Positive Hyphenation

Hello readers! Hello new year!

I began this new year doing something I should have done 9 months ago...I finally changed my name to incorporate my husband's last name! I did the not-so-modern-anymore hyphenation and now have a million letters to sign when signing my last name but I will now always still have that piece of my parent's name that is so important and pride producing for me. The reason for my delay for the change? Well, there's two reasons. 1) I wanted to wait until I was done with school because I was worried that there would be the chance of records being confused and would then be forced to spend another million years chasing my tail to graduate! AND 2) I was totally procrastinating all of the hoops I would have to jump through once the change took place.

So on January 2nd, I headed to the SS office, waited for two hours and it was over. The first 30 minutes of the wait was torturous honestly but the remaining hour and a half was rather pleasant and truly flew by. Why? Well, a young lady (I can say that because she was probably 2 or three years younger than I ;) came and sat next to me and struck up an enjoyable conversation. We talked about work, name changes, schooling, children, church, waiting, house ownership, waiting, marriage and in the last five minutes, we exchanged names. It was so much fun to meet someone I didn't know and have a true blue honest conversation about anything without any previous knowledge of each other. I'll probably never see her again but I will thank her internally (and bloggily) for befriending me during those 90 minutes and reminding me that friends are anywhere we try and seek them out.

My last post mentioned a bit of new year's resolving. Well, I've yet to learn how to prepare artichokes but in the first four days of the new year, I sure have eaten a lot of them! That's something, right? ;) I have recently realized though that I think I've been neglecting myself and my mental and emotional well-being. I talk about this and that but I don't take steps to really heal, grow and evolve. I'm not as proactive about myself as I once was. I know it's only been four days, but I've been more proactive in this regard in these past four days than I have been in a long time.

I've started reading a book called How to Want What You Have which I've read about a fifth of thus far and what little I've acquired from it thus far has been so so very eye and heart opening. The author speaks of the 'precious present' and that life on Earth as we know it is life on the 'pleasure planet' and by remembering these two principals that we will begin to see life through persistantly gracious eyes and hearts. I'm working hard to overcome my anxieties and worries and these two 'P' phrases have so far been nothing but beneficial to me. If I examine life from a good, positive, pleasurable viewpoint, I cancel out the negative and scared view I've been experiencing for too long. Not to say that I always view things negatively but when those type of thoughts sneak in, they overwhelm me and take over. I don't want to sit here and forever blog about what I'm worried about, what plagues me or what I'm scared is around the corner but rather, I want and plan to blog about what makes me happy, what beautiful sight I took in during the day and how I was positively affected through life for that day.

I grew up in the Methodist church and even though I don't profess to be Christian or to have any sort of set beliefs, I thank the church for instilling in me good morals and good memories had with close friends. When I was 12 years old, I went through confirmation and was baptised. Confirmation consisted of, among other things, a class covering beliefs of the said religion. I remember some things but one this I'll always remember was a story told of two angels sent from above to collect prayers. Each had a basket to collect a certain type of prayer - one for prayers of thanks and one for prayers of wants. There may have been a third angel with a third basket but I can't recall. Just sharing what I remember :) When the angels returned to the Heavens, the basket of wants was beyond overflowing while the basket of thanks was close to being empty. What a great reminder of the importance of giving thanks! Not just in prayer but in life everyday; in our thoughts and souls. I love this story because it doesn't just have to apply to religion and prayers but it can and should be applied to how we view and live life.

Today I am grateful for:
Long weekends
Car heaters
Lazy days
Impromptu movie watching
Creativity
Marriage
Positive words
Corrective eyewear
Cardinals
Playing fetch
Bowling
Falling in love
Dogpiles

Unwrapping Emotional Packages

Christmas is over. Sigh. It was a whirlwind and it was a heavy holiday this year but it was nonetheless a good one. We were all over the state to visit all the appropriate holiday festivities and were well exhausted by the end of it. We even had family to our small abode Christmas evening!

I read, as I'm sure many of you did, about the Santa Shooter. It disturbed me so very very much. The main item of disturbance was the fact that this man, dressed as Santa, shot an eight year old girl in the face. She answered the door to see Santa and he shot her. How cruel. He truly stole her innocence and her family. Makes me downright sick. I'm so glad she survived and hope it doesn't plague her the rest of her life. Stories like these make me sometimes scared to be alive; scared that I may be in one of those terrible situations someday. It's of course the media that makes these type of stories more prevalent though. I need to take a break from media I believe.

During this time, I was down and thought much about how poorly I look upon American society. I've always been intrigued by the idea of picking up and relying on nothing but my senses to get me by. I'm sure I'll never do this but the idea of it is so romantic and appealing to me. This Christmas I acquired three new remote controls for three new plug-in gifts. I also received many new things to keep my jewelry habit alive and kicking. Combining these two acquisitions, I was forced to watch many movies over the break while working on jewelry. One of the movies I watched was called Into the Wild which is based off of a true story about an affluent young man who had just finished college and left to live off of the land with the ultimate goal of reaching and surviving in Alaska. It was such an appropriate film to me to watch at the time and it fulfilled something in me I needed to vicariously live through someone else.

I feel like I'm often battling an internal war between wanting to assimilate better into my culture and functioning normally versus wanting to run away and live a life without plans, without goals, without rules. When I assess my life and all that I have in it though, my drive to remain home with my family and what I'm familiar with wins. This Christmas, through heavy conversations, stark realizations, missing those no longer with us, I experienced extreme feelings of love, contentment, pride and perfection with life. It amazes me sometimes the depths we must go to realize how wonderful we have it, to realize that what matters in life is right in front of us.

This season I am grateful for:

Communication
Tears
Disabled Alarm Clocks
Family from afar
El Caminos
Friends who dig through the muck to find the gems
Family dinners eaten by those not technically family
Honesty
Working Toilets
Hot Tea
You

Slowing the Mental Roll

hmm. i don't really have too much to say other than i am doing my best at NOT writing a paper and am discovering so many different ways to procrastinate! blogging would be one of them, obviously :) it's funny, when i'm driving or in the shower or whatever, i'm forever 'blogging' in my head. my thoughts NEVER stop (i find it to be a curse honestly) and i always think to myself that i should blog about whatever it is that i am incessantly obsessing over...and then i sit down to do so, and i don't know what to write. i suppose i can write about that though - the fact that i can't slow my mind.

i'm in the middle of reading Eat, Pray, Love and am in the midst of the section where she is focusing on improving her meditative practices. she speaks about not being able to stop her mind; about how she will sit and meditate while thinking about things. i know exactly what she is talking about. even when i purposely try and slow my mind and not focus on anything, all i do is think more. it drives me batty. i've always been that way though. i'm a bit of an obsessive person in general; some have even attributed ocd to the list of adjectives that could describe me. i'm overly organized, too timely, i think everything through WAY too much, i play with the 'what ifs', and so forth. this type of thinking feeds into my anxiety issues i tend to exhibit as well. another thing i wish SO badly i could control. did i mention i have control issues? ;) i'm full of issues! sometimes i wonder if i'm crazy, honestly. then i realize, i'd be crazy if i wasn't all of these things - this is who i am. so what do i do? what can i do?

years ago, i was hugely into yoga and that proved to be a wonderfully fullfilling activity i partook in but my involvement in that - se fue. (in spanish, when playing with a child and you hide something behind your back and want to say 'where did it go?' you can say 'se fue' literally meaning 'it went'. i love that expression). so with my upcoming graduation in the near future, i have been making a mental list of all of these things i'd like to take up starting in january - german classes (know a lot but have never been formally taught - it's about time :), silver smithing classes, small business classes, and most importantly, yoga. i miss it. i need it. i plan on attending a class tomorrow night if one of my teaching classes doesn't go too late. i'm quite excited about it. i'm excited about slowing my mind down...at least for a couple of hours.