Lord, Grant Me Courage

It's been almost a year since I've posted. Lord, have I missed it. I've been thinking a lot about writing lately, but finally got around to doing it today. I've been thinking a lot lately in general, not just about writing, but about everything. I've thought about work, about life, about love, about family; you name it, I've thought it. All of these things kind of run together, because they are all essences of me. And lets just say, I don't know what is going on with me.

I've always used The Serenity Prayer as my vice. "Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Yes, there is more to it, but this is the important part for me most of the time. Well, Lord, right now I need courage because I think I've made a mistake.

Last time I wrote, I talked of how happy I was to start cosmetology school, how happy I was to find a career that was going to make me happy, that had endless opportunities. Well, I hate to say this because I hate being wrong, but I'm not as happy as I used to be about this decision. I think I went in with rose colored glasses, and now that it's coming to a close, I've taken those glasses off and I've looked at my life and I'm disappointed in myself. I think I took the easy way out. I went to cosmetology school because I knew I would be good, and I knew I would leave with a job. And I do love it. But I'm not in love with it. I know, cliche, I'm great at those.

I wish I had maybe taken a semester off, taken time to get my life back together. I've blamed so much of what happened to me on Cory and my time in San Angelo. But I'm almost 22 and I need to take responsibility for myself. Instead of changing my hair to get over a bad break up, I changed my life to get over a  bad part of my life.

I'm ready for school to be done with, not because it gives me the ability to get a job as a hair stylist, but because it gives me a chance to go back to school and get back on track. I'm glad I have my family behind me on this, but most importantly, I'm behind myself on this. Let's just pray I get it right this time.

I Don't Always Like You, But I Always Love You

My family is the best thing I have been blessed with. Everyone in my family is unique in their own way, but there isn't a single thing I would change about them.

This past week/weekend, I've had a lot of family around (more than the usual). We had a family dinner out last night with my parents, Ryan, Amy, and Maggie. Time with Maggie is always precious. The next day, Ryan, Amy, and Maggie came up to Drug Emporium and saw where I worked. It was quite a surprise, and a very good surprise it was.

On Friday, my mom and I went shopping. I love shopping with my mother and looking at all the fashions and people, and getting her opinion on clothes I'm getting. After that, we went out to dinner with my dad, my grandparents, and then met up with Aunt Kathy and my cousin Bill. I love seeing Kathy and Bill. I don't get to see them often, but hopefully now that they are expanding their business (photography) to the Dallas area, I will be able to see them more. We ate at Chuy's, which is in my opinion, the best Mexican food ever! Although it was loud, it's time I wouldn't trade for the world.

Later that night (way later), Ryan and Maggie showed up. Amy is currently over in Europe (Madrid, Paris, and London) doing some work for TCU with the study abroad students. We all wish she was here, but she is having lifetime experiences. Maggie went straight to bed, but the rest of us stayed up and conversed. At this point, our house is full of family and animals.

The next day, Kathy and Bill had some business to attend to in Dallas. Ryan, Maggie, my parents and I went to see the studio where they were doing the shoot, and then after a short stop at Bill's Records (I know, there are a lot of Bills in this blog), we went back to Red Oak and over to Jan and Dales. There was swimming, good food, and of course, forced family fun (FFF). Once we got back to our house, we watched "We Bought a Zoo" (a movie I truly recommend), and waited for Bill and Kathy. Although, by the time they returned back home, I was the only one awake.

Today, we all went to Jan and Dales, had a nice lunch, and then I had a photo shoot with Kathy and Bill. I really can't wait to see the pictures. Luckily, Bill checked when their flight took off otherwise they would have missed it, but we had to cut the shoot and the family time short. Nonetheless, seeing them for the little time we did is amazing and very special to us all.

We had a Peterson family dinner tonight with my parents, Ryan, and Maggie. Now my dad and Ryan are going to go see a movie and my mom, Maggie, and I are going to have a girls night, until Maggie goes to bed. Right now she (Maggie) is watching Toy Story, and she will probably be slowly drifting off since it's close to her bed time.

I'm not sure what the rest of the two week off will bring, but I'm happy for the time I have had with my loved ones before starting my new life at Ogle.

Dream Come True

So I have to admit, I am pleasantly beyond happy at the moment. When I began thinking of going into cosmetology, my main goal in becoming a hair stylist is to give a woman (or man) that hairstyle that makes them feel invincible, that for when they are going through something big like a break up or a wedding or a new job, whatever it is, they can go into it feeling like the best possible them.

Tonight, I received a message from my friend Terri asking me if I will do her hair for her wedding next March. I think I read the message about 5 times before it finally sunk in. Someone wants me to do what my dream is! I knew it would happen eventually, but if happening for the first time really just meant so much to me, and for someone that I consider my friend, really just pushed me over the edge. I feel so honored and blessed that someone is letting me in on their special day.

Social Media Side Affects

There is one thing that I just do not understand: why people don't think that what they put on the internet won't affect them elsewhere in their lives. People want to believe that because their profile is private, or because they're not tagged in a picture, that it can't come back to affect them.

When something goes on the internet, it's out there forever. Anyone can find a way to do a search and get what they need, and employers have ways of accessing "private" accounts and seeing what they please. And although they are not allowed to hold that stuff against you, they are also very well aware that if they hire a person who posts pictures of drinking, smoking weed, doing drugs, wearing scantly clothing, etc., all of these things will make future employers know that if they hire this person, this is the face of their company.

But it's not even jobs, it's people that think of this stuff. One day, most of us will have children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, and they will have the ability to go and look at this stuff. Now, we're all told of stupid things our parents did when we were young, but how would we feel if we could go and look at those pictures and see our parents doing those stupid things. Because it means that not only were our parents pushing the boundaries and doing these things, but they put it out there for the world to see (which can be worse than doing the actual thing). 

Or how do you think that your child would feel if they saw a post when they were young saying that you needed to nurse a hangover so your taking your child to the in-laws. How would that make someone feel?

There are so many instances when someone does something and they don't think about how it will affect them. 

My May Bucket List

So between UNT and Ogle, I have 34 days of nothing (except work), but mostly nothing. So I figure with all of this free time, I have looked at my bucket list and singled out 18 items that I am going to try my damnedest to do during this time.

1. Solve a Rubik's cube.
2. Go skydiving.
3. Ride in a helicopter.
4. Spend an entire day watching Disney movies.
5. Take a homeless person food.
6. Pay for a strangers groceries.
7. Get a white ink tattoo.
8. Complete a scrapbook.
9. Plant a tree.
10. Be in two places at once.
11. Shoot a gun.
12. Go fishing and eat my catch.
13. Learn how to play poker.
14. Have a bonfire.
15. Catch a firefly.
16. Go to a spa.
17. Make a quilt.
18. Go to the circus.

Not sure if I get all of it done, but it will be a nice start.

Fourth Quarter Pipe Dreams

So with my 21st birthday fast approaching, I've done a lot of thinking, and I've come to one conclusion: I am not where I thought I'd be. I'm not saying it in a bad way, I'm just not where I thought I would be.

If you asked the 5 year old me where I would be when I turned 21, I would have told you that I would be some princess in a Disney movie, or married to someone from some Nickelodeon show. I was convinced for a long time that cartoon characters were real people.

If you asked the 9 year old me, and this was the age of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and many boy bands, well, I would have been one of them. Yep, I wanted to be a pop star. I was such a sell out. But I also attribute it to my brother Ryan giving me the Britney Spears album, her first one, for my 10th birthday and telling me it's what the cool kids listened to. I guess we all make mistakes.

At 11, I was going to go to an Ivy League school and study law. I was then going to join a prestigious law firm and become very rich. Talk about dreaming. I got this idea from my parents telling me many times that I would make a good lawyer because I like to argue. How well I argue(d) is a totally different side of the story. I think more of the time, it's the other person giving up because they get tired of discussing the subject matter and just want to move on. I also wanted to eventually be a judge. That would have been cool.

When I was 12, I was going to go to UNT and study Journalism just like Ryan did. And then, I would move to New York and get a job at the New York Times, or Seventeen Magazine, as the Editor-in-Chief. Again, I was going to be rich. This decision was based off of my love for writing and the fact that I always made good grades in English. I often wonder if I had done Journalism in high school how this might have altered my course through life.

If you were to ask the 14 year old me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you a psychiatrist or a psychologist. I wasn't sure yet if I wanted to spend some time in Med school just so I could give out medicine, or if I just wanted to listen to people talk for 60 minute sessions.

By 16, I would have told you that I wanted to be a child psychologist, and I wanted to open a practice and have a pediatrician, an OB-GYN, and a pediatric dentist working in this practice along side me. This was when Private Practice first started, so I based my wants off of that.

I wanted to work with the craziest of the crazies when I was 18. I was (and still am) big into Criminal Minds, and I have a love for the movies Sybil and A Beautiful Mind and Memento. Although I had a fear that the person I was helping would come back and kill me one day, like in The Sixth Sense. So I decided that I wanted to help people with eating disorders.

When I was 19, I wanted to be a nurse, and an art teacher, and then I moved, and then I wanted to try Psychology again because it was a new school, and then I did a little Development and Family Studies where I would train to be an Early Intervention Specialist.

Somewhere in there, I lost myself and who I wanted to be. After some deep soul searching and drawing at straws. But, to quote Kimya Dawson, I'm finding that my fourth-quarter pipe dreams are more and more worth fighting for.

I know what I want, and that is to be happy. The little quote that I saw floating around the internet a few years back: "When I was in Kindergarten, my teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up and to write it on a piece of paper. I said I wanted to be happy. She said I didn't understand the assignment; I say she doesn't understand life." Although my Kindergarten teacher never would have said that had I wrote down "happy," that is simply what I want to be.

I want to make enough to have a good life, but not so much that I forget what a dollar is worth. I want to find a man who loves every bit of me, the good and the bad, and have a lovely life with him and any children we may have. I want to watch my nieces (and any if I should ever have a nephew) and my children grow up and watch their lives unfold. I want to be there for my family and my friends when they need me. I want to complete the items on my Bucket List to the best of my abilities. And I want to make a lot of mistakes, even more than I may have already made. Because those mistakes, they've gotten me to where I am today, and they've taught me some valuable lessons, ones I'm sure my parents wish I didn't have to go through to learn, but I made it through them. These mistakes have made up the little facets of me, and I'm sure as hell glad I made them. Life is all about trying not make mistakes, and death is about wishing you made a lot more. Overall, I want to be happy.

So, where will I be when I reach 25, or 30, even 50. I have no clue. And for the time being, I'm not going to to try and guess. I have my plan for the next 11 months of my life, and towards the end of those 11 months, I'll look forward a little bit. But for right now, I'm happy just where I'm at.

Keeping Up

So for those of y'all who don't keep up with me on Facebook, my latest big change in my life is cosmetology school. I will start attending Ogle Beauty on June 11th, and I cannot wait!!

This decision wasn't just an overnight decision. I first thought about it around last December when I was put on academic probation. Well, I guess you can say I thought of it a long time ago when I was in high school and was jealous of the girls in the cosmetology class who got to be in this cool class with this cool teachers for three hours, and they got to eat and drink throughout class! I always thought they were lucky. But getting back to present day, I thought about it last December. I've always had this great love for fashion and beauty and the hot new trends and looking your best. What else better to go into than something that gives me all of that? And I still get to give back to people. Every girl out there will tell you when they go through something, like a break up or they change careers, anything like that, they change their outward appearance also. Or giving a lady that perfect hairstyle for that perfect day like her prom or her wedding, that would be so special.

When I graduated high school, this is the last thing I saw myself doing. Well, maybe not the last thing, but definitely not high on my list. I think maybe that's why some people are more or less shocked with my decision. A college education has never not been on my list of things to achieve.But I don't really care what those people have to say. They don't know what I've been going through since I entered college, they didn't have the same personal experience that I did when they went to college. They're also not me. So if they're not me, and haven't had the experience that I've had, who are they to tell me my decision is wrong? I'm happy, and that's all I care about.

So I'll start on June 11th, and if I have 100% attendance, I should graduate mid-April, if not, then it will be mid-May. It will be 5 days a week, 8:30-4:30 every day. It's 4 phases: the first phase is the basics where I'll practice on mannequin's; the second phase, I'll start spending some time on the floor, but still mostly mannequin's; for the third and fourth phases, I'll primarily be working on people, and the fourth phase is where I will take my board exam to get my license, and they'll also help me prepare for interviews and jobs after graduation. That's what I liked most about Ogle, was that fourth phase. None of the other schools had that. They also didn't have classrooms designated for each phase, or have sinks, driers, etc., in each classroom. And everyone I talked to told me that this was the place to go. And the kit that is included is AMAZING! They provide so much more than the other places. They also require you to take two electives, to help you specialize in something. Pretty much, there are a million and one reasons why this is the best cosmetology school out there, and I can't wait for June.