Quote: Rhonda Byrne Hero

“Whatever circumstances you were born into, whatever family life and education you had or didn't have, you came here to make your dreams come true, and no matter where you are now, you are fully equipped with everything you need to do it.” 

– Rhonda Byrne Hero

I must admit to having doubts about being fully equipped with everything I need now. Maybe other people are, but I still have too many scattered pieces of myself to put back together before I'll be ready to claim this. I'm getting closer and closer though.

Moving Towards Learning

I'm in a time in my life where I have the possibility of massive learning available to me. Everything I do can be a learning experience. So, I've decided to really focus on learning the things I've been eager to learn for quite some time.

First off, I bought two books regarding journal/biblio/poetry therapy. I never did receive responses to the emails I sent to the certification programs asking for advice. I can't even get on one of the websites lately. That freaks me out because it makes me think that something happened to the organization and I might not have the chance to get the certification I want from them. Of course, there are plenty of other possible reasons that their website is down but I always seem to go for the worst one. Ignoring my worries, I decided to just keep moving. I have a whole list of books saved on an Amazon wish list so I went through and picked the two that I thought would be the most educational for the beginning of my journey. I intend to study them like I would if I was in school and get as much out of them as I possibly can.

I also want to study the people who inspire me. I got this idea from Shameless Maya. She talks about it in this video, How to be Great! and this blog post, Study the Greats. I started thinking about how little I know about the people whose work has inspired me. That is unacceptable. You can't really know the work without knowing the person who created it. A while back I wrote about how encountering the work of Frida Kahlo and learning her life story completely changed my life. You can read that post here. Really, coming across her work and life story was the beginning of so much of what my life goals are now. But she isn't the only person who I have been inspired by in one way or another. I want to know as much about them as I know about Frida. To start off with I will be studying Emily Dickinson, William Shakespeare, and Anias Nin. Besides just knowing more about the people who have inspired, I can't help but think that seeing how any hardships they faced were turned into something beautiful, will help me focus on turning my own hardships into something beautiful.

And finally, I am trying to learn as much as I can at my new job. I landed an internship in the accounting department of a local business. I think that this is an incredible opportunity to learn the behind the scenes of a business. I am pretty sure that I will end up being self-employed and I need to learn anything I can about business before that happens. Obviously, self-employment is different than a growing corporation but there are certainly parallels. So, I want to learn everything I can.

Ok, that was longer than I intended so I will stop now. Besides, my mind needs to go back to absorbing as much as it can handle.

A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

Friendships Are Rubies

Friendships are rubies
The rarest of all the gems
To forever be cherished

Friendships are rubies
Only fools would throw away
Such sacred and precious jewels


Friendships Are Rubies by Porcelain Lotus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Quote: Alice Walker

“In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.”

-Alice Walker

And I'm Back To Being Frustrated

I've hit a moment of frustration. I just started a new job. Finally! It took 4 months to find this job and then I waited around for another month until it finally started. It's only part-time and I could really use a second job but I'm happy to finally be working again.

However, I hadn't even been working for week when my aunt and uncle decided that they wanted half my paycheck to cover room, board, and use of their car. Typically, that would not be unreasonable. I'm frustrated in this case because they told me that when I moved here, they would take complete responsibility for me, cover all my costs, and let me borrow their car until I get back on my feet. This job is a part-time job and in no way indicates that I am back on my feet. I'm still in the hole and they know this. So, by expecting payment now, they are going back on the commitment that they made to me. I'm further frustrated by the fact that I am in no position to argue. They could kick me out at any time regardless of what commitments were made. Obviously commitments aren't that important and can be changed at any time. There is something about my family. They make big commitments to you but you can never be sure if they will follow through. Next time, I'm getting it in writing.

Don't think that I planned to mooch off of them or that I'm not grateful for what they have been doing for me. I planned to slowly start covering my costs while I paid off past debt. Once the debt was paid off then I would have worked with them to cover all my costs, start paying them back and move out when money permitted. I just don't like how all of this went down.

I'm also extremely frustrated by my lack of a personal life. The only people I've met are people from church, people online, and people from work. So far, I haven't related to any of them. I thought that I had made a friend for a little while but he decided that he wasn't interested in having me in his life if I wasn't dating him. Friendships are such valuable relationships and I will never understand why guys are so willing to throw them away if the friendship is with a woman. So, I'm back to being friendless and having no idea where to meet people. I've always made friends at church, work, or school. Now that I don't have those as options, I'm at a loss. I thought about joining a class but now it looks like money won't permit that. How do people make friends when they have no money to do anything and the places that they can go, don't have anyone who is friend-material?

Ok, I'm sure you all are tired of me venting, plus this isn't making me feel any better, so that's enough for now.

Quote: Bjork

"There are certain emotions in your body that not even your best friend can sympathize with, but you will find the right film or the right book, and it will understand you."

-Bjork

Quote: Rumi

I wonder how many times my heart will have to be broken before it finally opens again.

Quote: J.R.R. Tolkien

“A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.” 

-J.R.R. Tolkien

It's all I have to bring today (26) by Emily Dickinson

It's all I have to bring today (26) by Emily Dickinson

For the longest time, I couldn't figure out Emily Dickinson's poetry. I would read a poem over and over and get nowhere. The best thing that ModPo class I took did for me was teach me how to read her poems. Now not only do I finally get to enjoy them, I can really relate to many of them. I actually wonder if we might have had quite a few things in common.

Emailing My Future Self

At church last Sunday, they had us do something that I thought was a really great idea. They had us write down what God has done for us in 2013 and what we are still waiting for in 2014. They had us put the list in an envelope addressed to ourselves and they are going to send it to us at the end of 2014.

I love the idea but I didn't have the time I needed to sit down and really think about it. I really wanted to do it with a more thought out list. Then I found EmailFuture.com. It's a site where you can send an email to yourself in the future. So, I wrote a better list of what I want to happen in 2014. I think 2013 has been covered pretty well here so I don't feel like I need to rehash it. I set up the email to be sent to me on December 31, 2014 at 11:45 pm. That is the latest time of day that they allow.

I hope it works. I think it will be so fun to be able to look at that list and compare it to how things really ended up.

My Plan For Growth

Since my guiding word of the year is growth, I decided that I need to come up with a plan to get going in that direction. Of course, I don't know where this is all going to take me but I have a few things I'm doing to start the next part of my journey.

First, I'm trying to get in contact with people involved in the journal therapy certification programs to get some advice on how to gain the necessary experience and background knowledge I need to get into the program. I'm not sure what would count as qualified experience. Hopefully, I will hear back from them and will then begin working on implementing their suggestions. If I don't hear back from them, I will just have to stick with reading books for the background knowledge and looking for volunteer opportunities for the experience. I'll be doing that anyways. In order to get into the program I have to finish my degree as well. I am looking for a job that is stable enough to help me pay for school.

Of course, reclaiming my femininity is still a huge priority for me. It is about taking the way I am changing and feeling on the inside and expressing it on the outside. As long as I continue seeing the same person, who was so lost and confused, in the mirror everyday I will always be stuck. So, I am making regular exercise and daily stretching part of my routine. Having a body that is strong, limber and flexible is part of my definition of feminine. I firmly believe that it is the years of anger, tension, and bitterness that have made my body so stiff and weak. That stuff gets into your bones and hardens every part of you. Since I am slowly releasing it from my heart, I need to release it from my body as well.

Another part of reclaiming my femininity is improving my posture. I mentioned in a comment on my I Want My Femininity Back post, that I realized that my posture showed my past desire to be invisible. Since I no longer feel that way, my posture needs to change. It's not an easy thing to change though. The muscles are ridiculously tight and have already been trained a certain way. The stretching that I am doing is loosening up those incredibly tight muscles and posture exercises are retraining those muscles, hopefully. I want to be careful with this though. I used to know a girl whose posture was so good that she seemed robotic. I do not want that. I want to stand with ease and confidence. I want to walk tall and gracefully. I don't want to sit so straight that it seems unnatural.

In the same comment I just mentioned, I say that my current wardrobe shows my past desire to be invisible as well. It also shows my lack of self-esteem and lack of desire to put any effort into myself. My beauty routine is the same way. So, every month as long as I'm getting a paycheck, I'm going to buy one or two new clothing items to start overhauling my wardrobe. I am going to develop morning and nighttime rituals to better care for my skin, hair, and teeth. My look needs to show that I do care about myself and be an expression of who I really am.

I also intend to start reading more. I used to read everything in sight when I was a child, four and five books at a time. I lost the love for it during high school. Being forced to read books at ridiculous speeds while still trying to have enough time for the rest of my classes, made reading stressful and exasperating. I never really regained my love for reading again. Now is the time. Few things can teach you more than reading. Hopefully, it will improve my writing as well.

I think I should make a vision board. I've never done that before but I've heard so many good things about it. Having my goals right in front of me where I can see them instead of just thinking about them might be helpful.

So, that it my starter plan. I'm sure things will be added and changed as the year goes on but I think I'm headed in the right direction.

Guiding Word Of The Year For 2014

Something I decided to start doing every year is come up with a guiding word for the year. My guiding word for 2013 was action. You can read my post about that here. Since then, I've done very well accomplishing that, if I do say so myself. I decided to pursue journal therapy facilitation, I moved across the country in order to get out of a bad situation and in hopes of more opportunity, I've started exercising regularly, I'm working on my strength and flexibility as a start to reclaiming my femininity, and I've taken a tax class to add to my education and in hopes of a job. Quite a bit of action I would say. So now that the new year is here, it's time for me to come up with a guiding word for 2014.

My guiding word of the year is:
Growth

In 2014, I need to expand on everything I've accomplished in 2013 and make sure that all my efforts don't go to waste. I don't want to end up stalled again. I intend to keep walking this path that I have chosen and to keep getting better.