Things to Come

Howdy folks,


In doing much thought about this past year and the new year to come I have looked over this years resolutions to see how well I have done and honestly what things I need to cram in last minute to check off, lol. So going through the list:


1) Move on with my life and put the past behind me. - Yeah I pretty much feel like I have this one down. I laugh at most of the past and have learned my lessons from it. CHECK
2) Get a job - Well I did get a job, not in love with it. So I started my own business and that I am happy about. It is everything I wanted. It allows me to CHECK off this one!
3) Quit Smoking- this one was checked a while ago, even though I haven't been perfect. This one is CHECKED
4) Losing an anonymous amount of weight- Well I am still battling this one. I lost weight, I gained weight, I lost it again. I guess because I didn't put a number to what I wanted, I didn't really commit to it. So this one is still not checked,  FAIL :(
5) Meet new people- I have definitely met many people. I have new, great friendships and just plain and simple met some really interesting people! CHECK
6) Find real joy in life and stop taking advantage of the wonderful moments everyday- Pretty sure I have this one down. I have never felt so happy with my life. Even though there are definitely moments of sadness, I realized that's life. You can't be happy ALL the time, but 99% is pretty good. There will always be someone who will say something mean or put you down and it's okay to be upset but not to hold onto those feelings. CHECK
7) Be more adventurous- Yeah I think rushing getting a birth certificate, passport, and ticket, then jetting off to Italy with less than 3 weeks notice qualifies as being more adventurous! CHECK 
8) Do more for others- Well over the past year I have been working every month with an organization that helps the homeless. It has been one of the most rewarding experiences and the thing I look forward to. CHECK
9) Working on my temper-Lord knows I really have trying to work on this one with little success. I mean seriously, I just blew up at my office printer! Not to make excuses but it really did have it coming! But on the a positive note, at least I am finding humor in it. FAIL :(
10) Stop being selfish and start being selfless- I think I had made some definite improvements on this one. It's an on going one but I'm going to CHECK it off the list.
11) Write more- Another one that I have been back and forth with. While in Italy I did tons of writing but I must admit I have not made it a priority in my life. KINDA CHECKED
12) To stay focused on my goals!- I have set my goals and stayed pretty focused on them, for the most part. CHECK



PART 2 of this blog- Looking to the future.
As I was seriously bored one day at work, I went through and reread all, yes I said ALL, of my old blogs. Mostly just to see what progress I had made. I was pretty proud of the accomplishments I had made over the past year. This whole thing was a stretch for me and tested me in so many ways. I find myself living too much in the comfortable zone and that's just not good enough for me any more! So in looking over what I have done I also saw the things that I needed to work on for next year. Of course all the things from this years list applies for next year as well. It's funny, I was reading one of my friend's Facebook status and he was talking about doing some self renovations. When I started this project for me is was just for intention of doing some fixes but turned out I started a massive renovation. If you have even been involved in a renovation you know that once you start making minor changes you see ALL the things that you want to change and it snowballs. For once I'm not afraid of the snowball of changes I want to make to my life. I am actually excited about them. I have not sat down and thoroughly thought out next years renovation list but we still have a good part of December to go before really making that list. Until then lets see if I can check off those last little things on my list! 


Until next time!

D Day or should I say B Day

Well my birthday has come and gone. At first I was looking forward to the day and then it arrived. I woke up that morning and couldn't get the thought of failure out of my head. Every time I turned around I heard myself yelling at myself about what a failure I was. In the past week or so I definitely had experienced some set backs and disappointments but I did not expect myself to beat me up as much as I did. I think that many of my friends that were around for my semi meltdown thought that it had to do with marriage and relationships and such but honestly it had little to nothing to do with it. It had more to do with all the dreams and goals that I have worked so hard to accomplish and experienced only failure from them. I am the person who gives 110% of myself to my dreams but many times things just don't work out according to plan and that can be rather frustrating. For me I begin to question or doubt my abilities in that area, the whole "well it didn't work out so I must not be good at it" attitude. Why do I beat myself up so much? Why do I doubt my abilities and gifts? Why must the road have so many boulders in the way? Why can't I have a smooth, easy path? So many questions of things I just don't understand. In life I see and hear of so many people that have easy, "this person never went to school, picked up a camera, and instantly opened a business. I am not that lucky, I have to work hard at everything I do and those people that do I am jealous of. I did have a good day but it was somewhat tainted with my own self hate. This morning as I was looking for my inspirational quote of the day that I post on facebook (which honestly is something I need for my own encouragement during this time) I came across one that was perfect for the feelings I have been having, " Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing." That couldn't have come at a better time. It's hard to see through the failure of a dream but it doesn't mean that we should just give up. Everything is okay in the end, if it's not okay then it's not the end. Theses are things that I need to imprint on my brain every time I feel like a failure. I am not a defeated, I am just delayed.

The Passing of Time

It's unbelievable to me but in less than a week I will be 27. Time has flown by. Last night I had the hardest time sleeping, I couldn't stop thinking about my life. So far I have had mixed reviews about how my life has turned out thus far. I can remember 10 years thinking about college and what I had planned for my life. As far back as I can remember I have been a planner, I laid my life out, set deadlines, and had a timeline that I intended to follow. The only thing on that checklist that I have follow was college. Everything else has not gone according to plan. Don't get me wrong I am not 100% upset with that. I have grown up so much during that time and my view points have changed dramatically about many of those things on my timeline. For instance marriage, I had this plan to find my soulmate and be married by 21 or so. 6 years later not married and no soulmate in sight my focus on that has changed. I would love to find my soulmate but it is no longer a priority in my life and it doesn't determine my happiness. I wanted to be set in a great career and completely independent. Well at one point I was pretty well independent of my parents then some poor decisions occurred that brought me back home. Needless to say, I got sidetracked from my timeline and plan. You see I have never been a great multi-tasker.  I am good a committing and giving 110%, at one thing. I find it very challenging to give a 110% at multiple things at the same time, something always falls by the wayside. During college I was good at focusing at school and got into a relationship and focused a lot of energy into that too but once out of college I focused more energy than ever on that relationship that everything else got put on the shelf. I was so focused on my deadline to get married that it became a "by whatever means necessary" situation. I put everything important to me aside for that one goal, everything I valued was set on the shelf collecting dusk. After checking my priorities and some life changing events I came back to the storage unit of my life. Now I sit here a year later finally coming to terms with the past that I have created for myself. I have face the pain and hurt and I am ready to be propelled into my future and destiny. From a young age I knew that I had a strong purpose and destiny on my life, as the years have passed I have filled it with many distractions and diversions. Now almost 27 I am ready to stop stalling and ready to jump on that path. I am fully committed to this purpose whether I fully understand it or not, I'm taking a leap. Last night I sat there thinking about all the things I have learned, especially over the past year. As much disappointment as I have faced I am still pretty proud of myself and the minor to you but significant accomplishments I have made. I have faced many fears and overcome many obstacles, there were many times I felt like giving up, I pressed through. I am no longer the same person that I was; I am a greater, better, more awesome version of me, the real me!

Back to it!

I am back from Italy and finally getting settle back into my normal life again. What an amazing, life changing experience. If home is where the heart is, my home is in Italy. This trip was more amazing than I could have ever expected or dreamed of. I accomplished a few fears on the way. Now this isn't my first time out of the country by any means but it is the first time as an adult that I have flown by myself to a random country with no person holding my hand the whole way. Needless to say, I was slightly panicked and that's an understatement. I had to go from Atlanta to Paris, navigate Charles De Gaulle airport by myself and dig up my middle school French classes to communicate with the locals. As my plane got into Paris airspace I shed a few tears of joy. There are a few pictures of Paris on my wall the my late Uncle took many years ago and it has been a long time dream/goal to go to Paris and here I was doing it. Even though I wasn't going to travel through Paris, I was still there. Well, I got a slight culture shock. I found most of the French people I met to be so rude. They had a total disregard and lack of respect for the people around them. After Paris it was time to head off to Florence. Got there and had to get from the airport to the train station. I got a great taxi driver, who got me where I needed to go. Got to the train station and had to get a ticket. Well that was a challenge, I had no clue what the machine was saying, unlike Paris the people in Italy are so sweet. A nice woman saw the desperation on my face and asked if she could help me. I got my ticket then had to find my train, another person saw me standing there trying to figure out my platform and guided me to the right spot for me to board my train. Finally got on the train and had to figure out which station to get off on. I asked an older man, who was so sweet, when it was my stop he came and helped me get all my luggage off and made sure my friends were there to pick me up. the kindness of strangers continued the entire trip and there will be many stories to come about it. People in America don't do these things. You may get help every once in a while but these people went out of their way to help all the time, for no reason. From this I decided to open my eyes to others, instead of focusing on my individual needs everyday.
I experience so much love and generosity. Never have I met people that were so welcoming and inviting for me to truly get the best experience ever. I went with my best friend and her family, from the time I stepped off the train to the time I left they welcomed me to their family. Never in my life have I met people so kind to someone that they had never met before.
I learned so much from the Italians that I wanted to take back with me. I live life so focused on my goals that I forget to relax and just enjoy life and every moment of it. The people there have a motto that will stick with me forever, "We have time for everything." Ever though here in America we do value time, it's almost as though we put too much importance on time. We spend so much time determining how we are going to spend that time that we loss so much time that could be spent with what's truly important in life. Which led me to reevaluating my values in life, what is important to me.
For so long technology has played an important role in my life, it allows me to "stay connected" but to who. I waste a lot of time trying to stay "connected" and for what, to hear that this person is sitting in traffic, that it's stormy outside. Now I am not saying that I am going rogue and completely abandoning said technology but my value of it's true importance has shifted. I will still update my friends and use this technology as a medium to display my art to more people but I will not spend my days wasted at staring a screen that is not going to talk back. I want real conversations with the people that are important to me. I have decided that instead of hiding behind my screen that maybe I should get out there and hang out with these people that I call my friends.
There are 3 things that I feel that have lost there value in my life: Friends, Family, and Food. I just covered the friends part. Family, now I love my family I do, but I definitely don't commit to spending ample amounts of time with them. I see them on holidays and a few more times a year but lets be honest typically it's for some special occasion. During my trip I noticed a trend amongst these people, family is always at heart of everything. They don't dread seeing certain members of their family, if there is something about them that we would consider annoying, it's taken in humor to them. They love to laugh and believe in taking life less seriously. They live life with gusto, something that we are unfamiliar with. During my trip I lost a foundational member of my family, my grandmother. She was the glue that held my family together. If it wasn't for her my family would not gather as much. The only reason why we had so many people gathered together at Easter, Thanksgiving, or Christmas was because of her. I love my family but never craved seeing them, sad but true. But the combination of my grandmother's death and the experience I was having made me really want to be with them.
We as a society have become so focused on what's not important that we have lost sight of the things that are. We have more of a relationship with our computer than the people that we should hold close to us. I included. I have let so many great moments pass me by to hang out with my computer, and I know I am not alone in this.
Lastly, food. Many of us have a love/hate relationship with food. Why? Food is there for our health, it's not designed for us to fear it. It's there to help us, survive.  Why do we hate the thing that allows us to live? Makes no sense. Italy is the perfect place to gain a new appreciation of food. You go there and you don't think about if that food is going to make you gain weight, you just want to enjoy it with everyone else that is around you enjoying it. And believe me, one bite and you don't care about the calories in it. They don't think about portion control or diet food, it's full of cream, cheese, and everything "unhealthy" but it's natural. If whole milk wasn't good for you then God would have made a cow that produced a less fattening milk. If God made it, it's got to be okay for me, now if man made it I can't say the same thing. No longer will I hate food, I have to eat it I might as well enjoy it while I'm doing it.
There are so many more experiences that I want to share but I guess you will have to wait until I write the book, :)

The Journey Really Begins

I know, I know, it has been almost 3 months since my last entry. Well life has become jam packed. To update you all, well those that don't already know, I have started my own business! My photography business opened shop early August and has been steadily growing and growing each week. It's amazing, something that I just loved to do in my past-time is becoming something that I am doing full-time. We are official with our business license, tax info, and employer stuff. I even have employees! They are all commissioned based but it's all good. I could not be more happier with my life and the direction that I am headed. I have been blessed with so many amazing opportunities each and everyday, it is beginning to blow my mind. To think a year ago I was so unhappy and depressed with the situation that I was in and now I am being requested to fly to other countries for my services. Another update for those that do not already know, last weekend I received a message from one of my friends inviting me to go on an all expense paid trip to Italy, all I had to do was get my passport, get my ticket, and bring as much shopping money as I could, all in exchange for photography of all the amazing cities and adventures her and her family go on. I said "hold on one second let me think about it, I'm done thinking. OF COURSE I WANT TO GO! I will make it happen." And sure enough it's happening. my passport is being processed as I write, my tickets are booked and paid for, and I have already begun packing. I leave the USA on September 30th to arrive in Tuscany, Florence, Italy for 14 days of pure adventure! It's funny, one of my things to accomplish for the year was be more adventurous, and well this is definitely that. Typical Jennie would completely over think the opportunity, worry about the lack of passport and birth certificate and well money. But when I stepped out in faith and trusted someone other than myself and realized that I just got to get the things done and have faith in the right people and know it is out of my hands and trust that it will all work out in my favor, it all became a lot easier. So instead of spending my night being sleepless because I can't stop worrying, they are sleepless because I am so excited or I can't stop trying to learn the language. Another one of my things to do was to meet new people and well what a better way to meet new people than to go to a foreign country, enough said.
My trip will celebrate my year anniversary of my life being flipped upside down and what a way to celebrate it. I didn't even realize it until I was sitting in church on sunday and all the sudden I was like the day that I leave for Italy is the exact day that I choose to walk away from what had become so familiar to me, focusing on someone who wasn't there for me, who didn't care about me, and someone who put my every move/action down. Now I stand a year later, healed of those wounds and moving forward in the direction this person told me was not possible. At the time that I made that decision to walk away I didn't think I was strong enough, that I couldn't do it on my own, that I was everything he told me I was, but today I realize that those words were not describing me or my life. I am destined for greatness and great things because my faith is in someone else. He was right about one thing, I couldn't do it on my own, I had a lot of friends and family that supported, guided, and encouraged me throughout the entire years journey and I thank them all. As I went to reread what I just wrote my eyes began to well up with tears but they are not tears of sadness about the past, they are tears of gratitude, I am so thankful for the many blessings I have been given, most of all a new lease on life! I am expecting Italy to continue the transformation of my life.
I just recently watched Eat, Pray, Love. I cried through the entire movie. It did stir up so many memories. In a way I related to her journey, the spark of the beginning of the situation wasn't necessarily the same but it was that unhappiness that led her to make a radical change in her life and I am too. It led her to Italy, funny unknowingly mine did too. For me it has been a Pray, Eat, Love!
Well, BIG thanks to all that have stood by me and loved and supported me throughout this year, please continue. Expect lots of blog entries while I am Italy.

And to sign off for this edition, Arrivederci Grazie Mi Amici!

Jogging down this not so lonely road!

Hello Everyone,

I know it has been a long time since my last post but it has been for good reasons. My life, in short, has become abundantly slammed. In a great way though. Work is keeping me really busy and on my toes. Everyday is something different. I long for the boring days of not much going on. I have been spending time with friends. I truly feel blessed. I was able to purchase a new camera that knocks my socks off, which has allowed me to expand my services to the company I work for. My life is pretty much staying drama-free. Every now and again I will get an email or phone call accusing me of something but I am now able to blow it off and no longer react in anger. That is definitely an improvement! :) What else, well I did meet a really great guy and we went out. But after a few weeks I just decided that I am at a point in my life to where I just am not interested in anything but friendship with people. It's not from a fear of being hurt, I guess it really boils down to just craving time to myself. I need time to continue to take care of me and not worry about what I think the other person needs. So for now Prince Charming and I are just friends. Besides, I still have a whole list of things to accomplish! It has been over 6 months since I started The Resolution Project and I am proud of the leaps that I have made.

1) Move on with my life and put the past behind me. 
I can definitely say that this one I can check off the list. I do not worry about my past whatsoever. my past my contact me and try and stir up trouble but I remind it that I have moved on from that.

2) Get a job 
CHECK! Got that one! I am loving it for the most part. I am able to do all the things that I love!

3) Quit Smoking 
This one has been checked! Still doing pretty good on this one.

4) Losing an anonymous amount of weight 
Well, I kind of sat this one on the back burner until I got settled in with the job and it's now time to start focusing on it. I have dropped a few pounds here and there but it has not been a priority. Times are changing and now it is!

5) Meet new people 
I am definitely meeting new people all the time. My struggle right now is maintaining those friendships with these new faces. I am becoming more and more open with people and no longer fear of what people think of me. I like me and so should everyone else, :) I definitely feel like my personality has evolved into what I want to be and not what others want me to be. That was off subject but it came to me while thinking about the actual subject. My goal is to only surround myself by good and positive people. In order to do that I have to keep my perceptive radar. I guess what I am saying is it is hard for me to balance being perceptive of good influences and allowing people in. Again, I'm working on it and plan to be working on it for a long time.
 

6) Find real joy in life and stop taking advantage of the wonderful moments everyday
I am definitely trying to not let the wonderful moments to pass me by. I guess for me this is all about capturing those moments with my camera. And if you know me you would have noticed that I always have my sidekick with me, Mr. Nikon. Sometimes its Mr. Nikon Jr. but most of the time it's Sr. that comes along for the ride, :)

7) Be more adventurous 
I feel like an old lady lately. On my weekends I am adventurous but during the week, I fail at this one. When I get off from work and finally make it home through the jungle of cars they like to call traffic, I'm done. All I want is my pup and my bed, maybe dinner. I guess right now, my adventure is actually surviving my ride to and from work.

8) Do more for others 
Again, this is one of those goals that I will be working on forever. I have become more generous with my time and money to great causes that I believe in. So I feel that I can check this one but will continue to keep this one in check.

9) Working on my temper 
I feel that solely eliminating my button pusher has helped with this one. I like many people have to keep things in check but instead of getting angry at things I am trying to laugh it off and find the humor in it. I am finding that I'm more of a funnier person by doing that.

10) Stop being selfish and start being selfless 

Well this one is subject to people opinion of what is selfish. I have decided to set aside some relationships in my life to focus more on my needs, which could be completely considered as being selfish. BUT this is some much needed time to myself and in order for me to be less of a selfish person, I just need to back away from people and things.
 

11) Write more 
EPIC FAIL on my part! I have let this one really go by the wayside! I really need to step it up and work on this one. Shame, shame on me.

12) To stay focused on my goals!
I am but I'm not. My goals are not in the forefront of my mind at all times but they are there. I am aware that they exist and I know of the things I need to work on and want to work on but I feel that if I focus too much on them then I will no longer be doing it for the right reasons. I will be doing it because I don't believe in failure and once the year is up, I will probably go back to my old ways.

So all in all, life is great. I have regained my happiness and replacing many bad memories with good ones. I am proud of the success that I have made and plan to keep working on it! The journey continues and I'm keeping up with it!

Driving Forward... Not Looking Back...

Hello faithful readers,
I know that it has been over a month since my last post but I am happy to say it has been for good reasons! I GOT A JOB! Yippy! The story behind it is pretty amazing and a true testament as to how things can really work out for the good!
It all started when a friend from college called me up to let me know that she went on an interview with a company and just didn't feel like it was the right job for her. There was nothing wrong with the position, just not what she was looking for. She felt that it was right up my alley and thought I might be interested. Well she wasn't lying, it really was right up my alley and it was a perfect fit for me. With in a day I went up for the interview and the same day I was hired. I started the next day and have been loving it ever since. The pay wasn't the greatest in the world and it is a drive but some times we have to make little sacrifices for better things to come. Well after a few days of proving myself my boss gave me a raise. I guess you want to know what I do now, I work for Abracadabra Video as their Office Manager and Production Coordinator. After mentioning to him that I do photography, he took a look at my portfolio and decided to add me as their Photographer! I was so excited about that, photography is such a great passion of mine and one that I never really planned on getting paid to do. After a few days of chatting and actually getting to know me he realized that he didn't really read over my resume too much, they were in such desperate need of someone that whoever wanted the position was pretty much hired. He has started to give me more and more responsibility and it feels great! I accomplished exactly what I wanted to accomplish, finding a job that I truly love!
It's funny, I planned and prepared so hard to make my resume look good and it didn't matter. For the first time in an interview I could truly be myself and not stiff and be what they wanted me to be and thats the job I get. Everything works out for the best in the end. I can always feel calm in the storm with the knowledge of even though I don't know the future it will always be better. Faith and Hope can pull you through so many terrible and uncomfortable situations.
Another valuable lesson that I learned through this experience is to stop being what everyone wants you to be or be the person that they are looking for. When you are true to yourself, you will never fail! It may  look like failure is all around you but it's only a mirage. If there is one thing that I have struggled to overcome in the past couple of months and a good part of my life is the feeling of being a failure. It is so easy to look around you and see things that didn't go right and call that a failure. It may be a failure but not necessarily on your part. For me, I took the failure of my relationship very personally. I felt that I had done something wrong or I just wasn't good enough and it had nothing to do with that. Sometimes we take on other people's failures because we think we have to or that someone has to. We don't even if they can't see their failures doesn't mean we take them on. Sometimes its good to just leave the baggage in the middle of the road instead of carrying it for someone else. Eventually they are going to have to deal with it.
As I was driving to work the strangest thing happened, I caught myself saying I came from the darkness and have enter into the light. I literally had, it was so dark and stormy at home and then all the sudden as I was approaching my exit the brightness was overwhelming, the clouds were a beautiful creamy white and the sky was so blue, bluer than I have ever seen. I didn't expect it at all, it came out of nowhere. I didn't even realize how dark it was at home until I had become consumed in the light. You see the light reflecting off of things and everything looks so shiny and beautiful and new. It's strange because I feel that way about my life, I had no clue as to how unhappy I was until I was happy. Now everything looks so much better than it did before.
So, I plan on driving more and more towards the light and keeping the dark skies in my rearview mirror.
Drive on...

Fish in the Sea

In the search for my perfect job I have seen nothing but failure. This is starting to get depressing! And might I say frustrating!! I realize that it is not failure on my part but more of a lack of respect on the employers part. In the last year I have applied for 1000's of jobs, many of them are applications sent off into the world wide web (I'm beginning to think it's a blackhole of nothingness). I have received a few responses back on those jobs I have applied for and I have been on interviews. It's funny I use to consider myself as a closer, I could close the deal with anyone, I could sell myself like no other. I don't feel like I am not selling myself well cause every interview I go on I get that look from the employer that leads you to think, "I nailed it" and I always get the response of "you are a top candidate". But I find myself always feeling like I am number 2, not number1. So what's wrong? These employers lead me on, making me think that I have the job and then all the sudden I get. "I'm sorry we decided to go with someone that is over qualified for the position" or the latest, "We decided to put the position on hold since we had hired for another position and they are going to do both positions at the same time'. So what was the point of WASTING MY TIME??? Seriously! The thing that erked me the most about this particular employer is at the interview I was extremely hesitant about leaving a book of my materials but because I was promised that I would be back for yet another interview within the week, I left it. STUPID, STUPID, STUPID, I should ALWAYS listen to my gut. Two weeks later, no response from the company and then a "you can come pick it up". Thank you for making me drive yet another 1 1/2 hour to come to your business and waste my time again. I got no apology, no "can we send you this material back", nothing. What happen to respect? These companies have forgotten how to respect the "little people". I told the company they should mail me my material since it was based on their response that I was "coming" for a 3rd interview that I left it. Needless to say, no response yet. Sad thing is the lady said that they would like to hold onto my resume for possible positions in the future, I told her to disregard it. I don't work for companies that play games. If you are this disrespectful to me before I am even hired then how are you going to treat me once I am. It's like relationships, if the guy is a jerk when you're dating do you seriously think he is going to treat you any better once your married? All venting aside, it was very upsetting for me because this was the exact position I wanted and didn't think existed and it was sad to see it not work out. I am okay with not getting the position, it's just the lack of respect that bugs me. So after my night of sulking and digging holes in the yard, I am over it and started back at square one... AGAIN... Someone once told me "Jobs are like men, there are plenty of fish in the sea", my reply "you're right and it's hard to find the right one. They are either already taken or pointless." Guess I'll keep fishing, maybe I cast my rod across the sea... to maybe England... We will see... Cheerio

The Roller-Coasters of Life

Life is funny sometimes. Sometimes we stress so much about certain things in our life and it turns out to be a good thing. Many of you know that I am a deep thinker. Sometimes I feel like Gregory House (from the show House), never fails that near the end of his show he will be in mid sentence and a revelation happens and he has his "Aha!" moment and then rushes off to save the day. Well my moments have no real significance and I definitely don't save the day but boy do I get some deep insight into life at times.

The other day I was having a very typical conversation with a person, nothing really personal, just "How ya doing?" For some unknown reason I responded, "Just hanging on the roller-coaster of life". And to that the person responded, as many people would, "I hope for mostly ups". I agreed and went on with my day not really thinking much about it. As I was driving home my dad pointed out a carnival off the express-way and "aha!", I thought about that brief conversation. I looked at the carnival and thought about the ones that I had been too, mostly fun until I got to the, what they would like to refer to as, a "roller-coaster". In all honesty there is not much to it, you go up a few feet, come to a straight stretch, whip around a corner, go down a hill, and back up and then it's over, not really that much fun. When I think of a roller-coaster, I can't say that a carnival one is the type I picture. I envision one that has this slow and intense climb to the top of a steep hill and then it whips so fast around a corner it takes your breath away, and then it plummets down and then back up and goes in a loop and once you come out of the loop you are climbing right back up another hill only to plummet further down into this cave-like slope where you can't even see the bottom, it's pitch black dark and you feel the coaster slowing down. Then suddenly off in the distance you see a speck of light slowly growing closer and closer and as the light fills your surroundings your eyes begin to readjust and it's like you are seeing the whole thing for the first time. You hear the chains as they slowly pull the coaster up the incline and you look up but all you see are the tracks heading up. You look back and what seemed so scary has become so small in comparison to where you are headed. You hang out at the top for a while and then you plummet down one last time until you suddenly stop, rides over. And even though there were times that jerked you around so hard it hurt and you were falling down so fast it scared you to death, you still want to get back on the ride. That's how life is, we have many ups and downs. For every up (success) we have to come from a down (depression for some). You see a roller-coaster is all about momentum, all those twist and turns, ups and downs are what allow the ride to climb higher and higher, and that's what makes it exciting. So many of us want to not think about or not have the down hills in our lives, it's hard to face, sometimes even scary, but those down hills gives us new eyes to see a multitude of perspectives. If we are only at the top all the time, all we see are the small things, nothing is important and in return if we are only at the bottom, everything is too big, it begins to become overwhelming but its when we travel from the bottom to the top that we gain appreciation for those things in our life and a sense of humility. For me, it's when I am in the down slopes in life that's when I learn to face my fears and come out of the dark whole that I was just in, with so much knowledge and fresh eyes to see new things that before I couldn't see because I had my hands over my eyes. I chose to embrace the down hills in life because I know that they will help me get to the top, and the further down I was, the higher I will climb. I also thought about the sounds of the chains pulling my up with my hands raised in the air, those sounds are the friends and family cheering you on as you climb your way to the top. No one's roller-coaster is the same, but we all have one.

In life I think of the journey to the valleys and down slopes as the mistakes or actions that got us there. We all have them, some deeper than others but they are there. So many of us choose to stay in our valleys, it's comfortable there, why not. Climbing out of a valley is hard work, but the more you climb, the more you are headed to the top of the mountain of your success. I'm not saying that we can't be successful in our valleys but think about how much more successful you will be once you actually start climbing. Those lessons that we learned from our mistakes are our path stones up our mountain. If it wasn't for the valley's and mountains of life, we would be on a plateau, nowhere to go but straight and nothing to learn, BORING! I don't want to live a boring life, I want an exciting life, so I just have to deal and learn from all that goes with it!

It's funny that a simple response triggered all of this inside of me. What was even funnier was I took my GRE exam for my Master's program and the first part of the exam is a written part. You get to choose from two different topics and you have to write an essay on one. As I glanced at the screen the first option was about a quote "Only through our mistakes can there be discovery and progress", I didn't even look at option number two, I knew that was what I wanted to write about. The entire night before all I could think about was how much I have learned from my mistakes and how my roller-coaster was finally coming into the light and I was beginning to see things from a new perspective. All night I thought about this and here I now had an opportunity to write from the heart exactly what I was thinking about the night before. Oh, how life can be so funny.

I don't go to the amusement park to ride the train, I go to ride the roller-coasters. So I will keep on hanging onto the roller-coaster of life with my hands in the air not looking back but keeping my eyes fixed at the top!

What is a name?

Many of you that are my facebook friends may have recently noticed the random name change and today I have decided to address my reasoning behind the sudden change. 

I guess in order to address the present we need to visit the past. For so many years I place such an importance on my name, it gave me this inner power-like feeling, a sort of confidence. It all started many years ago, in high school I think, one day I met a guest speaker and introduced myself "Hi, I'm Jennie Vaughn". You see I rarely introduce myself as just Jennie most of the time my last name always follows. The woman looked at me dead in the eyes and said something that stuck with me to this day, "Jennie Vaughn, huh. That's a power name you know! It's a name people will remember, a good name I might say." From that day on I took more pride in my name than I ever did. Even in college I sold myself on my name, when other students branded their companies for their portfolio I on the other hand branded my name. For years I stood alone on my good name, nobody else to support it but me. Well during college I stupidly decided to attach my name to other people, ones that lacked a good reputation. As we all know, when you a line yourself with those type of people you too begin to unknowingly earn the same reputation as them, it begins to taint your good name. This all became aware to me recently when a college buddy I hadn't kept in touch with was unaware of the current changes in my life and in their pity stated "I'm so surprised, it was always Jennie and so and so this and Jennie and so and so that. You guys were attached at the hip." I was horrified, my name was attached to his. I know that we had done a lot together and we shared a lot of interest, so it wasn't a surprise to see both of us on set together, but we were two totally different people with completely different perspectives on our interest. I sat there and thought, does everyone I know from my college years only see me and him, not all the work that I did with or without him. What about all the awards that I won, without him. Don't get me wrong, I learned a lot while with him but it was nothing that I couldn't have learned without him. Anyways, it really upset me to think that my name won't be remembered for all that I accomplished but because of who I was with. This was reason number 1 for the name change.

Reason number 2. I always remember the story about Beyonce and her stage name for herself, Sasha Fierce. She had this persona that gave her more confidence and allowed her to be more than she could ever be. It was like her superhero version of herself. I remember joking with a friend about what my stage name would be/ what my superhero name was. You see I grew up with many Jenny's in my life, it's a popular name. Because I was never the "original Jenny" I was alway referred to as Jennie V not to be confused with my friend Jenny B. (which we often were and are). I remember in college people hearing Jennie V and thinking that my name was Genevieve and of course I would correct them. So when my friend and I talked about our superhero names I thought of Jenevieve, it was all me just a little disguised just like a superhero. During my relationship when I had really lost track of who I was, in public I acted the way I thought Jenevieve would act (I'm not crazy and I don't have multiple personalities). I'm a writer and I think about life through the eyes of characters in a book or script. Jenevieve was the ultra version of me, essentially what I wanted to be. She had confidence that could not be easily shattered, she dusted off snide comments or looks, she stood up for what she believed in, she was equally passionate and compassionate, people looked up to her not down on her, she knew what direction she was headed and laughed at the obstacles in her way . That's who I saw myself as, who I wanted to be, but I couldn't because fear was holding me back. Many people would look at me and say that I did those things, not really, it was that mask I talked about in one of my previous blogs. Jenevieve is what I wanted Jennie Vaughn to be, unfortunately Jennie Vaughn was too afraid of what people thought about her and what was being said behind her back. You see some years ago I discovered I had a talent, I have a BS vision. I know instantly when someone is lying to me, I guess you could say it's Jenevieve's superpower. In order to see through many lies, you have to be a talented liar yourself, not that I out right lied about who I was but more like I was a very surface person, I played up my strengths and hid my weaknesses. Unfortunately we all have our weakness and mine was acceptance. You don't make a lot of friends by calling people out all the time or just not letting people in at all and yet I wanted people to accept me, I just wanted to know that I was welcome whenever I decided to be apart of the group. And because of that longing for acceptance you tend to bend in some areas of your life, like standing up for what you believe in, not doing things you will regret, all the things that made me proud of Jennie Vaughn. 

So during this time of self discovery I saw that the name I once loved, I was ashamed of. It no longer gave me a sense of pride and ownership. I realized that I lost all the things that made me proud to say that name. So I wanted to do an act of reclaiming who I was, who Jennie Vaughn wants to be and should be, therefore I temporarily changed my name to something I want Jennie Vaughn to represent in the future. Also I wanted no part in the tainted versions of me and the lies that had been spread around, that's not me and it's not who I am. Who I am is confident, passionate, compassionate, joyful, giving, a leader, and is on the move, love me or hate me it's who I am, so get on or get off cause this train is picking up speed and there is no stopping it right now.

Past and Present

Two weeks have passed since my last entry and two months have passed since I began this project. I felt like with the beginning on month three, it would be a great time to review my resolutions/goals for the year. I find that when making goals the month we stop looking at that list, we lose focus on the end product and give up. I refuse to give up, as hard as some may be I am not giving up. So lets refresh ourselves with the resolutions and take a peek at the progress on them.

1) Move on with my life and put the past behind me. 
This one I can honestly say I feel like I can check it off. In the past I always felt that moving on meant, as it applies to relationships, that I removed myself from one and started a new one. In the past few months I have come to realize that this is not true, for me at least. For a while I felt like I wanted to be in a new relationship but recently I have changed my views on that, I am completely happy just the way things are, no man in my life and all. For so long I grew so attached to the relationships in my life that I lost who I was, I defined myself by who I was friends with. Sure I showed hints of my personality but I always felt a slight uncomfortableness deep inside. These past few months have allowed me some time to get to know me and I enjoy that.

2) Get a job 
Unfortunately this goal cannot be checked off. As much as this is frustrating I am not letting it get me down. I know that there is the perfect job for me out there... somewhere... (hopefully sometime soon). I have definitely had my ups and downs with this one, my good days and my bad days. I calculated since returning back to Atlanta I have applied to 583 jobs, no joke. Most of which I never hear anything about, but none the less I keep applying.

3) Quit Smoking 
Funny, when I reread my feelings about conquering this particular goal at that time I felt like this was going to be such a challenge. It has been the easiest of them all. I feel so much better since I have quit. No more nasty cough or stinky smell. I have, for the most part, gotten the smell out of my car for the exception of when I turn the heat on. My trick for doing so, if any of you are wondering, is placing a bounce laundry bar in my backseat window, works like a charm and leaves such a refreshing scent behind.

4) Losing an anonymous amount of weight 
Well, this is a tricky one. I tried the whole vegan 21 day fast and for the most part it worked out really well, I lost about 15 pounds. I can't say that all 15 pounds have remained off but I am still working hard at it. I have done well with cutting out sodas and caffeine in general, every now and again I will have one. I do drink tons of coffee but it's caffeine-free. I continue to drink tons of water a day and I only eat meat about once a day. I have added a lot more vegetables into my meals, so I feel like I am on the right course.  I am on my 3 weeks off right now but next week I plan to do the fast again. The whole goal is to eventually make a life style change.

5) Meet new people 
Funny, to think that the whole goal of this one was to meet a guy. Well as discussed earlier, I don't really care about that one, BUT I am meeting tons of new people and getting to know some old ones. I think at first I was really hesitant about this one, especially being so hurt by my ex who was my best friend as well, but I have really turned a new stone on this front. I have really begun to enjoy really getting to know people that I knew from the past. I also have taking time out of my busy yet not so busy life to spend time with complete strangers and getting to know them. I look forward to the last saturday of each month and going downtown with a group and spending time with the forgotten people of Atlanta. I enjoy my conversations with them, along with the photographs I get to take. Those days are amongst the highlights of my month. It's funny, I use to consider myself as the most outgoing introvert you ever met and now I am not that anymore. It feels so good to finally take the mask off of who I was, as if a weight has truly been lifted.

6) Find real joy in life and stop taking advantage of the wonderful moments everyday
I have definitely found joy in my life. Even just rereading what I have written today I can see on the screen the joy and happiness that I have found in my life. Now again this is not to say I don't have my rough days, but man are they fewer than what I use to have. I find myself smiling a lot more and not just on the outside, but on the inside as well. What a great feeling this is.

7) Be more adventurous 
I can't say I have really done much about this one. I guess in a way I have, because of not having a job and not really knowing where I will be this year or what I will be doing has allowed me to throw the planning book out the window. I feel like me being adventurous, right now at least, is me living in the moment. I know that for the most part I can do anything I want at any given moment (as long as it cost nothing, lol). I guess for me being adventurous is me feeling free and I do feel that, but I would like to do more and go on more adventures!

8) Do more for others 
I think I am on the road to that. I definitely feel like I do more than I use to. Like I said, I love spending time doing stuff for the homeless in Atlanta. I was thinking about that the other day, I so easily could be in many of their shoes, losing or leaving a job/city for one reason or another, unexpectedly finding yourself without a home; I know what it's like, if it wasn't for friends and family putting me up, I would be there... on a street... alone. It breaks my heart to see people in that situation because of the state of our economy, I feel their pain. Aside from that I have been giving of my talents and skills to various people and organizations. I have a very use it or lose it mentality and at the same time I am helping other people out and that feels good.


9) Working on my temper 
I have not done anything about this one. I see it, I realize that is it welling up inside me, but I feel like I cannot do anything about it. Driving less has definitely decreased my desire to stop at lights and chew someone out for their lack of driving skills, so that's a plus. I think I have traded it for going to the super market and seeing people's lack of bagging groceries or incompetence to walk around acting civil to the other shoppers, and I have had a few moments that I let my frustration be known to the people but I do feel that I acted maturely and with a good attitude. Again, I am working on it. I can't accomplished all 12 in two months, there is still time :).
  
10) Stop being selfish and start being selfless 
I think this sort of goes back to the Doing More for Others. At times doing stuff for other people has been for selfish reasons but the fact that I even thought of doing it to begin with is a step for me. I guess what my problem is, is that I will do whatever anyone wants as long as it is something I will enjoy doing, still pretty selfish. So again, another work in progress.

11) Write more 
Well for a while I was doing great with this one but once I got to a point that I got all my upsetting emotions out, I felt like there was nothing really to write about. I have stories in my head, I just don't take the time to stop watching tv and write them. I can't consider myself a writer unless I write! So I will work on this one, again!

12) To stay focused on my goals!
I am definitely staying focused even though there have been many times that I just wanted to give up. There have been times that I have told myself "I am done with this, it's too hard, it's too frustrating. I am not working on this anymore." I go to bed and clear my head and the next morning I start again, working on those goals. I just keep reminding myself that the end result for all of these goals will make me a better person and an even more happier person!


So in revisiting my resolutions and goals I feel like I am working hard even though I may not be seeing tons of progress. Thanks to all of you for the encouraging words and your words of wisdom. It is a long journey and we are 1/6 of the way through it. 

Looking to the future

All I have to say is what a week it has been. An awesome one at that. It has been full of so much joy, love, and emotion. The church I have been working with had it's annual youth conference and the guy I have been working for had the daunting task of creating all these videos and printed material for the conference and my job was to assist him in whatever capacity that I could, well mission accomplished. We produced some wonderful videos. Also during the conference because of the snow we were down 2 cameras and a camera person, so all the conference shooting was left up to me. I have never been so excited about running around with a camera. Needless to say the conference went off great and I got tons of footage to use. Because of all that went all I ended the week pretty exhausted. 

Today I worked with some of the girls from the halfway-like house that my mom works with teaching them about cover letters, resumes, and interview preparation. The class went really well. I was pretty proud of all that I had accomplished this past week. Doing all of this has really created more of a passion in me to do things like this. I have for a while wanted to teach but not necessarily in a classroom environment. In thinking about that it I started to think about what I want to do with my life. If anyone knows me they know that I am full of random information, I love doing research and looking things up (I am weird and I find that fun). It has been on my heart to start a business. All of this said I started to think about what type of business I wanted to have. I already have my Vaughn Agency name registered and all that jazz. Originally it was for a Casting Agency but I am leaning away from that and I have something else in mind. I love working with people and businesses and I started to think about how I could do that for a living and decided that being an image consultant is perfect for me. This isn't just a personal image consultant that helps you decide what to wear but a more deeper version of that. I want to help businesses and people learn how to market themselves. So many people are only business-minded and have a difficult time thinking about creative ways to build their business or even get their business launch and I am great at those things. I am good with commercial ideas, web design, color schemes, all kinds of things that would help grow a business. So I have decided that's what I want the Vaughn Agency to be all about. Now I am not exactly sure how to get the clients but I am doing some of this on a small scale. 

So what do you all think? This is a great time for some advice...

Taking off the Mask

What a week it has been, a wonderful one at that. I started helping do some media for the church that I attend and that was a blast. We got to shoot a couple of videos for a conference coming up this weekend and I got to edit them both. It is so nice to finally do something with my skills, I felt like they were going to waste. I started to reconnect with old friends and work on friendships with some new ones. This friday was a blast, a friend of mine was celebrating her end of chemo with a party of a lifetime. She decided to have Karaoke party and I felt like I had really come out of my shell.
In the past week just chatting with my mom, I started to have some revelations about myself. I realized that as open as I may appear actually I am not. I will easily let people into the surface part of my life but beyond that I am very closed off and guarded. For so many years (even before my past relationship) the people that I came to be so close to would hurt me. I thought that I was forgiving those people but I still held on to that hurt. I became a people pleaser, I only said and did what people expected me to do and say. The more those people would hurt me, the more I would try harder in thinking that "If I try harder, they won't hurt me". Because of this I gained a lot of superficial friendships on my part. Only the friends that dug harder and harder at the truth would I reveal it to them, but even then it wasn't my truest of true feelings. At one point in my life when it got really bad I began to convince myself of those lies.
Long ago, I started putting on a mask to cover all the hurt and pain, and as that hurt and pain began to build I took off that mask less often until one day I stopped taking it off all together. During that time I began to fear time to myself because I felt like I was sitting in a room with a person I didn't know and wasn't sure if I would like. I tend to get in a comfortable place in my life and stay there, refusing to go beyond that. I was comfortable in my mask. The recent events have created such a huge crack in my comfort zone that it has allowed me to take off my mask and to really allow me to see me. I have grown to love the woman that I am, all parts of me. That mask had deceived me into believing that I was defeated and I am not.
This weekend I had fun and I didn't have any of my comfortable crutches to hold onto, it was just me and of course this massive group of people. My friend's party taught me a lot. I let so many opportunities to celebrate life pass me by and I don't even think twice about it. I had forgotten what it was like to love life, to live life. I am tired of letting those moments pass me by unappreciated. I can't sit in comfort anymore, I just can't. I am so happy and I am ready to live again, unafraid and uncomfortably.

Day of Realization

I have not forgotten about my dedication to my blog, I just simply had nothing to say. I was suppose to start working with someone on a few new projects last week but unfortunately due to my lack of caffeine and sugar, I got sick. Last week was simply a sucky week! I couldn't work on anything really because of my massive migraines that left me basically unable to function for about 4 days, I had to deal with my ex, and I started craving all the things I stopped eating. Besides the suckiness there was some profound realizations which made most of it worth it. My week was mostly boring until friday, a day that will be further known as The Day of Realization, I was forced to speak to my demon, my ex. I have been unable to contact a former employer to give them my current address and was forced to break down and ask my ex if he could possibly forward any mail he receives to my parents address. Most people would react, "sure, No problem." It was pretty evident that he had moved on a while ago and I as well, this conversation should go smoothly I repeated to myself in my head. Not the case, it has become more clear that my ex is not like most people. Me simply asking for my mail equaled me being obsessed of him (I laughed when I discovered this). Also he brought it to my attention that I was sharing too much personal information in status updates to mutual friends and that it was really difficult for him to read. This all coming from the man that premeditated a trip to cheat on me, the person who on the day of revealing this to me told me he didn't care about me anymore, and everything he had ever said was a lie. As hurtful as that all was I was the person strong enough to quit my job at the company we both worked at, moved to a completely different state, and discontinued all contact with him. You see our relationship was built around patterns. He would cheat or the abuse would go to far, I would walk away, he would convince me that he had changed, I believed him, and inevitably we would get back together. This happened for 4+ years. I didn't know how to think or speak for myself anymore, all I knew how to do was what he wanted me to do or what he wanted me to be. Until that one day, I had had enough. I would no longer stand by a man who hit me or put me down every time I disagreed. I had finally reclaimed my voice and I wanted me back and I am proud to say I have found myself again. I know who I am and what I want and that makes me so happy, a happiness that was hidden for so many years and covered with denial of what was really going on. So coming back to friday, it really angered me that this man that I don't care about anymore would even dare question the fact that I have any interest in him and that was beyond me. That very brief conversation reminded me of that little puff that I took the other week and my reaction to it. This was a person that despite it all I loved him and never thought that I would be without him and even though there had been no temptation to be with him there was always that question buried deep in the back of my mind of "I wonder if he has really changed" and that conversation reminded me of how much he hadn't and how I really had no interest of ever being friends with him. Just like smoking, those feelings I had once had are totally different and I am so much happier without it and him. It feels so good to officially say that I have completely moved on and that is why I marked friday as my Day of Realization!

It is what it is

The weekend is over and I am sad to see it go. Time always seems to fly when your having fun. I spent a good part of the weekend hanging out with my friend in Atlanta. I was extremely worried. You see she is a smoker and was my smoking buddy when we worked together. What is worse is most of the friends we hang out with are smokers. The whole drive up there not an ounce of temptation, I was more happy that I finally got the stinky smell of out my car. A little while into hanging out the dreadful moment occurred, it was time to step out on the porch for a cigarette break. As the air began to fill up with with smoke I realized that it smelled totally different to me, no longer a smell that I love but more of disgust. At the same time memories of all the fun times I had while smoking began to flood my mind and before I knew it  I was asking for a drag. Now my friend is a good friend and some would say somewhat cruel. She hands over the last of her cigarette and I took a puff. I coughed and choked, it tasted disgusting, I hated it. Now many of you would say that I slipped and in a way I did but at the same time that little puff ease my desire of do I really want to quit. You don't realize how good you feel until you take that puff. Your sense of taste and smell are totally different and even my eyes reacted to it totally differently. Yes that puff was a drop in my resistance wall but it showed me that my weakness wasn't as weak as I thought, my mind had really grown to hate the thing I once love and that little puff tested that.

Like I said this weekend was a true test of my strength, I sort of passed/failed my not smoking test but I did really good on eating real healthy. Luckily my friend knows a lot of health food and helped me stick to that part. The highlight of my weekend was spending my saturday not in bed like I enjoy but working with the homeless. It was a little different this time, more helpers than people that needed help but I still enjoy talking to these people that most individuals run away from and making them feel human again.  The best part of it was I got to share the experience with two of my good friends and my brother. I love when you are doing a positive thing and you tell people about it that they want to jump on the train.

Now onto the sucky stuff, I still haven't heard a thing about a job. I am not upset, I have just realized that it is was it is. I realized yesterday that I am not keeping up-to-date on my skills and even by working temp jobs I still wouldn't be using those skills, so I decided to volunteer those skills. The church I grew up in does a lot of media stuff and there is only one person to do it, that's where I come in. I spoke with the guy yesterday and he was thrilled to have the help and I am thrilled to learn more and to stay current.  I am also giving my talents to a couple of non-profit organizations. I felt like it was the right thing to do and whenever I do go on an interview it won't look like I have been doing nothing.

I have really come to realize that circumstances happened and there really is not much you can do about it. The only thing you can really do is react, positive or negative. Sometimes that reaction isn't just an immediate one, sometimes that one circumstance requires multiple reactions over a long period of time. Just because you reacted so negatively at the initial response of the circumstance doesn't mean every reaction that follows has to be negative. Growing up every time I was upset about something my dad would always tell me to turn that frown upside down. I feel like we have to do that with life. Turn the negative into a positive. Everything happens for a reason, even if we don't know what that reason in the beginning is, it will become more clear later on down the road. Or if you are like me, you know the reason why it happened and just decided that there had to be more to it but there isn't more, sometimes it just is what it is.

Checking it off

Today I can officially check off not smoking on my list of resolutions. I have reached my 21 day mark! Yay me! Today will also be a test of my strength and resistance. I am hanging out with my friend for the weekend and well she is a smoker. This should be fun, :( 

I am so looking forward to a weekend out and about. I haven't really done much since New Years. I have been in my little bubble and I am starting to get too comfortable in it. I am pretty excited about going and working with the homeless tomorrow too. I have a fairly decent size group coming with me. I find that when I am the most down and out that helping others just seems to really lift my spirits and makes me feel so much better.

On another note: the whole Vegan Fast thing is going a lot better. I guess my body has finally adjusted to the strange things I am eating. It's amazing that by eliminating sweets and meats I have ten times the energy that I had before. 

I finally feel like things are starting to be on the up and up. I feel like I am starting to really move on from my past.

Sometimes Change isn't Fun

This week I started this new diet/healthy eating thing, the whole Vegan Fast. It all sounds easy in writing but actually doing it is a challenge. The first part of the week I failed to actually start it. It wasn't until today while grocery shopping that I fully committed to the plan. I decided to get a vegetable burger instead of the real deal, no problem I like those. What I didn't count on was my body not liking them. I guess sometimes we try and change too much and our body doesn't like it. Even though my body/stomach had an adverse reaction to the food, I must continue on this challenge! 

I love how when you decide to reframe from eating certain foods you all the sudden find so many shows or ads about that one type of food. While cooking my veggie burger I sat down to watch what I thought was a cake challenge and it turned out to be some barbeque challenge, seriously! Of all things this show had to be all about meat and not just pork either, it had chicken and beef to, how cruel! I am starting to see that temptation is all around and it is how you react to it that determines your success with your goals. For now, I will resist you temptation, try me another day.

It's a Heart Thing

Hello Faithful Readers,
Last night was suppose to be an entry night but I got caught up in some wonderful conversations with friends and family and before I knew it it was 3:30 in the morning and I was exhausted of thinking. So change of plans.
Yesterday was an interesting day for me and a huge test. A good deal of my smoking was done while driving,  a 45 minute trip equaled 3 cigarettes for me. Yesterday I had a meeting at a friends house and it was 45 minutes away, that's fine. I didn't think much of it until I got in my car and smelled my former lifestyle, gross. I got out of the driveway and had to stop in the middle of the road to find a small bottle of air freshener hidden in my passenger door pocket, the smell was too overwhelming and I hated it. I made it there without having to stop at a gas station to pick up my favorite pack. But then there was the ride home and about halfway to my destination the air freshener had run out and I really needed to stop to get gas. While stopped at a light I look over at the car sitting next to me and there sat this hot guy in his mustang smoking a cigarette, I starred so long that I didn't realize the light had turned green. Needless to say my trip home did not involve a stop at the gas station! I couldn't do it, I was too weak and I would cave if I stopped. Even through the trials and doubt of my day trip I made it to and from without smoking a single cigarette!
I am a full believer in the statement that it takes 21 days to break or start a habit. So come the 21st "becoming a non-smoker" will receive a big check on my list of resolutions.
On another note, I know that many people make resolutions for the year and as the months go by the resolutions become less and less important, that's not the case for me. It is all about timing for me. I was already going through so much change, I left a great deal of friends behind when I moved back to Atlanta, I left my job, and I finally left my boyfriend, I left everything. 2009 was a year of leaving things, leaving Atlanta for Augusta, graduating school, leaving everything that I had grown so attached to and it hurt. For me in order to not feel the pain of losing those things I had to put my PR spin on it, make it into something better. So I decided that 2010 was going to be my PR spin, 2010 was a year of change. Everything that I left I knew in my heart needed to be let go of and all of my "resolutions" are things that my heart wants to change, it's just a matter of getting my mind and body to catch up with my heart. Last night while in deep conversation with some friends about life experiences, one of them said such a profound thing to me. When we want to change things we tend to try and change the things around us hoping that it will change the feelings in us but that is the wrong way. We have to change the insides before we can change the outside or we will fail. Now those are not his exact words but that is what I took from what he said. For those that really know me, you know how much I hate change, it really messes with my head. I have to have everything perfectly in order for me to feel at ease. So this whole process is really pushing me out of my comfort zone but onward I go.

This weeks begins a new chapter, one that I hate the effort of but love the results. I am going on what I would like to call a Vegan Fast. For 21 days if it doesn't grow from the ground, I'm not eating it. That means no meats, no dairy, NO CHEESE, and no eggs. Now I would go crazy if I did all of this at once, so I am going to do this in steps, this week no eggs, next week no meats and no eggs, and then week 3 none of them. I am hoping to go longer than the 21 days but we will have to see on that. It all sounds good on paper, lets see how it goes. None the less it should turn out some interesting blogs!

The Hunt continues

Hello faithful readers, not much going on lately. I have been sitting back doing a lot of reflecting. Reflecting on my life, my direction in it, and everything else about it. I am still on the massive hunt for a job. For the past 2 months I have said that I am not going to settle for some stupid job that I am going to hate but that was 2 1/2 months ago and I have yet found my "close to or on the road to my dream job", so now here I sit with a wonder astronomical bill from Sallie Mae and I am forced to make a decision. The decision being continue to wait it out and have a debt collector call me or settle for whatever is available (not in my desired field). Well, since I would like to maintain my less than perfect but still decent credit rating I guess I am going for option number two. Come Monday morning I will be finding a local temp agencies and putting in my application. All of this considered I am not upset, no tears have been shed in the process of making this decision. Money aside, this staying home doing nothing but cooking is so boring and not my kind of life. I am a busy person, who likes to stay busy. During this borecation I have found that being trapped in your own thoughts for too long can be very boring. I have even started questioning my career choice (which is something that I love very much) but the thought of being rejected by one more company is driving me insane. Something has got to be done to our job market, companies beg for people to submit resumes and yet they do nothing. No REAL response back about even receiving it, just some generic automatic response of receipt. This is ridiculous! And to top it off, all these jobs that say that the possible needs to be filled immediately and then calls you back 7 MONTHS LATER, there has to be laws against this. I now know the true disappointments of job hunting! Well, less nagging and more hunting. God speed...

It's a New Dawn, It's a New Day!

It is a new dawn and a new day! Well after my last posting things are starting to look and feel a lot better. I recently heard one of my favorite songs by Michael Buble- Feeling Good. As I sat back and listened to the words I realized that it really applied to me and what parts didn't apply I was going to make it apply. It is a new day and a new life for me. My favorite part is "and this old world is a new world and a bold world for me".  After sitting at my computer playing the song over and over again until I knew every word, suddenly a sense of freedom came over me and I realized that I am feeling good. I have decided that the moment I start to have that bad feeling creep in that I will stop and say freedom is mine and I know how I feel and I feel good. Thank you Anthony Newley for these inspirational lyrics.

 

The Calm before the storm

Today was a difficult day, for no reason but it was. I had no temptations to smoke but there was no lack of problems. I started my morning randomly bursting into tears, for no reason, over the stupidest thing. And as long as I kept busy through out the day I was fine. I tried everything to avoid the unknown upsetting emotion inside of me; I cooked, I made candles from old candles, I sewed, and then I cooked again, but the moment I sat down to watch a movie with my family it was like the tears were waiting for an excuse to come out. After time with my family had ended and my alone time began the tears overtook me. I just started cluelessly balling. I started to realize that it is my overwhelming frustration that has built up inside of me begging for release that overcame my stubbornness. I also realized that I am apparently going through another stage of grief, depression. As like every person that deals with some sort of loss in their life we think that we are the exception to the rule, it wasn't until I looked up the stages of grief that I realized that I was dealing with them. I didn't realize it because before every stage there was the calm feeling deep inside that made me feel that I was over everything and then another stage hit. Well, today depression hit. Thanks! And it really makes me mad. Why you say, this is normal. Not for me. I pride myself on being able to hold my head up high and keep smiling through everything. I was able to for years in my terrible relationship, why not now? It makes it all the more frustrating for me. I know that life is not fair and I am not looking for a pity party but why is it that good people get hurt and bad people get all the riches of the world.
One of the things I have been doing is working with the homeless and the last outreach I worked this man walked up to me and was thoroughly upset with what we were doing for these people. This man had a warm, nice house in a not so cheap area of town and he was so mean to these people that had nothing but the the things in their hands and these are good people, that have had misfortune find them, yet this man was willing to destroy this brief moment of happiness we were bringing, why? Because it was out of his comfort zone. This man really upset me. I just don't understand people. This story reminded me of how mean people can be to undeserving people.
Back to the stages of grief. I was really shocked to read through the stages. Not because I had never heard of them before, but because I saw scenarios of my life playing out as I read each stage. The good thing is depression is number 4 out the 5 and number 5 is the one I long for, Acceptance.
In reading this article on grief two interesting things stood out to me. The first one being "nurture yourself, no one else can do it but you". Wow, for years I have been so focused on taking care of someone else that I forgot how to nurture myself and the past couple of months I have been turning to other sources of nurturing. The other point was "Allow yourself to grieve and give yourself as much time as you need to adjust to what has happened". This stood out to me because I have been trying to rush the process, convincing myself over and over again that I am over it, but I'm not. The one thing that keeps me going is knowing that one day I will truly be over it and abundantly happy again.

For once in my life knowledge is comfort.

Days 6 & 7

Well I am finishing out the 1st week of my Resolutions Project and so far I am happy to say that I have not smoked at all! I am really surprised! There have been cravings here and there but I have pushed right through them, with a little help of my friend named food. On the downside, I feel like I have gain about 50 pounds trying to overcome this goal which is a problem seeing how I am suppose to be losing weight not the other way around. No problem, really?!?! I think I will continue to push off the losing weight thing for another month, secretly I am just dreading it. The problem with losing weight is it typically cost money and well I have none. And the other problem is I am an extremely picky eater, but I enjoy food. So I will be turning to you all for some creative problem-solving on that front, but that's another week, still focusing on the not smoking and 10 other things.

On another note, I have had some major set backs to this moving on thing. I was feeling good and wasn't really thinking about all the memories until yesterday. I had a strange dream that involved him and it was like a flood of memories came rushing in, some good and bad. I felt like I was going through the whole ordeal over again and I hate that. My mind plays the memories like movies in my head over and over and over again and I just want to press stop on the remote but I can't. I am really struggling with this and I have no clue how to make it go away? I guess I am really searching for some advice from those that have been through this. What should I do?

The Journey Continues

Well days 4 and 5 have passed and I have yet to have a cigarette. It's amazing the things your body goes through trying to purge out the toxins you so easily pumped in for years. This week I have been sick and moody. I have stayed in my bedroom for the better part of the day. I would probably cause more harm than good. Day 5 was the worst so far. I was alone all day and would of loved nothing more than to drink my coffee and smoke my cigarette but I did neither, instead I read, all day. Reading has become my new addiction so to speak. Since nothing else seems to be working out for the moment, I enjoy spending my day lost in some fantasy world reading of the problems each character is facing instead of truly reflecting on my own. Why not, their problems are much less depressing than mine. I figure that once I am done with this book, my body will be done detoxing and I can regain the energy I once had to actually do something with my day.

Aside from the not smoking, I haven't really done much about the other resolutions. Some seem like mountains that I am not prepared to climb, others mountains I am just sitting at the top of wondering where to go from here.

I feel that I am at some what of a stand still with the moving on part of my life. Thoughts of the past enter in here and there throughout the day but don't seem to really faze me but what is next? What else is there to do to move on? I feel like I have done all the physical things I can do to move on. Move from a different state, rid myself of all the things that create painful memories, yet I still feel lost. What else is there to do? I guess just wait, let time really heal me. It feels like a wound with a bandage over it, it keeps itching and I am so ready for the band aid to come off but yet I am still worried that if I remove it that I will expose the wound to the harsh surroundings it's not ready for. For now I will wait and let more time pass until I know for sure this wound has fully healed.

The Art of Quitting Smoking

Well days 2 and 3 were fun. I haven't had a cigarette since New Years night (go me)! I would be lying if I said it hasn't been hard, it has been extremely hard. I came to realize when I woke up yesterday morning that it wasn't the nicotine that I was addicted to, it's the ritual of the act. Every morning I get up and grab the dogs leash and grab a cigarette. Smoking allowed me to escape the boredom of walking my dog in the freezing cold or the burning heat of the summer! There are only about 3 situations that make me want to smoke; boredom, stress, & socializing. By eliminating those situations in my life I should have no problem quitting, right. But Houston we have a problem, those 3 small situations that prompt me to smoke are life. I can't change or eliminate those things from my life. I just need something else to concentrate on.  I fully prepared myself with 15 packs of gum (no lie) to supplement for my other craving. So instead of concentrating on my smoke rings, I concentrated on not biting my tongue or cheek. Great, I made it through the morning. Now I really tested myself by dealing with a stressful situation, which stress is a major trigger for me. I went to visit my grandmother in the hospital, she was in a crowded room of family. I love them but it can be stressful. Well again with lots of pieces of gum I failed to have a single cigarette the entire time. By the time we got home I was so exhausted that I rushed my dog out for a quick walk and wasn't even slightly tempted to smoke.
Today I woke up feeling like crap and craving a cigarette and hoping that the headache would go away. I spent most of my day in bed sick, probably withdraws, and reading. The cravings are becoming less evil but they still exist. So in a nutshell, Days 2 & 3 finished successfully, lets hope that the next month continues the same way.

Aside from quitting smoking there are 11 other resolutions to complete. Today I did something really difficult. I decided that in order for me to move on that I needed to delete some photos of my past. It's bad enough having the memories but to see them on a daily basis is really hard. So today I deleted them, oh there was hesitation but once the window popped up with the "Are you really sure you want to delete this" question, every trace of hesitation was gone. Once I pressed okay a soothing feeling came over me, like I had fully closed that chapter in my life. If only deleting photos allowed me to complete this resolution, I wish. I'm not sure what step in the process will be the deciding one on which I know that this resolution will be complete, I kind of figured that I will just know.

Well enough deep thinking for now, more sleep is needed.