Onto the Next One

So just after I made a really good update on things, I was delivered some very tragic news.  My boyfriend's father passed away about 2 weeks ago from cancer.  He had been diagnosed last October with lymphosarcoma.  My boyfriend and I had been trying to get time off to fly out and see his dad before he passed and with jobs and costs and not really having anywhere to stay it just never worked out in our favor.  But I know that things happen for a reason and even though he never got to reconnect with his dad, he still had a great relationship and good memories with him.

I'm not really sure what else to say about that, mostly because I don't feel like plastering all this crap about someone else's family and life on the internet.  But we did make it out to New York for the funeral and I got to meet everyone on that side of the family.  And that was really special.  I've never been so warmly welcomed and accepted into a family of someone I've been dating and I'm glad to know I've created some really special relationships there.

On the way back we stopped at my parents' for an extra day to visit with my family and my sister had just gotten back from being abroad in Ghana.  We shared a lot of stories about things and updated each other on our lives.  Also now I want an ipad so I can waste infinite hours playing Monopoly Hotels.

I'm back home now after nearly two weeks being gone and I feel completely lost.  Everything's changed and I'm not sure what direction to go in at this point.  There's been talk of moving again, talk of starting a family, talk of moving in an entirely different direction as far as careers go.  It's scary, but also exciting because I feel like just when I was convinced I needed time to sort things out about me, I've been given a very big shove to move forward.  So once I finish getting things unpacked and some phone calls made, I'll be having a long grown up conversation with the boyfriend about the future.  Nothing scary at this point, but just a way of drawing out a plan of action instead of telling each other "some day".  Time to grow up and get on it!

Back in the saddle

After nearly a 5 month hiatus I have finally returned to the blogging world.  There were a lot of reasons as to why I stopped but after this past month I've realized that those reasons just didn't hold up anymore.  I realize that I made this blog public because I figured that it would give people an insight most bloggers don't have nor share.  (e.g. not mommy blogs, food blogs, beauty blogs, craft blogs, nor comedy, etc.)  What I naively overlooked was the amount of people who would use this blog as a means of spying on me and what's going on in my life, ergo drawing their own conclusions about my personal life (which is not something I want plastered on the internet so I've gone about ways to make sure I don't post anything too personal on here).  I found out about the spying and negative words being passed around and complete lies being told about me, and at first I didn't mind because that's in human nature to gossip, but then it started affecting my family (most importantly my mom) and I didn't want to hurt her because of something I was doing.  That didn't seem fair to me because no one wants phone calls from people saying things that are entirely unfounded or untrue or even blown out of proportion.  Also, my parents live 3 states away from me, so any kind of correspondence we have is usually delayed by a day or two, so no I can't instantly inform them about everything going on in my life, much less things I don't think are significant to their lives in the first place.  I have the type of relationship with my parents that if it's important, you'll tell me.  If it impacts my life, you'll come forth and let me know first.  I realize that might be hard for some people to grasp based on their relationships with their parents, but for me the last thing I want to do is hurt their feelings.  They know I'm an adult and the things I do are my choices and I pay the consequences for my actions.  I can handle my life.  What no one needs is someone looking at a public blog and drawing their own conclusions based on those entries alone about a person and assuming they know what's up and then taking it upon themselves to inform my family about things that ultimately are untrue or skewed.  I don't appreciate having my family calling me at some random ass hour of the night asking me weird questions about what I did last weekend or if I'm dying or if I was in the hospital or something completely unfounded.  It's a waste of time, frankly, and doesn't help anyone.

Anyway, if you followed my blog on Facebook (which if that's the only way you read this blog you probably aren't even reading this), I deleted my Facebook account.  Mostly I just don't like people taking the liberty to spy on me and I also was tired of randoms friending me and then posting crap no one really cares about.  There's a lot of drawbacks at first, but I moved over to Google+ and I like it because it's more private and I only share things with people I trust to share information with.  For everything else there's Twitter, which I'm slowly getting the hang of.  Still kind of annoying though.

Anyway, I stopped avoiding the blogging world because I don't like feeling like I need to hide because of the negativity.  I don't write for that, I write for me and I've been wanting to post a blog since my last post. So I'm not afraid of what people say because if you can't say anything nice to me or about me or anyone, you probably shouldn't be talking in the first place.  I'm back now and hopefully I'll have more stuff to write about other than this.

So an update on what I've been doing aside from avoiding the internet is that I officially threw out the idea that I need a college degree and I need to graduate by x year or semester.  Also I ran out of financial aid (and to be honest you can't not work and be a full time student anymore-it's totally unrealistic).  Since I've stopped being a student I've been a lot happier not having that stress and worry in my life.  It's made me really look into what I want to do as far as a job goes.  I took this entire summer off from work and school as a way of me going back and sharpening my skill set entirely on my own.  By September I plan on applying for big people jobs and networking towards the industry I really want to get into.  This summer has been a kind of soul searching season and really opening myself up to the kinds of things I wish I could put on my resume or experience and I just never did because I had to work or I was in school.  Fortunately I'm with someone who can provide for the both of us and allow me to figure out what I'm really trying to do with my life right now.

Leading up to this point though, I've been through a lot.  And it hasn't been fun.  There's been a lot of strain on certain family members' deteriorating health, a couple scares and some sad realizations that they're not just adults anymore, they're getting old.  I won't go into detail because I know some of them want that to remain private and I respect their wishes.  But it's been hard and I've been trying to keep strong for others.  For me personally, I've had a lot of flack about not being in school, not finishing, but that has all been coming from people who don't want to let me be heard, who don't want to listen to what's really going on with me.  I find it very selfish and unfair as well as rude.  So I just don't listen to it.

One of the biggest things that's happened is I moved out of the city.  I don't entirely hate it because pretty much all of my friends moved away this spring (like out of state) and I wasn't in school anymore so it didn't make sense to be around a bunch of college hipsters.  I actually kind of felt like I was getting stuck in some weird pseudo-high school.  But I do miss uptown.  I miss being around so much activity and the lakes and just having the ability to go anywhere at nearly any time.  Everything shuts down by 9 in the suburbs and I am forever resentful for that.  Mostly because I'm a night owl and usually want to do things by 11 p.m.  But I like where I live and I like knowing this isn't forever.  In fact, with figuring out what exactly I want to do for a job, I'm fully willing to relocate to a bigger city.  I'm young, I don't have any liabilities keeping me from moving around or traveling, so I'm not uncomfortable with the idea of starting some place fresh.

I still can't believe how much has changed within 5 months, but I know that deep down this was meant to happen.  I've faced a lot of let down and disappointment, a lot of that just with myself and I've been spending the last 2 weeks just really trying to figure out what it is I need to be doing differently.  Life has shown me that there is no real happy ending because life is constantly changing and evolving.  I am constantly changing and evolving and adapting to change.  Because of that you can't just be happy with one way of living.  You gotta be able to live many different lifestyles suitable to the situations you find yourself in.  And those happen nearly every day for me.