BE A DO-ER

I was sitting on the couch after work one day when a restless feeling washed over me. I was a woman possessed, in need of something to do besides stare at moving pictures on screens. Life can somehow warp into this mindless repetitiveness where you feel as though you are doing the same things over and over, day after day, and suddenly I had had enough of it.

It's not as though my life is terribly mundane and it's not as though I never do any new things, but it was just feeling all sorts of one tracked and I needed an excuse to step out of the flow. So I got up off the couch and I boiled some water in a pot and I poured it into these old candles I had laying around telling myself for forever that one day I was going to clean them out.

And at that moment, something dawned on me.

Something that I should have realized a bit sooner in life and something that I'm mildly embarrassed to admit right now. But that would be the idea of "stop talking about doing it and just do it already."

Everyone always says things like "Oh, I really want to do that" or "Hey, this is on my bucket list! I should do this!" or "eventually I want to go to here and do this thing."

Well you know what? You're never gonna check things off your bucket list simply by saying that you want to do the thing on the list. You have to actually go do the thing. I tell you, it was the strangest of ah-ha moments because I kind of just wanted to smack myself on the head and go "well, duh Ralph."

So I did clean out those candles. And then I figured out how to peel the labels off so they are pretty glass jars now. And then I went and bought stuff to make sugar scrub to put in my nice clean candle jars as a gift.

And since then, I have been doing the things on my Pinterest boards instead of just letting them sit out there in the land of the internet waiting for that magical "someday" to appear on the horizon. Someday doesn't exist though. It's a thing that we've made up in our heads. I love the quote I've read a billion times in the way of fitness motivation that says "there are seven days in the week and someday isn't one of them." I mean, preach it sister.

Also, among my duh, Ralph epiphanies, is that when I am doing these things that I have been saying I will get around to doing for forever, there is this incredible sense of accomplishment that comes along with it. There is just something about being able to cross things off the list or put them in the "done" pile, or whatever your preferred method of organization be.

I've found that I am happier for having accomplished making/creating things instead of accomplishing finishing all the series of TV shows in my Netflix queue. In addition to my jars, I designed a pair of kick ass shoes for my roommate as well as the new spring coffee menu at work, made cold-brewed coffee, and tried some new recipes.

If my goal is to live a joy-filled year, this is definitely the direction I want to keep pursuing. I want to be a do-er instead of a say-er.

REFLECTION

As the year starts drawing to a close, I seem to always get more reflective and thankful about life. The serenity of a snow laden landscape, the sun setting behind the rolling hills of the Palouse on a long drive home, and the calmness of the music playing softly through my car's stereo speakers all come together in such a perfect way, indescribable with words. It makes me all sorts of nostalgic.

I was remembering my life for this past year and what a crazy roller coaster it's been. It's funny to me, that as you go through life you often forget what life was like a month ago. A year ago. Three years ago. Who were you then? What were you doing? Who was important? Where did you live?

And holy buckets you guys, I have come so far. When I started this blog* I was a freshman in college. I was just a little baby, embarking on the adventure of my life with no idea of the obstacles I would face or the path I would choose. I was wide eyed and innocent, not even eighteen years old. Now here I am, twenty-three and graduated with a full time teaching position.

Sometimes I wish I could go back and do it all over. But then I think about all the papers I had to write and projects I completed, paperwork I filled out, and I'm glad I'm on the other side of all that. We tend to glorify the past, only remembering the good parts and forgetting the painful ones. College was such a fun time in my life, for the most part. But there was a lot of crap I went through too, and college hurt a lot. It forced me to grow, it helped shape my journey.

College was full of life lessons to learn. It was full of relationships, with boys and girls who were older and younger than me. I had to navigate situations I'd never been through before. I had to learn who to trust and when to let go. My time at the university taught me so much more than just academics, it taught me life. And for that, I am thankful.

There is a lot in my life, actually, that I am thankful for this year. Because it's November, a lot of my friends and family are posting everyday the different things that make them grateful. I haven't been doing that, and I'm not sure why. But here are some things that I'm thankful for everyday:

My family. Without their support I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today. I know that we don't always see eye to eye on everything, but I do know that they will love me no matter what.

My friends. There are people on this planet who aren't related to me and yet will still always be around. That is comforting beyond words, especially for a quiet little introvert like me.

My boyfriend. That boy does not know how special he is to me on so many levels.

My pup. I love that little Lottie dog more than I know how to express. She's just the cutest.

My job. This is the toughest thing I've ever gone through and some days I really feel like walking away but I know that this is where I'm supposed to be. At least for the moment. And plus, my coworkers and students are generally pretty awesome. This school is a great environment to be in everyday.

The weekends. I love those precious days in between work weeks. Especially when I get to share them with Nathan. It just doesn't feel like the weekend when we're not together.

My life. This adventure that I'm on is beautiful. Everyday I get to make new memories in this unique journey that God has blessed me with. I can't remember a time when everything was easy, but all the pieces fit together to make this beautiful picture. I don't get to see the whole thing just yet, but even the ugly parts of life are used to make the whole thing pretty darn rad.

Happy November, guys.

(ps here's a poem that i wrote a couple years ago. i just found it in my archives. it's a gem)

*i just realized that yesterday was the five year anniversary of my little blog! high five!

ROUGH OCTOBERS

So Octobers are difficult months, I've come to the conclusion. Driving back home from parent/teacher conferences tonight, I was reflecting on the last year of my life. I never went to parent-teacher conferences as a student teacher, so tonight was a new experience.

I've said before that teaching is hard. Nathan hears it from me all the time - this is the hardest thing I've ever done. And first years are always the hardest. Even though I had a semester of student teaching, that's all I really had. One semester. And I was never really fully in charge of my class either. I mean, it was a great experience, but it doesn't fully prepare you to take on a classroom all your own.

I remember last October in particular. It was the busiest and hardest month of my student teaching. I was writing this absolutely stupidly huge lesson plan for three consecutive lessons that built on the same concepts and were obscenely large in their required fields of information. Way more information was requested on the school mandated lesson plan form than my principal has EVER asked of me to show him. And then there was also the TPA, where I not only had to video myself teaching a lesson and crop it down to a ten minute segment, but then I also had to reflect on how the lesson went, how the students reacted and what I would change about the lesson had I needed to reteach it to the same group of students and also how I would change it to teach it to a new group of students. I mean, talk about a headache.

And then there's this past October. Dudes, it was the worst probably. I went home and cried on multiple occasions. I got in a mildish case of trouble with my vice principal, and while he didn't yell at me, he was very firm. Students are not supposed to wear hats and I needed to grow a spine. ouch. Plus, my students were just pushing my buttons every which way I turned. I kept trying new methods, different seating charts, different punishments, and things would work for a little while and then I'd be back to square one. I was a little at a loss for everything and I just kind of wanted to quit.

I think that's part of why I was a little nervous for tonight. After how October went, I just kind of feel like it knocked me on my butt and that all the parents would somehow know that I sucked as a teacher.

What surprised me though, was that there are students who are enjoying my class and they go home and talk about how they like art and that I'm one of their favorite teachers and wow. I really needed to hear that. Lately I just feel like I'm maybe not ready for this job and that perhaps I'm a little too incompetent to be a teacher. October had way more bad days than good ones, so I felt like I was losing it.

But tonight, tonight I felt like maybe I didn't suck as bad as I thought I did. And it forced me to realize that I have some really talented students who really do enjoy my class, so I must be doing something right. Right? Hopefully November will be a nice change of pace. I know it will still be challenging, I just want to feel like maybe I have my feet underneath me.

I suppose I'm getting there, but we're always our own worst critic. But just like I had to make myself become a runner, I also have to make myself become a teacher. I'm going to conquer this hill if it kills me, you know? Shoot.

be brave

I am not good about keeping up with new year resolutions. Actually, I kind of hate the idea and I know I am far from alone in that. So I tried something completely new last year and ended up really enjoying the way things played out for me. I picked a theme word for 2012 - Explore.

During the year I was intent on exploring myself. In the early months of the year I was exploring beautiful things about my personality, my likes, my dislikes. Having just come out of a relationship it was a good experience for me - exploring myself as myself with just myself for company.

The middle months of the year became about exploring the transition from being independent and on my own to moving back into my parents' household and starting my last semester of college - student teaching. There were a lot of challenges, some that I had foreseen and some that caught me completely off guard.

Towards the end of the year, as graduation drew closer and then became just a memory, life was more about exploring what happened once school no longer ruled my life and homework was nonexistent. I also started to explore myself again in a relationship that I originally didn't realize would last as long as it has.

Now 2012 is over and I am in need of a new word. I'm partially tempted to pick the same word because "explore" worked so well for me last year. But this year is starting off with some issues I've never navigated before and I'm struggling to find a word that will help me get through all of this.

I threw around words like trust and acceptance and create. Discover, hope, or dream? This year is the first year since I was a child that I have not had to go to school. Worrying about report cards and passing tests is a thing of the past. Now I worry about having to pay back all my student loans and cover the cost of my car insurance. So the word I choose has to be challenging and different, because that's what I'm staring in the face with all these new obstacles.

At first trust seemed like the obvious choice, since, you know, things. The more I thought about it though, the more I became unsure of whether or not that was really what I wanted to challenge myself with this year. It's something I need to work on, but I don't know if I want to give it the confines of 365 days. Which just sort of left me floating with nothing really to fall back on.

Being at a loss for what to do next, I looked up the word trust on thesaurus.com just to see what would happen. I found the word confidence listed among the synonyms. Confidence was a good start, but not quite all the way there. So I clicked on it, and that took me to a list of synonyms for confidence. Which is where I found the word courage and this little light bulb went off in my head.

Courage.

I need to make this year about having the courage to do the right thing, the necessary thing, the different thing, and sometimes even the thing that I don't want to do. I need to have boldness and braveness when it comes to making decisions about my life and my future. Right now this year is full of possibilities for me to be brave and opportunities for me to show courage.

Whether it's having the guts to take a blind leap of faith or just being confident enough to go through life with a purpose, I need to have the courage to do things and stuff and the like. I know there is a purpose for me and for my life, but I just haven't found it yet. So let this year be about becoming a courageous person who lives life on purpose.

a little trust goes a long way

I was thinking the other day about all sorts of things that roll around inside my wonderfully messy head, and sometimes when I get to thinking, I do way too much of it and get way too anxious about stuff and things that shouldn't really matter as much as I make them out to. And then I think, but don't we all?

My heart starts to beat really fast and my palms get sweaty and then I just get a little bit more agitated than I should be when I find myself thinking about certain things. Most of the time it deals with trusting people, or making sure that I get this turned in on time, or remembering the order of upcoming events. Usually with the latter two is when I start writing things down, making lists so that I can see in a visual manner what exactly is happening. It never seems to turn out as bad as I convince myself that it is, so there you go.

But then I find myself not writing about the other things, the things that I once wrote about when no one read my blog except my aunt and some anonymous internet souls and I didn't feel the need to really sensor what words flew from my finger tips. Now I find myself avoiding writing about certain topics because once I write them, I kind of let myself move on a little bit and I don't want to necessarily have a conversation about them later. I mean, unless I start on the topic myself.

To get to the point of this post though, I realized something on my drive home from work the other day. It's probably something that I should have realized a long time ago, and maybe part of me did, but I never put words to it until recently.

Worrying about something that may or may not happen is a total and complete waste of time. If that something was going to happen anyway, spending time and energy having a great deal of anxiety about that matter isn't going to do any good for anyone. I have no control over it. None. Zero.

To back track for a second, I used to worry about PC all the time towards the end of our relationship. I would sneak into his phone and read his texts because I knew he was hiding things from me. I knew he was lying about things that he didn't want me to find out - and it mostly dealt with his feelings for other girls. I think what hurt the most out of that was the fact that he couldn't just man up and tell me what was going on - he kept lying to me. Saying things like "no, I don't like her like that" and "we're just friends" and then when I found out that wasn't really what was going on, I was devastated, That's when I finally just quit talking to him and promised myself I would never do that in another relationship.

Consequently, those feelings have followed me around. They tucked themselves neatly into this little dark corner of a dusty old suitcase and stayed put. When I was with SVI they never crept back up because that relationship was so not serious that I really wasn't affected by how he felt about other girls. But lately I have been struggling to keep those pesky little emotions in check. I find myself making small jokes about "don't hit on too many girls while you're out tonight" in order to get a little reassurance that I feel like I should be strong enough not to need.

But I found myself in the car on the way home from work thinking about what all I've gone through in life and relationships and how they affect me, and I came to this conclusion: there's nothing I can do about the actions of other people. I don't control them. Not like I try to control other people, I am actually a pretty laid back person almost sometimes to the point of annoyance, but I just let worries about the future occasionally bog me down.

So I decided something. I decided that I'm not going to let fear of being lied to control my life. If something is going to happen, no amount of my worrying is going to change that so why waste my time? Instead I just want to relax and enjoy the events that happen in my life. I have to relearn to trust people again, but even though it sometimes feels incredibly difficult, it's not impossible. And once I decided that, I felt a lot better.

Ultimately God is in control, whether you choose to believe that or not. It's sometimes hard to have faith in His timing or see why certain things are happening to you, but in the end it somehow always works out for the better. I seem to wrestle with trusting Him and trusting people a lot more than I should, but if I just let things go, not only am I a happier person, but things always seem to find a solution. It's not an easy walk, but always worth it.

i am awesome, hear me roar

One of the youth leaders at our church built a rock climbing haven in his basement. I have been there twice, climbing along different trails and doing things of epic proportions that no mere mortal would be able to conquer. But being awesome runs in the family, so there you have it. So does modesty, I promise.

TheKeeper's college roommate is here for a visit, so he tagged along too as well as another good friend. We were distracted from the holds on the walls and didn't do a ton of actual climbing this time because we found holds that were suspended from the ceiling with ropes...and well, we used them for more interesting things like dangling upside down from one arm rather than for aiding our mad climbing skillz, yo.

We finished the day up with some delicious Panda Express, with the orange chicken and mandarin chicken and a side of chow mien, please. And just in case you were wondering what the Panda has to say about such matters as love and romance, here you go:

What I've Learned

Source: tumblr.com via Llysa on Pinterest

I honestly haven't been thinking about making any new year's resolutions this year. In fact, that hadn't even crossed my mind until I dug back through my archives looking for my post about last year's new year's day. I had stated that I wanted to forget all about 2010 and move forward with 2011 since that was sure to be a better year. I wanted to just be myself this last year - no tricks, no smoke and mirrors. And that didn't really work out for me the way that I thought it would. Oh, it worked all right, it just did it in a way that I hadn't anticipated. It knocked me on my butt cold and hard and fast. And it took a while to recuperate.

In January a really big, really bad thing happened that I fought with and cried over and wanted to die from. It was earth-shattering unto my soul and my heart and my head. I looked at the situation unfairly and I spent my time dragging my feet, trying not to move on. I talked a good talk but I didn't always walk a good walk. My head wanted to be in the right place, but my heart wasn't ready for that yet.

This went on for months, too. I wasn't myself, and I didn't want to be. I also didn't really know how to be myself either. I had based so much of who I was on the relationship that I had been in, that I really did just forget how to be me. I kept trudging forward though, making baby steps that deep down I didn't want to make, but I knew I had to. I was holding on too tight to something that just needed to be let go.

On the plus side, I dropped fifteen pounds like it was no body's business.

Then before I knew it, it was summer time. I spent my days learning the subtle art of watercolor and cooking meals for PC. I still hadn't fully recovered, but I was happier with where I was in life. Except that I kept hoping things would right themselves the way I wanted them to. Yeah, that never happened. But I kept hoping. I would cross my fingers and wish on stars and I prayed about it a lot. But I kept finding out things that were being hidden from me, lies that I had been told, and looking back now I don't honestly understand why it is that I held on so long hoping things would change. Things would never change the way I thought they would. Life didn't go where I wanted it to.

The end of June I finished my class up and celebrated with friend by going to a party where I met Somebody-Very-Important. We flirted and talked and hung out all of July and when I got back from my trip to Honduras he wanted to make our relationship official. So I went with it. I really liked him. He was the first guy that had got my attention since my big split with PC and I liked the way I felt when I was with him. I liked the way treated me and how he spoke to me. And the fact that he paid for me whenever we went out didn't hurt his cause either. I had been so used to driving everywhere and paying for everything and being the rock in an unsteady relationship that it took a little bit of time for me to be comfortable with the new flow of things - but they were flowing the way that I wanted them to instead of feeling like I was swimming upstream all the time.

PC was still floating around in my life until the biggest lie I'd ever been told came to the surface. I found out things that I had thought would never happen to me - no, it couldn't be. I didn't want it to be that way. He had done some things behind my back that he told me he wasn't doing to my face and then he tried to blame me for finding out - telling me I had been too nosy, that he was only trying to be my friend and I wouldn't let him, when in fact it had been the other way around. And once this had all come out, I couldn't just sit there and let it roll over me like I had done in the past. This time I had to do something about it. PC was interfering with my relationship with Somebody-Very-Important and I had still not completely let him go.

So that's what I did. I shut off all communication with him. I wasn't friends with him on facebook, I didn't instant message him, and I quit answering his text messages. It took me a few weeks to get the courage to go pick up the stuff I had left at his apartment, and when I did that I made sure I didn't have to see him when I came over. It was only after I completely cut him out of my life that I was able to really move forward.

Source: babywalters.blogspot.com via Mindy on Pinterest

I learned how strong I can really be and I figured out who really cares about me. I decided about things that I do like and things that I don't. I don't worry about stepping on toes or making anybody mad. I do what I want, when I want, with who I want. I am myself. I've learned that it's okay to not like all of the same things that the person you are dating likes. I've learned that you don't have to be serious with someone to have fun with them. I've learned that this is my life and I get to do whatever I want with it.

I have a better relationship with Jesus now that I'm not in a toxic, suffocating relationship with someone who doesn't want to be with me. I got to take a missions trip to a foreign country. I have tried new things and I have met new people. So even though I absolutely detested the way this year started, the ending to 2011 is much better than I would have ever thought possible.

This December I am a happy 21 year old with loads of new friends and my own personality and my only resolution for 2012 is to keep exploring myself. I'm not going to expect anything from this next year and I'm not going to set any precedents, I'm just going to let 2012 be 2012 and see where life takes me. A lot is going to change for me this next year - I will move back in with my parents and graduate school and then after that I will just have to see where Jesus takes me. But I know that whatever happens I will always have God and a plethora of people who love me just the way I am even if I don't like myself.

Source: Uploaded by user via Ashley on Pinterest

So Happy New Year to all of you, may 2012 be exactly the year you need.