After an eight month absence (maybe longer?) from blogging, it's hard to figure out where I left off and where I should pick back up. Should I try to summarize all that has happened while I've been away? Maybe I should treat today like it's any other day and just pretend eight months hasn't gone by. Or should I address some of the reasons that have recently been keeping me from blogging? I think it's only fair to do all of the above.
On May 30, 2009 I married my best friend, Patrick. Eight months later, I still feel just as happy and lucky as I did on that day. Everything about the day was perfect. No, I'm not saying I planned a seamless event and that nothing went wrong. We forgot to turn the mics on at the church, the wrong song played when we were introduced at the reception and the the vows we ended up saying weren't the ones we had written. What I mean when I say the day was perfect is that there was only one goal for the day: for two people who are very much happily in love, to come and get married in front of the people they hold nearest and dearest to their hearts. To make a commitment to love and cherish each other every day for the rest of our lives. To celebrate this love and happiness with all of our friends and family. Everything about the day was perfect.
On July 18, 2009, Pat and I brought our puppy, Grady, home. Our life definitely hasn't been the same since. We spent many sleepless nights listening to him cry in his crate and taking him out every few hours. Sometimes we had to ask ourselves if we brought home a puppy or a child. He's now 8 months old and I wish I could say the sleepless nights are over but unfortunately he had an accident in his crate. I will say the sleepless nights are now few and far between and that we are getting a lot of training for parenting. Due to his strange eating habits, we also have a lot less socks than we did 8 months ago. All joking aside, we can't imagine our lives without Grady and are glad to have him around for this crazy ride we call life.
I've come to an interesting juncture in my life. After 5 years of school and 2 1/2 years in the working world, I find myself trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. What are my goals? I've always had professional goals and I don't have any right now which really scares me. I've been analyzing what I'm good at and what I enjoy and interestingly enough, I'm finding that they aren't always the same. I've spent the last 8 months trying to sort through all of this and have really struggled with which aspects I could/should share in my blog and which I should keep private. So instead of deciding what was safe to write about, I just didn't write at all. Until today. Writing is and always has been my outlet and now more than ever, I need to express myself through my writing. I don't expect to wake up one day with that "A ha" moment where I say, "This is what I want to do with the rest of my life." But what I do expect is to turn each and every day into a learning experience that will get me one step closer to the end result, whatever it may be. There is a lot of uncertainty with my future and there are a lot unanswered questions.
There are, however, a few things of which I feel quite certain. I know that life has an interesting way of working itself out and that all of these little bumps in the road are a part of the big journey. I also know that God has a plan for me and part of His plan might include me figuring all of this out on my own. I feel very confident that I am not the only twenty-something person who after spending a few years in the working world is trying to figure out what makes them want to get up in the morning and go to work.
In fact, I heard on the radio this morning that the average person will change careers 10 times during their lifetime. Many of my twenty-something friends have said, if they could go back and choose their college major over again, they wouldn't choose the same thing. It's so difficult for an 18 year-old out of high school to choose a career. All we know is what we enjoy at the time and what we're good at. However, what we enjoy and what we're good at is not going to be the same thing at age 26 as it was at age 18. We might change drastically over the next few years as we're growing up and finding our way in the world.
I'm lucky in that I don't really regret my major of Interpersonal Communication. I enjoyed every class I took and it gave me the thirst for knowledge and the drive to go on to grad school. It made me enjoy higher education so much that I wanted to go on to teach it and hopefully one day inspire other students the way I had been inspired. Maybe deep down that is still my goal. Maybe I just have to wait until the time is right for me to feel comfortable with myself and with my experiences to feel that I really have something valuable to offer and teach to others. Maybe I need to find the right university, the right area of focus and research to get that drive to go on for my PhD. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
On May 30, 2009 I married my best friend, Patrick. Eight months later, I still feel just as happy and lucky as I did on that day. Everything about the day was perfect. No, I'm not saying I planned a seamless event and that nothing went wrong. We forgot to turn the mics on at the church, the wrong song played when we were introduced at the reception and the the vows we ended up saying weren't the ones we had written. What I mean when I say the day was perfect is that there was only one goal for the day: for two people who are very much happily in love, to come and get married in front of the people they hold nearest and dearest to their hearts. To make a commitment to love and cherish each other every day for the rest of our lives. To celebrate this love and happiness with all of our friends and family. Everything about the day was perfect.
On July 18, 2009, Pat and I brought our puppy, Grady, home. Our life definitely hasn't been the same since. We spent many sleepless nights listening to him cry in his crate and taking him out every few hours. Sometimes we had to ask ourselves if we brought home a puppy or a child. He's now 8 months old and I wish I could say the sleepless nights are over but unfortunately he had an accident in his crate. I will say the sleepless nights are now few and far between and that we are getting a lot of training for parenting. Due to his strange eating habits, we also have a lot less socks than we did 8 months ago. All joking aside, we can't imagine our lives without Grady and are glad to have him around for this crazy ride we call life.
I've come to an interesting juncture in my life. After 5 years of school and 2 1/2 years in the working world, I find myself trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. What are my goals? I've always had professional goals and I don't have any right now which really scares me. I've been analyzing what I'm good at and what I enjoy and interestingly enough, I'm finding that they aren't always the same. I've spent the last 8 months trying to sort through all of this and have really struggled with which aspects I could/should share in my blog and which I should keep private. So instead of deciding what was safe to write about, I just didn't write at all. Until today. Writing is and always has been my outlet and now more than ever, I need to express myself through my writing. I don't expect to wake up one day with that "A ha" moment where I say, "This is what I want to do with the rest of my life." But what I do expect is to turn each and every day into a learning experience that will get me one step closer to the end result, whatever it may be. There is a lot of uncertainty with my future and there are a lot unanswered questions.
There are, however, a few things of which I feel quite certain. I know that life has an interesting way of working itself out and that all of these little bumps in the road are a part of the big journey. I also know that God has a plan for me and part of His plan might include me figuring all of this out on my own. I feel very confident that I am not the only twenty-something person who after spending a few years in the working world is trying to figure out what makes them want to get up in the morning and go to work.
In fact, I heard on the radio this morning that the average person will change careers 10 times during their lifetime. Many of my twenty-something friends have said, if they could go back and choose their college major over again, they wouldn't choose the same thing. It's so difficult for an 18 year-old out of high school to choose a career. All we know is what we enjoy at the time and what we're good at. However, what we enjoy and what we're good at is not going to be the same thing at age 26 as it was at age 18. We might change drastically over the next few years as we're growing up and finding our way in the world.
I'm lucky in that I don't really regret my major of Interpersonal Communication. I enjoyed every class I took and it gave me the thirst for knowledge and the drive to go on to grad school. It made me enjoy higher education so much that I wanted to go on to teach it and hopefully one day inspire other students the way I had been inspired. Maybe deep down that is still my goal. Maybe I just have to wait until the time is right for me to feel comfortable with myself and with my experiences to feel that I really have something valuable to offer and teach to others. Maybe I need to find the right university, the right area of focus and research to get that drive to go on for my PhD. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
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