Day 8: What are 5 passions you have?
- Writing.
- Writing..
- Writing…
- Running!
- WRITING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?!
I guess that pretty much covers it then…Hmmm…
Writing
7. What is your dream job?
7. What is your dream job, and why?
When I was younger, quite a bit younger, I wanted to be a counselor. I earned a Bachelor’s degree with a counseling emphasis. I had every expectation to get my Master’s degree and become a licensed counselor, but didn’t.
To tell you the truth, I wanted to fix broken people. I wanted to change them. I wanted to take their weaknesses and make them strengths. I wanted to make flowers grow in a patch of weeds.
I never told you this before, when I was younger my mom would pair me up with younger girls that also had difficult sibling situations. Sometimes I would visit for a few hours or a weekend. I think that the purpose was to counsel and console them like I did with my mom. There was no doubt I would be a counselor.
Then my last year of college happened. We had a professor that was a counselor. She made me doubt my career ambitions. She took away my unrealistic expectations and told us what it really was like being a counselor. She told us how her holidays were interrupted because she had a take calls from suicidal clients. She told us of the times she lost clients to suicide and spoke of how difficult it was to handle. I questioned my ability to change people. I mean, I couldn’t even change myself or my loved ones who were struggling.
Really, who did I think I was? God?? To think that I could save people?
I thought about going back to school to be a counselor off and on over the last couple of decades, but no longer have the interest to do so. I don’t think I could listen to people talk about their problems and not do anything to fix them. I really lack compassion for those who are unwilling to change and just want someone to complain to. I think it would be incredibly hard to watch someone spiral down into mental illness and not be able to pull them back out. I would take every suicide personally as a failure on my part.
I also dreamed of being a librarian..surrounded by books in quiet serenity…organizing books..
I dreamed of being a lead singer in a band…exciting weekends being a star.
I even dreamed of working alone in a lab analyzing samples…checking for little details that might be off…water samples…pap smears…biopsies…DNA testing…being away from people using my analytical skills.
But right now, more than anything, my dream job is to be a writer.. I have been considering leaving my job of nine years and going back to get my Master’s degree in writing…The first thing that I would do is write my story…growing up with an autistic sibling… I would make it my life work… I would tell my mom…receive her blessing…get all of her journals that she used to write in to compile with mine… then write…offer hope to (without trying to fix) people who are struggling…it has been something I have always felt compelled to do… then I would be free from it and spend the rest of my life being a freelance travel writer…travel the world off the beaten path…take many pictures and write…
That would be my dream job..
4. Ten things to tell your 16 year old self
Day 4: List 10 things you would tell your 16 year old self, if you could
- Spend as much time as you can with your grandparents. I hate to tell you this, but friends come and go. Your best friends now won’t even be at your wedding. Soon something is going to happen that will push the friends you have now away. Enjoy the times with friends in the moment. Remember that your grandparents won’t be around forever. They are the greatest source of stability in your life, not your friends.You will never regret spending a lot of time with them.
- Your strong work ethic will get you very far in life. However, don’t put work or your long to-do list above your relationships. Take the night off of work to go to your brother’s high school graduation. The $30 you earned that night will never make up for the regret you will feel for the rest of your life for not being at your brother’s only graduation.
- I know that you are dealing with some pretty hard things to handle and you feel like you are all alone. These are the hardest years that you will ever face in your life. Hang in there, soon it will be smooth sailing.
- Don’t think that you have to be perfect, or even good, at something before you are willing to try it. You don’t have to be good at something to like it either. You don’t have to be perfect. Quit being so hard on yourself. It was a big lie when you were told you had to be perfect. Put yourself out on a limb. Try something new even if you are not good at it.Who cares if you fail?
- Leave home when you turn 18 and do WHATEVER it takes to not go back. In fact, move far away. Do not take responsibility for your parents problems. Do NOT agree to be your brother’s caregiver. You should not be giving your brother a shower on a Saturday night. You should be out living your life doing the things that young people do. For once in your life, be carefree. You will already regret not having a childhood, don’t regret not living while you’re young too. Soon enough you will be tied down by your own responsibilities.
- Don’t be a caregiver for your brother or anyone else for that matter. Be a little more selfish. Do the things you want to do. Allow yourself to be stupid and make mistakes that you can learn from. Hold out for the library job you will be offered instead of turning it down to be a caregiver. You did enough care giving as a child. This will not be good for you.
- Buy an expensive pair of running shoes and start running. Trust me. You need a healthy way to relieve your stress. It is a lot cheaper than therapy and all those bottles of pills that never helped you anyway. Soon you will enter adulthood with enough baggage to travel the whole world. Once you realize their weight, you will have a lifelong struggle with depression, anxiety, worry, and anger. Running will help you get through all the years of repressing your feelings that you couldn’t handle.
- Keep writing down everything you experience and don’t stop. It is worth making time for. Some day it will make for a helluva story.
- You have to forgive the people that have hurt you for your sake. Pity their weakness. Eventually you will no longer be able to outrun all of the things that you are hiding from. It is going to take a long time to face your demons. You will spend a lot of time reflecting. But eventually you will have to let go..forgive..and trust that God has a bigger plan or purpose for your life. Be a beacon of hope for those that struggle around you.
- Try not to worry so much. It annoys me and the others around me. I don’t like it. I want you to relax. Please start working on that now so we can get over this someday.
2. Describe 3 legitimate fears
Day 2: Describe 3 legitimate fears you have and explain how they became fears.
This required a lot of thought. Every fear that I could think of that I have boils down to one big legitimate fear…The fear of not being in control. I am not sure why I feel like I need to be in control all of the time or why I feel responsible for things that happen that are beyond my control. I think that I have some basic trust issues. For a long time it seemed like my life was ordered by chaos. It suffocated me. I tried everything to feel like I had some iota of control. I wanted to force change and be the magnet that forces the pendulum to swing in the other direction.
I have a fear of driving. For a period of time, I took medication to face this fear. I refused to stay at home to hide from this fear. I feared being trapped in my car which would bring on panic. If concrete construction barriers or bridges lock me in, I feel afraid. For awhile, I expended a lot of energy trying to be the perfect driver. I kept my car exactly in the middle of the white lines. There also was a period of time that I avoided the highway altogether. This was difficult because it was slow going the back way and I like to drive fast. Highway driving is boring, when I’m not anxious I fear falling asleep or not having a quick enough response if there is an emergency. Again, this boils down to not feeling like I have control. I can’t control the other drivers on the road. I feel afraid that I can’t guarantee that I will be able to keep my passengers or myself safe. Long road trips where I am the driver scares me. I haven’t totally gotten over this fear, but I won’t let it control me. Again, control.
I am afraid of flying which is difficult since I love traveling. I don’t have control over, or even know, the person flying the plane. Again, flying sometimes requires meds to prevent me from panicking. Taking meds is a struggle because it makes me feel like I can’t control my fear. I think the fear of flying stems a little from my dad being a pilot as a hobby. For most of my childhood, he was in charge of a civilian based group that would search for downed planes. He often would take calls in the middle of the night to get search teams together. It made me think that flying was not safe.
I am afraid of death. When my dad was in the Vietnam War, he thought that he wouldn’t die there because he could foresee his future death. He said that he would die on Christmas Eve of 2011. That day came and past and he is still here. Having a future death date had one purpose. It took away his fear of death in Vietnam when his friends were dying.
I tell everyone that I am going to die of dementia like others in my family did. I dream of not knowing that I am dying. Will the heaven that I believe in really be there? Or will life end in an empty meaningless void like it did before I existed? Will it hurt to take my dying breath? Part of the reason why I am a fitness fanatic is that it makes me feel like I have some control over time. Exercise will make me live longer. Cancer doesn’t run in the family. I have low blood pressure and cholesterol, so I ruled out heart disease as my demise. Thinking that I won’t know that I am dying takes the sting out of it. Death is something I have no control over. Will it be tomorrow, next year, or decades from now? It scares me to death.
Not only do I fear death, but I also fear that my loved ones will die or be in incredible pain. I try to control this by giving unsolicited advice. Don’t drink too much! Wear your seat belt! The more I push, the more they pull away. I would rather be in pain than see the people I love suffer. I want to be in control of their change.
I am afraid that my life partner will die before we do everything we planned.
I have to always have control over myself. I have to control my emotional response. I’m stoic. I fear things that could cause an outburst of emotion. I fear inappropriate laughter. I am afraid I won’t have complete control over my mind or body if I let go. This frightens me. Fear stops me from relaxing.
I have to double check the oven and coffee pot because it gives me a false control that my house will be safe when I am gone. I have to be the last one to leave the house. I am afraid that if I don’t have things under control, the house will burn down. I also am afraid that my cat will get caught in the blind cords and die if I leave him alone for the weekend. I am afraid to be the first person back in the house when we return.
I can’t stand being controlled by my circumstances, of being physically or emotionally trapped in situations I can’t control.
I am more fearful of the weather controlling my comings and goings instead of the storm itself. No control over the weather.
I am afraid that I will get sick and have to change my plans. No control over my body.
I have to be the last one to bed and the first one up in a group setting. I feel like I have to be ready to step in and control how people get along. I hover. Watching. Waiting. Taking control of the situation, problem solving in my mind.
Staying up until the last kid gets home makes me feel like I have control.
I guess I am a control freak because the thought of not being in control freaks me out!
I try incredibly hard to not let any of this fear control my life…
On the plus side, I am not afraid of spiders, water, snakes, scary clowns, or public speaking.
1. List 20 random facts about yourself
Ok, not only will these be random facts, some of them are downright weird…
1. I am left handed.
2. My blood type is AB. Not only do I have the rarest blood type, but I am the universal receiver baby! That means I don’t have to feel guilty about my fear of needles.
3. My personality type is ISTJ. Everyone in my house has a different personality, however we are all ‘T’s’ meaning that we are all thinkers versus feelers. Which also means that our house is full of debate versus drama. Lol.
4. I have incredibly good hearing. This has given me a natural ear for music. It also means that I wake up when a pin drops at my neighbor’s house.
5. I have the rare ability to voluntarily control my tensor tympani muscle. This means that with concentration I can close my ears off to sound without covering them. This has been a great gift when I can’t handle the sound of people loudly chewing.
6. I am a texture person, not a taste person, when it comes to food. I can’t stand eating onions, mushrooms, cooked green beans, shrimp, or chewy meat because of the texture. But, maybe, if you put these items in a blender I would like them.
7. I am a first born.
8. I ran in two marathons.
9. I have a Bachelor’s degree in something totally unrelated to what I’m doing now.
10. I have been with the same person exactly half of my life.
11. I have been married for 19 years. We have also been business partners for half that amount of time.
12. I found my first gray hair at 27.
13. I have 3 teenage children.
14. I love doing laundry, but hate dusting.
15. I read the whole Bible cover to cover.
16. I am double jointed and can touch my thumb to my arm.
17. I have 3 brothers, but no nephews.
18. I have 2 nieces, but no sisters.
19. I have a black thumb.
20. I like to clean.
Wow, that was a little harder than I thought it would be!
Please comment if we have anything in common…..
I’m thinking if we have zero in common, you have already moved on to another post…
1 to 5, casual reader…
5 to 10, follower maybe getting emails every time I post…
10 to 15, new best friend….
15 to 20, when can you move in??…..
20 or more….Wait, is that humanly possible?? Twins separated at birth?? Nope, that negates number 7 then…Lol..
Thanks for reading (putting up with me)!
What is it about anyway?
I suppose that some of you are wondering what my blog is about anyway…The easy answer is…I don’t know..I write about many different things such as travel, parenting, growing up with an autistic sibling, sailing, working with my husband…You name it, I probably wrote something about it…What can I say? My life is complex.
My life is changing so much this year. I’ve been experiencing more change now than I have in almost 2 decades. Even for the better, change is difficult for me. I hate the uncertainty.
With that being said, I am surprised that I haven’t structured my blog yet. Monday is parenting talk, Tuesday is autism day, and Wednesday I post a picture. I take every other Friday and the third Thursday off, etc…It may come down to that someday. Oh the thought! Putting my blog into neat color coded organized compartments…except that sometimes life is messy..
I’ve decided to change things up around here and do a 30 day question thingey. I haven’t run out of things to say…this isn’t a challenge, no one challenged me and I challenge no one. I’m not putting my name on the bottom of an old fashioned chain letter and sending the person on top a dollar.
There, now I can tell everyone that I am working towards embracing change…
Who knows?? It might be fun!
200 followers!!
I just want to say thank you.
Thank you for following my story.
I am not a celebrity. I am not famous. I’ve never been popular.
I don’t use fancy clip art or moving images. Once in awhile I’ll share a few photos I took.
My site doesn’t have all the bells and whistles. I’m barely computer literate. I don’t have an IQ of 152.
Thank you for taking a chance on me, for clicking the follow button.
I’m glad you are on this journey with me.
Thank you!
What if??
Last night I watched Paul perform as the lead at the local community theater. He did an awesome job. I have heard people say that he missed his calling. But is it ever too late to go after your dreams?
I have been thinking about that a lot this week.
When I met Paul, he started out with nothing. He was in his late 20’s living with a roommate in the bad part of town. He spent most of his childhood in the inner city of Chicago born to a single teen mom. He didn’t have a dad. His mom dropped out of high school. She tried to get her GED, but just wasn’t smart enough. You wouldn’t expect a man from such humble upbringings to start a successful business from nothing. But that is what he did.
If he can do that, why can’t he do so much more??
Paul asked me this week if I was happy living in his shadow. What if after working together for ten years we decided to part ways? What would I do? Maybe I would go back to school to learn how to be a better writer? Or take singing lessons? Or push my fitness goals to a whole new level? Try a new career?
I never once embraced the idea of change. But what if?? What if we moved away from this town? Or out of the state? I never lived over 40 minutes from my parents house.
I have started to grow restless with my old friends. I thought that they all changed. But maybe it wasn’t them that changed, maybe it was me.
Everything is changing all around me. People are coming and going from my life at record speeds.
In less than a week, my daughter will be leaving home for the first time. Change!
My MIL only has a few months left to live. Weeks? Days?? Change!
None of it is of my choosing or within my control.
I never really liked or wanted things to change, even when it is for the better. Now I seem to long for it. I can’t even explain it.
Sometimes I have to wonder…..what if??
The purge
I was always a writer. I started scribbling in diaries before I could write. Now those old letters seem strangely reminiscent of hieroglyphics found in a dark cave. It doesn’t make sense to me anymore. It is not even me anymore.
I wrote my first book in grade school. I wrote for hours and hours a fictional story about a girls orphanage. It was a childhood dream of mine to give lonely little girls a home. I wrote a story about their struggles and how I saved them. Then my middle school self thought that it was stupid and threw it out. Then I began to write my story.
Almost 5 years ago, I became friends with my ex-boyfriend Brad on Facebook. I asked him for my old pictures back. He sent me a big stack of my pictures to my home address. These were childhood pictures too old to be on digital print. He wanted one thing in return, his diary back. When I was going out with Brad he was in the military and kept a diary while he was on a Navy ship.
I searched through my stack of old journals. I found the diary and started to read it. I was hoping to find a riveting piece of historical non-fiction. But instead found a romantic novel obsessing about me. It contained page after page of personal biography about my life, my family, and my struggles. There was no way I was going to give that back, so I threw it out. We were both happily married to other people. I thought it would be forgotten, but I thought wrong.
It was also at that time that I threw out all of my high school notes written back and forth between friends. My childhood wasn’t the happiest part of my life. I was afraid that my children (my oldest at the time was 13) would find them. I didn’t want them to see me. I didn’t want them to be like the teen me.
Those were hard days. It seemed like I was always searching for that glimmer of hope. I spent a long time in the dark grasping for light before I got out. Now it lingers behind me in another dimension like an abyss or black hole. I feel if I go back it will trap me and I will never be able to leave again. This weekend I felt a lot of sorrow where there should’ve been nostalgia. My demons were restless.
So I purged away the old high school notes and Brad’s diary forever. Unfortunately, at the same time, I think I accidently threw out all of the letters that my mom sent me when she was in the hospital with my brother Matt. I feel very sad about that. But I don’t feel bad about Brad’s diary. Thankfully I kept all of my diaries.
There was a time (after I was dating a guy named Mac) when the words I wrote were powerful enough to almost destroy me. Mac found my diaries. Unbeknownst to me, he read them and tore out a few pages. He later tried to blackmail me with my own words. He threatened to send pages of my diary to my family members unless I took him back. It was terrifying, but I didn’t go back. Eventually he mailed the missing pages back to me. I certainly didn’t want something like that to happen again. I thought that Brad would move on with his life and forget all about it.
Then something happened, Brad’s wife passed away. Brad started contacting my mom asking if I was happy in my marriage because he still has feelings for me. It freaked my mom out and she warned me. A couple of months after that, I expressed sadness over the unexpected death of my neighbor. Brad sent me a message saying that he would be a shoulder to lean on.
Then a month ago, Brad sent me a message asking for the diary back. I told him that I threw it out. I sent him a nice message saying how I hope that someday he will be happy again and how that has nothing to do with me. His future is not in the past. We haven’t dated since the early 1990’s when I was still in high school.
Then this weekend my dad said that he received a long email from Brad stating that he was upset and hurt that I threw out the diary. He still has feelings for me. My dad said that his message was a little “off”. WTH?? I haven’t even seen him for over 20 years. Twenty years!! Two decades!! Why the hell is he bugging my parents about a stupid diary he wrote about me in 1992??
This is so insane that I can’t even believe that I am writing about this. Why does this craziness happen to me? Seriously, I wasn’t that great of a girlfriend. I am not even the same girl that I used to be.
To soon for the grammar police?
Sometimes it’s the little things that bother me. I’m not even sure why. If someone intends to do something good, but it turns out wrong, why should that bother me?
I shared with you a couple of months back that my neighbor passed away rather unexpectedly. She was very close to my age and it took everyone by shock.
Recently her step-daughter posted a picture of a tattoo that she received in memory of her step-mother. What a wonderful tribute for a step-mother, right? I don’t even know anyone who did that for their mother. Everyone responded with words such as beautiful, wonderful, touching, etc.
She inked the words ‘Someday came too soon’ on her body. Except that she used the wrong homophone. She used to soon, not too soon. It bothered me that she used incorrect grammar without noticing. The tattoo artist apparently didn’t notice either. He certainly didn’t leave any extra room to squeeze in another o.
I wonder if anyone will tell her? Who am I to criticize her wonderful tribute to a loving step-mother? I am not even an English major. Maybe I should’ve been!?!
I wish I could see the beauty in good intentions, but I am imperfect in that way. I feel like a harsh critic, the grammar police. Why can’t I just be happy that she had such a wonderful relationship with a step-parent that she wanted to permanently etch it on her body?
Sometimes I wonder why I care so much about perfection. I just find it sad that something special could get messed up. Why should I worry about it? She had the best of intentions.
Outrunning my demons 