Where to start?

So I feel like I am doing renovations, on myself that is. I am looking at myself kind of like a house, you look around see some little things you want to change and then the list gets longer and longer and well, longer. I started wanting to do just a few things to make a better me, then I stepped back and looked at myself and noticed that who I was wasn't anything that I thought I really was. I had picked up all these bad habits and just didn't like many things about myself. Now I am not one of those people who feels that in order to feel better about yourself you need to constantly beat yourself up, that's just not my style. I feel that if you don't like something about yourself, do something about it. So last year I started on the journey to "do something about it". As I started on the renovations of myself, inside and out, I did accomplish many of the goals that I set out to conquer, but there were a few that I sat there and looked at and I just can't figure out where to start. I know that in home renovations there may, and possibly will, come a time when you just can't do the work, you need to hire someone else to do it for you or with you. But what if you are too stubborn to hire someone else, you are determined to do it ALL on your own? That is one of the problems I am facing, especially when it comes to my weight. I have struggle my entire life trying to be thin and be a healthy weight but it seems like the more I try the further from my goal I get. One of my biggest problems is I want to be able to continue to enjoy food and not hate myself every time I eat something I want. Now because I have struggle my entire life I have a great understanding of every diet out there, I understand portion control, exercise, good foods and bad foods for you. I have done it all with little to no results. I'm not looking for an easy out, I just want to do something that allows me to still enjoy food and not worry about the pounds. My best friend and I have had many conversations about this particular issue, why is it that society puts so much pressure on people to be thin? It's every where, especially right now with the new year rolling in.  I don't want to live the rest of my life counting every calorie that I consume. Why is it that we are in a constant state of worry or stress. We stress about our jobs, our finances, our health, our weight... everything. Going to Italy really put this all into perspective for me, I want as little stress in my life as possible.  Maybe I should just move to Italy then I will be thin, if only. 

So when I sat down to determine what my goals for this year were going to be, at first all the ones I wrote down sounded cool but then yesterday I looked over them and thought, "What was I thinking?" Yes I want to do all these things but my goodness where do you even begin with some of these things? I guess that's why I decided to have a paradigm shift from resolutions to goals. Resolutions you just write down all the things you want to do differently; goals on the other ahead you have to determine the steps and specifics needed to achieve you goals. I guess right now I am in the process of trying to figure out all the steps for all my goals, I have a feeling that is going to take a lot of time and thought.

On a side note: Just then when I was thinking about all of this change, I realized that many people may think that people decide to change because they are unhappy. That is not the case at all for me. I am happy. I would be perfectly content with myself the way I am, I have accepted myself the way I am but and this is a big but, I would like to change some things about myself. I don't think that there is anything wrong with wanting to change things about yourself. For me the main reason I want to change is because I want to get even more out of life, I want to truly live life to the fullest and by not changing I feel like I am being held back. So that was me setting the record straight, :)

So to end today's verbal mind spill the things I need to do are sit down and decide an action plan for each of my goals. 

A New Year, A New Set of Goals!

Hello 2011 & peace out 2010,

2010 was a great year but 2011 is going to knock my socks off I can tell it! So for the new year I have some new resolutions, which will now be known as goals. You see resolutions over the past years have gotten a bad rap, they are not known for their longevity but goals on the other hand never make you feel like a failure. No matter what you do you are making actions towards accomplishing your goals, hence the new resolution/goals project. Goals require steps to accomplish them, an action plan. So in tonights blog I will layout all my goals then later on create action plans for each one. Goals require specifics.
So without further delay I present to you my faithful friends and readers my 2011 Resolutions/Goals!
1)Loss a specified (unmentioned) amount of weight
2)Stop being so lazy
3)Focus on my appearance- I feel my best when I look my best
4) Write at least 1 hour a week, aside from my blog.
5) Deal with controlling my anger issues
6)Transition to being self employed
7)Being 100% self sufficient
8) work more with other non-profits
9) find more healthier outlets to relax
10) learn Italian
11) travel more
12)try something new once a month
Lastly 13) continue with 2010 goals!

Super excited about the new year and continuing the new me!

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!