Birthday Weekend

This past Saturday I had my 20th birthday. As this day approached I wasn't sure how to feel about it. At the start of the week I couldn't wait for my birthday to come. My friends from school were coming to see me and I was just excited to hang out with friends and have a good time. However life is full of surprises and the week started off terrible. Nothing seemed to be going my way. Things just kept happening and I didn't know what to do about any of them. I just kept hoping that as my birthday got closer things would start to look up. Once again they really didn't. I started to think about how old I was going to be. I was going to be 20. I was no longer going to be a teenager. It was time for me to really mature. When I thought about being 20 it kind of scared me. 20 to me was a big number. One of my friends did not help me to forget that I was turning 20. Every chance she got she told me that I was going to be 20. As the day got closer I got more excited and started to forget the week that I had. I decided that I was not going to let those things get to me.

My friends from school finally got here and I was so happy to see them. They made the week so much better. I had looked forward to seeing them all summer. We had so much catching up. The next day they went with me to babysit. That day the kids' mom made me and cake and she also said something that will probably stick with me for a long time. She told me that these next ten years a lot will happen. As I began to think about what she said it made a lot of sense. In these next ten years I will graduate from college, start a career, and probably get married. These things are pretty big stepping stones in my life. Most of the time these things would scare me but I have realized that it is just part of growing up. I am also not scared because I know that the future holds great things and I cannot wait to see what is going to happen.

My birthday weekend turned out to be a pretty good one. I went to the cheesecake factory with my family and got to spend my birthday with some pretty great people. People who have been a part of who I am today.

Stressed...

The past week I have been very stressed out and frustrated. The thing is I have no idea why I have been like this. Most of the time i can figure out why I am stressed out and then figure out a way to take care of it but for the past week I have been very stressed and don't know how to fix it. In most cases I would just not worry about it and it would eventually go away. However this time is different than every other time. My stress had lead to getting upset with people for no reason what so ever and I feel terrible about. I'm not sure what to do about it. So i decided that I should blog and see if it helped anything.

For the past week I have been babysitting it's what I do in the summer. However last week the boy that I watch decided to see how far he could push until I got really upset. Well he succeed. He was acting up everyday and I felt like I couldn't control him. I tried everything but he decided to still misbehave and disrespect me. At first I thought oh this is what is causing my stress by the weekend it should be better.

As the weekend got closer my stress got worse. The boy started to act more and I was having other issues in my life that I had to deal with. I had to decide what to do about a friendship that I felt was not worth the effort anymore. Things with this friendship were great at the start of the summer but as summer went on things got worse. I was upset because I felt as though this person didn't want to hang out with me anymore. This person was one of my best friends all through high school and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what went wrong in our friendship. So by the middle of the week I decided that I was done with that I had fought to hold our friendship together but nothing was working so I ended it. This decision was not an easy one and it added to my stress. After ending I thought oh my stress should get better. Wrong again. Ending the friendship added to my stress. I just kept thinking did I make the right choice did I do the right thing. After a few days my ex friend at the time wrote me back and told me everything that was going on well I ended up crying and decided that if she makes me cry in a good way then she deserves another chance.

Saturday finally rolled around and I was really excited because me and one of my friends had decided earlier in the week that we were going to go downtown to the canal because it was something to do and it was free. Well before we went downtown we decided that we wanted to go shopping because a lot of the stores were having good sales. Not only that but most of the time shopping takes my stress away. So off to the mall we went and while I was there I felt really good and didn't have a care in the world. It was finally time to go to the canal so me and two of my friends headed downtown. We started to walk the canal and all the sudden this huge storm clouds rolled in and I started to freak out so we quickly turned back around and headed to the mall. After the mall my friends came back to my house and we had a great time just dance around and watching movies. I thought finally my stress is gone.

Sunday then came and the stress returned....at this point I stressed that my stress hadn't gone away yet. I took a nap that afternoon and tried to forget about everything. That night I hung out with some friends and things were good and then today came and things weren't going my way. I gave up early and didn't care. I think that is why I am stressed when things don't seem to be going my way I freak out and become this person that I do not like very much. As I continue to type I am realizing that the cause of my stress this past week is that I am just tired and I have been giving up way too easily because I don't want to have to deal with things. So in the end blogging about my stress really did help me I feel much more relaxed and free.

Moving Forward

Yesterday I went to go see Jon McLaughlin at Military Park. I at first didn't really want to go. I was very tired from the past week and I just want to relax until I had to go to my cousin's open house. However I do not regret going at all. Jon McLaughlin used to be one of my favorite artist but as I went to college I stopped listening to him I don't know why. Today when I heard him I fell in love with his music again. His songs are very inspiring and are very relaxing. His songs if you actually listen to the lyrics having really good meaning. He is original from Indiana. He actually has a song called Indiana and as I stood there today and listened to him play this song it made me began to think.

If you know me I want to eventually move to California. If I don't have the chance to move to California then I want to move to a bigger city. While Jon McLaughlin kept playing Indiana my mind began to wander. I started think about where I did want to live when I grow up. I realized that my call was to go to a bigger city. I think that I have always known this. Especially with every career I have ever been interested in. However as my mind wandered more I realized that Indiana is always going to be the place I call home. Who knows I could end up in Indiana. Either way though it is where home is. It is where my family is. While I know I complain a lot about Indiana and how boring it is. It is not always such a bad place to live. I know that if I ever get out of Indiana. I will always come and visit because it is the place where I grew up. It is where I became who I am today and it will always be the place where I feel most safe. I feel as though whoever you are you are always looking for something more something better. That is what I always used to say. I always used to say that I want to get out of Indiana because it would be better but now I realize that Indiana while it is not the best it is good enough for me.

Another song that Jon McLaughlin sings is called just four years. While it talks about the different aspects of high school. It also talks about how much life changes and you are only in high school for four years. It made me start to think about how college for most people is just four years. It then hit me I have already completed one year of college. That started to freak me out because I only have three more years in college. Three more years until I really have to grow up. Now three years seems like a long time but when I think about how fast my freshmen year went I beginning to worry about how fast the next three years will be. I look back now on the past five years of my life and wonder where the time has gone. It feels like just yesterday I was a scared little freshmen. It is surreal that in the fall I will be starting my sophomore year of college! What freaks me out more is I know as each year comes I will become more busy with school and working that time will just fly by. Now don't get me wrong I am excited to be done with school and start a career but it scares me at the same time because the real world is not always a friendly place to be. I have seen some of hard times people have gone through because when they get to the real world they don't know what to do. I just hope and pray that when I reach that point I will have some idea of what is going on and how to handle things. Jon McLaughlin's song talks about how the table turns in the real world. Thinking about I feel after the next three years I will be ready for the real world. Saturday was a great day. It got me back into an artist that I had some what forgotten about. His songs inspire me and make me believe in myself more. While I hate to think about how the next three years are going to go fast I am ready for them. I am ready for what the future holds. It is very scary and exciting. I know for a fact though wherever I end up I will always and forever call Indiana home.