy and cared. After my divorce, long ago, they have become my priority and my energy reserve.

My daily job has some good things like travelling and changing my landscapes. When possible I take the opportunity and stop by to take some nice shots that also remain in my mind to be recovered when stressful times come up:

With the fast rithm of our lives we very oftenly forget to stop a minute and breath, so busy we are! it's worth to do it frequently to regulate our internal balance though.

The animal family, the cats:

Do you remember I had a lot of cats at my house? They just live here and demand living cares although they are free since they can easily run through my house enclosure. This means that they risk their lives when they are outside the house security: people walking dogs that attack them, cars, poison, etc...
I had more than 20 cats and It was becoming an issue since it seemed that the number will grow fastly unless I took some measures. I did, I tried to capture them in order to sterilize them... it was not an easy nor cheap task. It took me around 2 years to have it done, but I finally achieved it. All my cats are now sterilized.

That little black one with the powdered head, gave me a nice shot, didn't she? Despite her appearance she's a real peace of cake ❤️
I've had some casualties though due to those numerous risks I cited before. I have them all in my heart...
Now I have 14 of them alive and healthy but they are getting old as time goes on, that's life.
I have only one of them that is allowed inside the house because I rescued him from the streets and was clearly a domestic cat. Three years before I've managed to install intelligent cat doors in my main house door and a facility building next to it so he can come in and go outside whenever he wants. It's a risk, I know, but It was impossible to keep him as a prisoner anymore. I was very afraid (I'm still afraid) of him whenever he goes outside, after 11 months it looks like he manages to stay safe somehow... I cross my fingers. I named him Morguen and he has a strong personality that I love:

As you can imagine, this cat family add more duties to my list... however I love them all and are also a blessing and a power supply to me.

Music:

As most of you know, I love music but for some strange reason I never allowed myself devoting to it. When I was young it was not considered as a living option in my family, so I followed a different path... it was an error.
Almost 10 years ago I started learning piano with a private teacher and years after I learnt other instruments like drums and guitar but almost 5 years ago I decided to study music at an online university. That brought me a lot more work load and displaced my instruments learning so I must honestly say that I barely can play my instruments 2 years ago. My grade subjects consume all my free time and it gets harder while I advance in the path.
I get 4 subjects a year splitted in a quadrimester pace. Every course has 10 subjects so I need like 2 years to complete a course. I'm in my way to get something more than 2 complete courses when this one ends on July.
I've started (finally) with the interesting stuff, composing basics, but it's super time consuming and not easy to deal with. I keep fighting every day to get the duties done and I can say I'm not doing it badly since my marks are rather good.
Hope that some day I can come here to present you my original work on composing, but I think it will be in some years now. I need at least 4 more years to finish the grade so a long hard way stays in front of me.
Here a sample of what I'm doing currently, just studying a Mozart's sonata since I have to compose (classic style composition exercise) one scheduled on 27 of January 😅

This was, I think, a complete and accurate resume of my situation, hope you can understand why I'm not so present here. I don't complain, I'm thankful for all that I'm provided with since my family and I have all neededs covered and even something is remaining so we can have some "extras". All of us are more or less health stable and no great problems appear, so we are fine and satisfied, although we are not blind on needs from people out there...

I'll take the opportunity to greet you all and wish the best for your New Year 2025, sending big 🤗

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Could it be without music? nooo!

Love and hugs to all ❤️

Pd: All images have been made by me and you have not the right to use it without my consent.