Update time!

I know that you are all on pins and needles!

Well, when I last checked in with this blog thingie, I was having anxiety

through the roof about all of the crazy stuff that was going on in my life. I'm pleased to announce that Sally the Car made it through graduation and is still rolling forward. She had her oil changed today. Dad seems to think that there is not as much wrong

with her as I seem to think, and I trust his judgement, which has given me a little bit of confidence.

Life has slowed down in the last week or two. Largely because I finished school and my internship and the only thing troubling me now is my current job and what to do in terms of future jobs. That and writing my Chinese New Years resolutions- which are going to be Chinese New Years resolutions because I didn't prepare for them in time for American New Year (and yes, "stop procrastinating" will be included on my list).

In other news:

I have a Masters Degree in Social Work!!!!

Can you believe it? Me!? A master?! To all those people who thought I'd never graduate: ha ha!!

My mommy and daddy needed to see this to believe it, so they flew in for my graduation

It was a lovely graduation ceremony; very short and sweet. There were only 16 of us graduating, and it was nice. It felt very personal and intimate.

The advice that the speaker gave to us was something along the lines of: "When the going gets hard, and you don't feel like you are making a difference, think back and remember what motivated you to pursue social work in the first place." I thought that was particularly poignant. I was motivated to pursue social work while working at a summer camp in New York in 2004. It was an amazing experience, and I learned a great deal about the suffering and sadness that exists in the world and in our own country.

I learned a lot about people, and how I want to make changes that will make this world a better place, and a safer place for my children to grow up. Ultimately, I went into social work because of my belief that all children deserve happiness, and it is the children who suffer the most when the world has problems.

Mostly, I went into social work because I wanted to help people. And sometimes we get caught in the day-to-day actions that don't really seem to make that much of a difference. I will try to remember all of the reasons I did this when the going gets tough.

Now that I have a little bit more breathing room, I want to figure out what I want this blog to become. It has always just been my little space to write my thoughts, but I have a hard time keeping up with it. I wonder if I would be better at just writing in a journal the old fashioned way. What I really want is for my writing to have purpose and meaning, but what should the purpose be? I'm feeling compelled to take this blog in a new direction, but I am lacking the compass to help me decide which direction is best. Thoughts?

Anxious...

Lately I’ve been anxious. About everything. Literally everything. I’ve started to read catastrophic implications into minor occurrences in my life.  I blame the cast of Grey’s Anatomy.  That show is way too dramatic! It is addicting and I don’t even like it!

Example one: Sally the Car is going in for new part on Monday. After she got her oil changed last Saturday, the mechanic told me she needs a new part (something about a control arm). So ever since then, I‘ve been having visions of me and Sally plunging off a cliff because the control arm fails. The old me would have been mildly concerned, but driven as usual until I had time to get her in.  The current me is so anxious that I have refused to drive Sally for the last three days. I’ve started to wonder how I will be able to get to work without a car, and if I will lose my job because of it, or if I will not be able to make it to the last couple weeks of school because of it. The mechanic will see her on Monday at 8 am. He is 50 miles away. So let us all pray that Sally is able to make it those 50 miles.

Example two: I’ve also had a lot of people yell at me lately. Now, as my mother will attest to, my definition of “yell” does not actually imply a raised voice; it implies people using a forceful tone to tell me something that I don’t want/need to hear. But it still frustrates me. The old me would take it all in stride, but recently those things have made me anxious. Instead of blowing it off, the current me has started to worry about my job, my school, my success as a social worker, and a number of other things.

I used to be the most easygoing person in the world, but the last few weeks I’ve started to feel differently. What gives? Could it just be all the changes in my life right now? Will things calm down? Or will this just be the way it is?

Happy Birthday to Me!

This is my fourth blog post with that title. I suppose it has become tradition. I still have to resist the urge to repeat the phrase “I live in a tree” after every time I say “Happy Birthday to me.” I’m still not sure where that urge comes from.

Let’s see, it has actually not been a very eventful year. Not as eventful as last year. Or the year before that. Slightly more eventful than the year before that.

So, without further adieu, let’s do this thing.

Since October 14, 2010, I have:

Survived what has been indisputably the most stressful year of my life without pulling my hair out, taking my life, or curling up into a ball and hiding under my bed. You might be rolling your eyes, but try going to graduate school while working 30 hours a week, interning another 20, and waking up at the crack of dawn to teach early morning seminary. No complaints, but it was definitely the most stressful year of my life.

Taken a road trip to Vegas in my grandma’s mini-van. Because nothing says “super fun road trip” like a Honda Odyssey.

Moved to North Carolina! Greensboro is a great place. Target is only a hop, skip, and a jump away. It is exactly halfway between my internship and school and work. Now if I can just convince my car to continue to function for a few more months. Every time I go to Raleigh, Durham, or Chapel Hill, I think to myself: “I really want to live here!” If only I could convince the job gods to find me a position there.

Lived off of my food storage for 2.5 months and counting. Never again will I make fun of those provident living Relief Society lessons.

Acquired a niece. I kind of like it when people automatically assume she’s my daughter. She’s extremely cute.

Trained for my third triathlon. Okay, so it was the second triathlon I have actually trained for, but it will be the third one I will compete in. The tri begins in T-minus one day. Here’s to last place!

Gone for 286 days and counting without drinking anything other than water and milk.

Gone for 105 days and counting without eating sugary junk food and desserts. I am taking the day off for my birthday though.

So, here’s to me. Happy birthday to me! And for those of you who don’t know, I share a birthday with Dwight D. Eisenhower. And Usher. And Ralph Lauren. Good to know.

I hope that the next year will be even better than the last. It sure seems like it will. I have graduation to look forward to, and hopefully getting a full time job, which might mean I am able to save some money or something like that. As for concrete plans for the future after graduation… well, for the first time in a long time, the future feels like an empty book. The next few years of my life could take me in any number of different directions, and it will be interesting to see what happens.

Bloggers

Even though I've kept this blog for over three years, I don't really consider myself "a blogger." Probably because few of my friends and family members blog themselves, and even fewer of them read my blog. I've never really blogged for the comments; I've mostly just blogged because I have things to say.

Lately though, I've been reading a great deal of personal blogs, and I have been starting to see blogging as a legitimate way to exercise my creativity. I find it somewhat inspiring to read blogs about the lives of people I've never met, but to see how much purpose and soul goes into their storytelling. I don't know if I can be that person who shares so much of her personal life with the general public. Yeah, I know that by posting the details of my life on the internet, anyone is free to read about it. But few enough people actually do that I hardly feel like an open book. But there's just something magical about reading people's stories. It gives me insight on humanity. It reminds me that I am not as strange as I sometimes think I am. It reminds me that of all of those little things that I struggle with, there is someone out there who has struggled before. I love those moments when I read someones blog and I think to myself: "You do that too!? I thought I was the only one!!"

I think I want to become a blogger. Rather than just having a blog, I think I want to be one of those people who helps to connect the world through the sharing of unique experiences. I'm not looking for more readers per se, but I am looking to improve my blog and improve my writing habits. I'm not entirely sure I have the discipline and the guts to take the time to share my stories, but I am going to try and see what happens.

In the meantime, here are a few links that have inspired my recent personal blog fetish. Do you have any that you would like to share with me?

HopefulLeigh, a blog about Christianity, singleness, and life in the south
Loralee's Looney Tunes, a blog about parenting, death, and raising boys
The Jacksons, a blog about grief and loss
The Nienie Dialogues, a blog about parenting, overcoming tragedy

Don't worry; I'm sure I'll find more.

Wish me luck!

Sally the Car

This is not my actual car, but a stand-in.

Sally is my wonder car. Unfortunately, Sally has been feeling less than wonderful lately. In April, I found out that Sally had leaks in her radiator. A week later, one of my hospice patients backed into her and left her with a couple of nice gouges in the bumper. I, being the nice car owner that I am, decided to use the insurance payout that the hospice patient got me to pay the remainder of my summer tuition. That same spring, a tree fell down in front of her and knocked out her antannae. In August, my work supervisor broke her door handle.

I have known for several months now that Sally is a hospice patient. That means that she is receiving comfort measures only (including regular oil changes and basic maintenance), and no aggressive treatment (which would include a transmission replacement or something of the like). I have been praying that Sally will simply last through my graduation, which is in 81 days (not that anyone is counting). Alas, it is appearing that Sally the wonder car does not have 81 days of life in her. I'm no mechanic, but she seems to be knocking on death's door.

This puts me into a predicament. I finally, by the skin of my teeth and using every last penny of my savings, paid my tuition for this semester. And now I think I will be having to buy a new car. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but probably soon.

I'm trying not to be mad at Sally. She has lived a tough life and has had her fair share of challenges. She has been a great friend and companion. And she, like me, is from Utah. So of course we are tough. I'm trying not to be mad at Sally, but she picked an inopportune moment to die. I wish she could have died after tomorrow, so that I can go to presentaion I am doing at my internship. And take my trip to WV that was planned for this weekend. But sometimes people pick bad times to die. Cars do too.

Sally may not be completely dead. I'm still waiting for the official pronouncement. But even if she is not dead, I don't think she has 81 days left. Let us celebrate the life of Sally the Car.

Tomorrow

I’ve hit a minor plateau in the triathlon training. To tell the truth, this week I have hit a minor plateau in the experience we call life.

I have gotten behind in my training, behind in my work, behind in school, and behind in my internship.

Pathetic? Yes. Paralyzing? No. In the immortal words of JoDee Messina: Tomorrow’s another day! And I’m thirsty anyway! So bring on the rain.

I am forcing myself to exercise in the morning before class tomorrow. Then I will force myself to pay attention in class (yeah right). Then I will force myself to spend tomorrow evening catching up on my reading for my Differential Diagnosis class.

(I’m sure that all of my readers wish that they were taking a class as intelligent sounding as “Differential Diagnosis.” It’s a pretentious way of saying we read a bunch of random stories that vaguely relate to mental illness and get graded on our note taking skills- I wonder if he gives more points if I take notes in color.)

Tomorrow, I will be back to the productive days of yore! Tomorrow is another day! And the sun will come out tomorrow! Tomorrow there’s a ray of hope! Tomorrow is Friday! Gotta get down on Friday! It’s not hopeless, it’s just Friday, but Sunday’s coming soon!

And now I will stop speaking in cheesy song lyrics, and put myself to bed in the hopes that tomorrow never dies.

Becky-Face

"Happiness is having a sister" -You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown

Last year's birthday, Becky got to have a princess party

Happy Birthday to the best big sister that a girl could ask for.

 I don't really know why I call her Becky-Face, but I always have. The best thing about Becky's birthday is that it is only three weeks before mine. That means that when I start freaking out about growing old, her birthday puts my freak-outs into perspective and I remember that she is turning four years older than me. (then I remember that she was married and pregnant with her second child when she was my age and the freak-outs resume)

Becky was the one who convinced me to move to the east coast. Without Becky in my life, I would not have gone to graduate school. Without Becky in my life I would not the two best boys (and the one best baby) in the world to play with.

If I didn't have Becky, who would spend a Sunday afternoon with me making fake sushi rolls filled with hot dogs and fried chicken?

If I didn't have Becky, I would never have tried to complete a triathlon. It's pretty safe to say that if you were not you, I would not be me. 

So, I am grateful for Becky. I'm grateful that you were born, especially that you came four years before me. You have modeled the life I would like to have and you have given me inspiration and motivation to be successful in life. Happy 32nd birthday! I hope it is the best day ever!

Commencement

Today marks 90 days until graduation.

Not that I am counting at all.

Actually, in a way, I am dreading this segment of my life ending. It has been a terrific time, and I feel anxious about the future.  All of the major phases in my life have had concrete starts and ends:

Age 0-5- Early childhood; age 5-12- elementary school; age 12-15- Jr. High; age 15-18- High School; age 18-20-pre-mission college/mom's cancer years; age 21-22- the mission; age 22-25-post mission college years; age 26-27- east coast/graduate school years.

When will the phases of life stop and life will simply become life?  Does that ever happen? I have a feeling that December 17 will be the end of a phase in my life, and I don’t know if/when there will ever be a new phase.

So, you see, much like one hit wonder Natalie Imbruglia, I am torn.  Torn between the realization that I will officially have absolutely no excuse to enter the adult world come December 17, and the desire I have to just be a kid forever. A part of me feels like I am simply not big enough to be a grown up and live in the real world. A part of me is counting the days until I can have a full time job, a steady income, and some element of stability in my life, and another part of me wonders if that is really what I want.

In my 27 and 11.5/12ths years of life, I have never once had a full time job. Okay, I did when I first moved to Virginia, but it only lasted 2 months until I started graduate school and went part time. And I was a full time missionary but that doesn’t count either because A) it is not a job, and B) if it were a job, there is no way I could be paid enough to do it.

I have somehow convinced myself that life will become automatically more easy when I just have one job, and no school or field placement for worry about. But now I am approaching graduation, we are in the midst of a significant financial crisis (which means that finding a job will likely be easier said than done), and I still have NO IDEA what I want to be when I grow up.

It would be much easier to get a job as a swimming teacher, go 20 thousand dollars more in debt, and get another masters degree. But that seems like a rather impractical route.

Was it really smart to get this much school without really knowing what I want to be when I grow up? Would it have maybe been smarter to have worked for a couple of years before doing all this? Who knows? But I’m here now, and I’m just anxious.  What sort of work should I do? Where should I live?

I’ll tell you what I want. I want to find a job that will give me opportunities for community outreach and advocacy. I want to live in an urban area that has a low enough cost of living that I can afford to live at least relatively close to the downtown area. I’m open to living in a foreign country if such a place needs social workers. 

I want to make enough money to be able to put gasoline in my car, feed myself on a regular basis, avoid the homeless shelter (avoid living in them; I’d be open to working in one), and eventually pay back those pesky student loans. Unless an anonymous benefactor decides that I am terrific enough that I deserve complete forgiveness on those loans. In which case I’d happily accept such an offer.

So, with all that said: Let it be known to the world that the job search has officially begun. May the Full-Time-Job-Gods be on my side. May the We-Live-In-A-Crappy-Economy-And-Most-People-Are-Grateful-To-Be-Using-Their-Masters-Degrees-To-Sling-Burgers-Gods be curiously distracted.

Wish me luck!

Training Calendar

Presenting, for your viewing enjoyment: Laura's official September-October 2011 triathlon training calendar. Hoping that publishing this online for all the world to see will keep me accountable and give me the motivation I need to do this thing. Without further ado, here you go:

I have to be honest, so far things are going very well. I didn't include the workouts I've done this past week in the calendar because they weren't a part of the "official 2011 triathlon training calendar," but you should know that perpetual motion is indeed underway. I'm finding it difficult to not devote all of my time to training in the pool, because swimming is easiest for me. My intern-boss says that I shouldn't bother swimming at all. I compromised with three planned swims a week (okay, that's not really a compromise; what I probably should have said is "I completely disregarded his advice and planned three swims a week," but lets not dwell on semantics).

Anyway. Saturday was my first official day working at the YMCA (which is how this whole thing got started). So I woke up extra early and ran a mile on the treadmill (I use the word "ran" very liberally. Anyone else would call what I do "jogging" or "meandering at a slightly enhanced pace," but again with the semantics).

Anyway. I'm a little torn between my desire to not work out on Sunday and my desire to get better faster. I have issues with the whole "keeping the Sabbath day holy" thing anyway (I may or may not be writing this blogpost from the Barnes and Noble Cafe on a Sunday afternoon... but I haven't bought anything... yet). I just don't have a lot of time during the week, given that I have school, work, and a time consuming internship to be dealing with. I work 10 hours three days a week, and 8 hours the other three. Plus I drive a lot. Sunday afternoons have become the only free time I have, and it has been difficult to refrain from getting stuff done for the week. The last two weeks, between school, work, and interning, I have been busy 60 hours. Not counting commuting (30-60 minutes one way, depending on where I'm going), and not counting homework. So I love my Sundays, where I can go to church and I don't have any of those other things to do, but it's hard to not use that time to do homework, go grocery shopping, sleep, or just generally be lazy. And it seems like such a good time to hit the gym, but I haven't decided if that is an appropriate Sunday activity. 

Anyway. I didn't come here to ramble about my Sunday dilemmas. I came here to tell you that you should be proud of me for surviving my first 4 days of triathlon training. 41 days to go. Wish me luck!

My "Baby Steps" Approach to Triathlon Training: Day 1

In case you were wondering, this is actually not me

September 1 marks day 1 of my newest triathlon training endeavor. I am taking small steps as I continue to move myself toward greater challenges. Hopefully those greater challenges will lead to greater successes. Here are the steps I have taken today:

1) Picked up my new (and free) membership to the local YMCA (I got a job teaching swimming lessons two hours a week there so that they would give me a free membership... it was all a part of my grandmaster plan)

2) Spent my intern supervision time listening to my supervisor talk to me for 45 minutes, giving me excellent training advice and helping me come up with a plan (because training for a triathlon has everything to do with social work)

3) Went back to the YMCA, wandered around for a bit trying to work up the nerve to enter into the gym part of the Y (It's been awhile since I've been to a real gym)

4) Jogged 2 miles and biked 3 more (I am seriously considering hiring a personal trainer, but I'd probably have to come up with a way to pay for such a thing)

5) Went home, thought about doing homework but decided to blog instead (and wondered what in the world I was thinking signing up for a triathlon right smack in the middle of the last semester of graduate school)

Perpetual motion is underway: 44 days and counting!