A Richer Kind of Time - A Poem

When you are slowly dying

You spend a lot of time

Thinking about quality.

Quality of life

Of medical care

Of relationships.

Quality of your time.

You try to fill your days

With constructive

And positive

And useful things to do

You concentrate on the good

And try like hell

To fix the bad

And push it away

When you can't.

And it's okay

To cry

When your life clock

Stands at 3 minutes

To midnight

And you don't want to go yet.

Me, I don't fear it

I also don't seek it

I know it's coming

And I realized

It could happen tomorrow

In a car wreck

Or a Walmart shooter's spree

Or I could defy

My multiple diagnoses

And live another 25 years.

Nobody knows for sure

When the Reaper

Decides to show up.

So I live for the day,

I make them count

I love on my family

I love on my friends

My dogs

And really most importantly

I love on myself.

I am not living

On borrowed time

I merely live

On shortened time.

And when 

You make it good

That is enough.

Copyright Jennifer Thomas, 2026

My Private Sanctuary of Ink and Paper

When the four walls of my home start to feel less like a shelter and more like a boundary, my creative rituals become my doorway. Being housebound can easily make a person feel adrift, but for me, passing the time isn't about killing hours; it is about reclaiming my soul and keeping my sanity intact.

The Unwilling Statistic - OR - Fuck That!

I’ve got a list of diagnoses a mile long, including diabetes, afib, and sleep apnea; however, it’s the COPD (which is just a pretty way of saying emphysema) that’s trying to put a timestamp on my life. They say three to five years. That’s the math. The worst part of that math is knowing I wrote the equation myself. Forty-five years of heavy smoking has caught up to me, and now my lungs are paying the debt I racked up. I have nobody to blame but the person in the mirror.

But here’s the thing: I’m not willing to die this young. I’m not done yet. Fuck that!

The Weight of Forty Years

Forty plus years ago, I spent one spring and summer where I had no job and couldn't find one. I was stripping one night a week and paid $25 for that, plus any tips customers stuffed in my g-string, which was usually about $10-15 a night. So my income was no more than $40 a week. I had to eat, and I needed cigarettes, which I considered a priority.

Ink, Strings, and Serenity OR Happy Little Clouds

There is a specific kind of silence that happens the moment I cap my pen after finishing a Zentangle. My hand is usually a bit cramped from the precision of the patterns, but my mind is finally quiet. To keep that peace from evaporating, I reach for my ukulele. The transition from the visual rhythm of ink on paper to the literal vibration of strings against my fingertips is where I find my center.

It’s a world of tiny, deliberate wonders. One hour I’m watching a Shrinky Dink curl and toughen under the heat, and the next I’m assembling an angel keychain, bead by bead. These aren't just crafts; they are anchors. In a world that feels increasingly loud and disposable, these small acts of creation are how I claim my space.

41 Pounds of Irony (And Zero Regrets)

I’ve been dropping weight since November. Just grinding it out, watching the scale tick down from 374. I hit 333 and felt like I was finally getting a handle on my own skin.

Then, a few weeks ago, the doctors decided to drop the other shoe: COPD. They handed me a three to five year sentence like it was a piece of junk mail.

Talk about a cosmic joke. I quit smoking two years ago, and let me tell you, that was harder than fuck. If I’d gotten this diagnosis back then, I probably would’ve gone straight out and bought another pack just to spite the world. But I didn't. I stuck it out because I like not stinking of smoke, and I like not having one hand permanently occupied by a cigarette. Most of all, I like not having to haul my ass outside 40 to 60 times a day just to feed the beast.

I spent two years reclaiming my time and four months shedding 41 pounds of gravity, just to find out my lungs are trying to quit the team anyway.

Reclaiming Joy: From Chronic Pain to Creative Flow

It’s been years since I felt this kind of creative spark, and honestly, I’m just wallowing in it.

For a long time, I let hand arthritis convince me that my crafting days were over. I packed up the beads, put away the clay, and assumed that part of my life was a closed chapter. 

The Dog Who Broke My Heart and the Dog Who Put It Back Together

I didn’t go looking for Lulu. She found me. She was five years old when I got her, already past the puppy chaos, already herself. The first time I saw her, she walked straight over, climbed into my space like she belonged there, and rested her head on my heart. Not my lap. Not my hand. My heart. I said her name and she responded instantly, like she already knew it was hers. From that moment on, she was mine and I was hers.