Grrr...

I'm really frustrated and grumpy tonight, though I'm trying really hard not to be. It's difficult, though, when I was looking forward to having the day off and then I'm called in to work only to later find out that I have to work the rest of the week as well and just don't get a day off this week. Add to that the fact that while driving home it was snowing and every single person in front of me was moving at a snail's pace. Come on, we live in Utah. It snows, and yes, it is still winter. I was going well under the speed limit and still whipping past people. I guess some people are just terrified of driving in the snow at night, but I have to say, it's not that hard.

Okay, rant over. Sorry for that. I've just been frustrated because I really value my free time. I hate it when people infringe on the time I have to myself because I don't really get that much of it. Maybe more than some, but it is something I really treasure and don't take kindly when time I was expecting for myself it taken away.

What I wrote in my last post still holds true, I am trying to be more positive, but it seems like every time I make a resolution of that sort, it's always so much harder to keep it. I was feeling fine earlier this week and was in a fairly positive mood, but it seems like all my frustrations have exploded, or better yet imploded, on me today. Maybe because I was trying so hard to push all my negative thoughts to the side instead of dealing with them head on, they just ended up blowing up in my face.

I don't know what the answer is. Everything I try ends up failing, it seems, no matter how well placed my intentions and efforts are. What should I do? If anyone has any suggestions, I'm open to hear them. I need some kind of help, but it seems like I've tried everything and nothing has yet to work.

Maybe I'm overreacting and everything will calm down later, but right now it feels like everything is just a mess. I just get so frustrated with the way things are going and I feel powerless to change them. That's why I've decided to go to Paris and why I've taken up knitting: I want something in my life that I am in control of so that I don't feel completely powerless and useless. I need something that makes me feel like I actually have a say in my life and am not just blowing on the winds of caprice.

I think I just need to relax a little tonight and go to bed. Hopefully I'll wake up feeling better in the morning. I couldn't possibly feel any worse than I do right now.

As I think, so I am

I barely finished reading a beautiful little book called, "As a Man Thinketh" by James Allen. It took me less than an hour, but I was thoroughly amazed by how many important ideas he was able to capture in so few pages.

In the book, Allen describes the importance of our thoughts. "A man is literally what he thinks," he writes, "his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts."

And so, depending on what a man thinks in his heart, he acts upon those thoughts, whether good or bad, which in turn shapes his character and the circumstances surrounding him. There is truth to what he says: When I think good, pure, happy thoughts, that is how I feel and how I act. But when I am thinking low, bad, impure thoughts, I feel degraded and useless, and therefore act in that way.

After reading these words, I have decided that it is time for me to change my thoughts. It won't be an easy task -- the truly important things in life are never easy -- but it will be something to change my life for the better and I will be happier for it.

So no more moping, no more opining the state of my life. I am the only one who can change these conditions. It is up to me to make the best of what has been given me and turn my life into something truly spectacular.

Paris in springtime

I decided that, barring unforeseen circumstances, like marriage, around this time next year I'll be in Paris.

The decision comes on an impulse, yes, but more by an alignment of the planets or other kind of kismet. While I was knitting earlier today, I sat pondering how much I would love to take a trip to France with my future daughter(s), with just the girls. A call from my sister interrupted these daydreams, but while talking to her, she mentioned how I should go on a trip to Paris.

I couldn't believe my ears, considering my previous train of thought. I've always wanted to visit Paris, especially since I speak French and spent a year and a half living in Montreal, but I've never been able to make the trip before.

Somehow it just seems like it's meant to be. There's nothing to keep me from traveling the world, well, nothing will keep me once I get a good-paying job with benefits like vacation time, which I hope to find somewhere in the near future.

So if I start planning now, I should be able to save up enough to spend several weeks there, and maybe even hop on over to London, which is one of my favorite cities in the world. I spent two months there studying during college and have never forgotten the experience.

I think that this is really what I need now, especially to keep my thoughts off a certain dumb guy. It will give me something to hope for and to work toward. I'm so excited! Though it seems rather foolish of me to get so worked up about something still a year off, it's something I can finally look forward to again, which is exactly what I need to lift my spirits once again.

A quick note

After about two hours of meandering through the blogosphere, I've realized just how little I care to read what's out there. There are so many blogs but I have yet to find one that I would be willing to go back and read regularly. Maybe I just haven't found something or someone I connect with; that seems to always be my problem. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. But it just seems like a big, lonely world out there where I have yet to make any blogging friends. Oh, well. C'est la vie.

Makeup lessons

I usually look better than this, I promise, but whenever my niece, Kelly, comes over to visit, she likes to play in with my makeup. On this day a few weeks ago before I had a chance to do my makeup or hair, she decided to help me out by doing my makeup for me.

How she applies makeup usually involves taking a brush, getting gobs of eye shadow or blush on it, and smearing it all over her and my cheeks. I guess you can say it's a form of painting for her.

You can't really see it in this picture, mainly it just looks like our faces our dirty, but I can assure you that by the time she's done going through everything, we're fairly colorful.

The real test of friendship

I hadn't realized how much I'd missed having really good guy friends around until I started hanging out with one friend I'd lost contact with for the past few months. We'd started texting again and decided to get a few of the old friends back together again to hang out. He'd recently gone through a rough breakup, so I think he was trying to reconnect with people he was comfortable with.

Thing is, I hang out once or twice a week (owing to my working nights) and often there are guys there, but no one I'd really connected with and could really talk to. I tend to be shy around guys I don't know very well and so it's hard for me to open up sometimes.

But with this friend, he and I have gotten along so well and I can talk to him about almost anything; things both serious and things that I think are hilarious even though other people may think they're dumb.

Now, I'm not attracted to him at all, but I hadn't realized how much I'd missed having a guy around who I could ask anything and be assured of an honest answer. I also missed how friendly he is, i.e. giving hugs and patting my leg while talking. It's something I haven't had in my life for a while, especially since I don't have a boyfriend or anyone I'm dating.

Basically, the point is that I need to surround myself with good friends I can trust and who I can talk to about anything or nothing. I have friends that I hang around with, but I don't really connect with them the same. I miss the days when I was in college and we would spend hours discussing history or religion or art or current events and no one would roll their eyes at me for being dumb. I'm just surrounded by nice people who don't understand me and who are so different from me I feel like I can't be myself for fear of being ridiculed.

No one should ever feel like that, and that's why I think I need to stop spending so much time with those friends and instead seek out those who will really understand me and love me for who I am and not just because I know how to have fun.

It's been too long since I felt like I really belonged in a group, much too long. And I need to change that, somehow.

Hitting the road

I went for a drive this evening to clear my head and think a little of what's been happening in my life lately. I've been frustrated again, which is surprising. Me being frustrated isn't that surprising, it's the fact that I haven't been in a permanently frustrated stupor these past few weeks.

Normally I'm the kind of person who overanalyzes everything and freaks out over the simplest frustration, but this past little while I've actually been fairly level-headed, well, for myself that is. I still freak out more than many people, as seen by previous posts, but somehow I've been able to get through it all with a modicum of tranquility.

Today, however, I was back to my normal, freak-out-over-tiny-little-details-that-don't-really-matter self. Part of that is a backlog of small, little frustrations that have been building for a while and another part is just that I'm a woman and am very emotional at the moment. It happens to the best of us, but it usually happens to me when I've got so many things on my plate.

My job, for example, was going better this week. I wasn't nearly as frustrated as I had been earlier, but by the end of the endless week I was fried out. I was done. Add to that the frustration of not hearing back on second job interview for a position I really thought could have been mine. And then there is the lingering stress of my miserable love life (i.e. nonexistent, pathetic, dead and buried), along with stress at home. It was a recipe for disaster.

I'm fairly surprised that I didn't blow a gasket in front of my whole family earlier. I was fortunately able to hold it all in until I could get away this evening and think things through. There's just something about jumping in my car, turning off the radio and driving who knows where in utter silence that helps me to clear my jumbled brain. It's really what I needed tonight.

So I'm feeling much better now, not on the point of creating a scene anymore, which is definitely a good thing. I'm also a little more hopeful that everything will work itself out, something that was really bothering me earlier today. When I get stressed I tend to lose my hope, and without hope, nothing seems worth anything anymore. I need my hopes and dreams and goals to keep me going through the rough times. Sometimes it's all I have.

Hair today, gone tomorrow

So maybe I jumped the gun a little bit about spring coming. It snowed again yesterday and today. Grrr... But what can I do? I'll just have to wait it out, like usual.

I am continuing with my preparation for spring, however, with an appointment I have tomorrow. I decided to chop off my hair, like I do every spring. Usually I grow my hair out in the fall and winter so I'll have an extra layer of warmth on my neck, and I generally tell myself that this year I'll grow it out even longer, well into summer.

Never lasts. By the time spring rolls around, or in most cases the first hint that spring could be coming, I'm ready to chop it all off and start over new. I also look much older and more professional with it shorter, though I have to say, I want my hair longer for a very vain reason: Guys always say they like longer hair on a girl. Though many of them find girls with short hair cute, longer hair has been proven in numerous studies to be the preference of most males. I admit that I would like a guy to look at my long, luscious hair (and yes, I have had people describe it that way) and think, wow, I'd really like to run my fingers through that. Or at least one guy. But that's another story for another day.

Other than that, my life continues as usual. I have found a new passion in life: knitting. I have to say I love it, though I'm not really sure why I like it quite so much. I am making very cute things for myself and for my friends, which is always a bonus. A hobby that is also productive, who'd have thought?

And no, I won't bore you with yet another treatise on how great knitting is. I'm really tired after the crazy week we had at work, though I will add in closing that it wears me out editing all those stories about the poor victims from Monday's shootings in Salt Lake. My heart goes out to them with each word I read and I almost start crying while sitting at my desk. It truly is tragic.

Ah, spring

I really want things to start falling into place in my life. I'm starting to get excited about things again. Well, I've been excited about things, specific things, this winter, but I'm starting to feel the general excitement that comes with spring.

Temperatures here have been lovely this past week. The sun is shining and I can feel the earth coming alive once again. Although there is beauty in the winter, I cherish the warmth and renewed life that accompanies spring. It's that renewal I crave in my life, a fresh start, a new beginning, something to make me want to jump out of bed every morning.

I know spring isn't far off now, only a month or two at most, but I'm already craving the feeling of walking through the park with buds opening into life, birds singing their sweet songs as they fly through the trees. It's a feeling I've searched for all winter.

I have so many plans for this new year, many of which I hope I can start accomplishing soon. I hope to have a new job, and with that a new social life. Working at night really does a good job of killing any possible dating or hanging out with friends. I also want to start eating healthier and working out more. It's just so difficult for me to exercise when it's so cold.

There are so many possibilities for my life right now. I just want to take everything in and turn it into something spectacular. I do hope that this feeling will last, especially if the weather decides to turn nasty again before spring finally does come. But with that I'll just have to wait and see.

Knit your way to contentment

I went to my knitting class Tuesday evening and I must say that I really enjoyed it. There is something to what people say about it being relaxing. It also helps me feel productive while watching TV or taking care of my niece, though she did run off with my ball of yarn and unwind it all over the house. I do have another class Monday where I'll learn the rest of the basics and then I'll be off and running. I'm doing pretty good for a beginner, as you can see by my lovely photo. Not bad, not bad at all. My first project, though, is to knit a scarf for my niece because, let's face it, if I screw it up terribly she won't notice or care.

My plan to keep myself preoccupied is working, though not perfectly. My mind still wanders to that dumb boy and I have to remind myself that whatever happens happens. I can't begrudge the past and I shouldn't spend my future dreaming my life away on fruitless pursuits. Better to live in the present and enjoy it for all it's worth.

On other fronts, still no word on the job interview I went to. I think I'll have to call soon and get the process moving forward. Maybe then I won't feel stagnant on all fronts.

I also let one of my friends look at the half-finished manuscript of my book-in-progress. Last time I spoke with her, she'd only read 15 pages but loved it. I'm sure she's just being nice, but it's good to hear all the same. It has, however, given me impetus to start working on it again, which is something I hadn't done for several months. The winter really tends to get me down, but now that I'm feeling better, I'm starting to write again.

I can feel the winds of change coming. They may be a little slow for my taste, but at least they are coming. It gives me something to look forward to every day.

Snowshoeing angel

Once we reached the top we decided to make snow angels. As you can see, I had a little bit of difficulty making a snow angel with snowshoes still attached to my feet. It was rather fun trying to get up again.

Give me this mountain

Well, this weekend I had a fun and exciting trip up into the mountains with a large group of singles from my area. We stayed in one of our friend's exquisite cabins, which is nearly twice the size of my house and has a theatre room filled with love sacs. Ah, heaven.

But anyway, while we were up there I had the chance to go snowshoeing with a few of my friends. Can I say that I love being out in nature. There's something so calming and peaceful about being in the wild, listening to the wind blow through the trees and knowing that there are hardly any souls around to bother you.

As we were making a trail and trudging through rather deep snow up a steep part of the mountain, I had the temptation to turn back and say, "Well, I've had my adventure. This is too hard. I'm done."

But then I had the thought that, no, I can't turn back now. I tend to give up too easily. If something doesn't come my way in the time I want, it's such a temptation for me to give it all up. Well, I never really give up, but I always want to. There's something in me that keeps me going, some dogged determination, though I'm still not sure where it comes from. As we were climbing, that determination sparked in me again and I didn't turn back, no matter how tempting it was.

Then as we continued climbing I thought back to a story in the Bible someone once shared with me. An ancient prophet in Israel, faced with daunting odds and a fierce uphill climb, said to God, "Give me this mountain." Instead of backing down when things got a little tough, he kept going. Determined, he asked for the challenges he would face because he knew that if he passed through them successfully, his life would be richly blessed.

So, walking through the snow as we approached the peak I said in my heart, "Give me this mountain, Lord. Give me these challenges because I need them to learn and grow."

I know the challenges I am now faced with are really difficult for me, more difficult than anything I've ever passed through before. But I also know that if I am successful and make it to the top of my mountain, the view will be amazing and I will thank God that he didn't let me give up when it all seemed too hard.

And so as I looked out over the valley that day as we reached the top, I saw something amazing and I felt a peace that I would never have found if I hadn't climbed my mountain. It was worth it, in the end. I just had to keep going until I could see how far I'd truly come.