A Little ♥ and Soul

Whenever I work the graveyard shift on Saturdays, by the time Monday comes around, I feel like I've worked five days in a row of straight graveyard shifts. I don't sleep on Sunday until the evening and then I wake up at 5:30 am on Monday. At this point, my toes are edging on exhausted. It doesn't help that I have a whole week ahead of me to accomplish stuff. bleh... Anyway, I've spent sometime outside today. The sun is shining, and even if it's a little bit chilly, I love that the sun is making a more consistent appearance. My cheeks are a little more rosy which makes the bags under my eyes even more apparent, but at this moment, I don't care. If the sun weren't in the perfect spot to shine in my eyes while I sit at my desk, I'd have my blinds open. But I'll settle for half opened blinds with my sliding glass door wide open. My birthday is in a few days. I doubt that anyone will really remember it if it weren't for the fact that my birthday...

So, I started school...again. I've completed my third week and I've already been absent F I V E times. Horrible, I know. I'm attending MATC - Mountainlands Applied Technology College - in Lehi by Thanksgiving Point. It takes me about an hour to get there on the bus. Anyway, I'm taking the Medical Assistant course, and so far, it's been a little stressful. The first two tests I took, I had to retake to get the program passing grade. If this were a regular university level course, I wouldn't have had to retake the tests. Well...I guess I would have had to anyway. The nursing program at UVU requires an 80% passing grade for the whole program. So why would this be any different?? My grade so far is an 82.5%. Not too shabby. Although, my attendance will be the undoing of all my studying. The hardest thing, aside from all the medical terminology I have to memorize, is the fact that I'm still working graveyard shifts. If I had a different job, I think I'd hav...

"I have learned that we feel like a failure when we make mistakes even when we profess a belief that the purpose of this existence is to make and learn from them." Growing up in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I have had this belief that - as the quote says - we are here experiencing mortality to make mistakes and to learn from them so we can, eventually, become exalted beings and live with our Heavenly Father. In it's simplest form, that is why we're here. We have steps that we have to perform to attain such exaltation; faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost, enduring to the end, temple ordinances...you get the point. The first three things I mentioned are always ongoing. We're baptized with water and every week with the sacrament, we renew those covenants. It's a time for reflection of what we've done during the week. What went wrong, what went right, what we need to work on.  Anyhow, growing up in the church, I fe...

So, I've been thinking about the people in my life. There are so many that have just come and gone as easily as I've come and gone from theirs. I think that as I've gotten older, the more I yearn for more of a connection. I have friends. Most are merely acquaintances. But I'm finding that once in a while I'll find a "golden egg" of an acquaintance and the relationship breaks into the friend bracket. I've met such a friend from my work and her friendship couldn't have come at a more opportune time in my life. Then there are the people in your life that you've known for a long while. Like more than five years. Some of them stick around and you're more than grateful for their friendship. Some of them, like I've mentioned, come and go pretty easily. They've left whatever impression they were meant to leave and have made a graceful exit from your life. Then there are those who you think have turned into a bosom buddy of sorts, at least i...

So, you know when the beginning of the new year rolls around and you recommit yourself to begin a healthier lifestyle and then you kind of crash and burn somewhere around the end of the month? Yeah...I've been there. Like every year of my my twenties. For some reason, the closer I get to turning 32 - yikes! when did that happen??? - the more I think about where I want my life to go, what I want to do, who I want to be...you get the point. Almost a week ago, I started exercising every day with just one rest day a week. Today - Saturday - is my rest day. It also is my sugar day. Anyhow, last Sunday I was sitting in my room perusing Pinterest. I was coming off a graveyard shift sleep the daylight hours away stint and I was bored. I said to myself, "You should do something healthy today. You've slept all day and have energy to burn." Somehow I ended up on this wall exercise chart thing on a friend's board and I thought, I can do this. It's quiet. I won't wake...

So, I've decided to write down those journal prompts down in my paper journal. I come to Blogger pretty regularly, but when it comes down to typing out the prompts, I just don't have to motivation to catch up on whole weeks worth. Plus, I think it'd be kind of cool for my - hopeful - posterity to dig through my journals some day. I'm a journal/paper nerd, so I have a lot of differently sized journals. Anyway, I'm going to my assigned ward in about 12 hours. I've been avoiding the whole BYU singles ward scene since I moved back to Provo. The Bishop made a surprise visit yesterday morning. I was still in bed after finishing yesterday's graveyard shift. I think I had made it to 4 hours of sleep before they came. I'm surprised they're even letting me attend the ward at all. This will be a good jumping off to start some introspection of things I need to work on. Pretty vague, huh? Let's just say that there is a lot that I need to work that I've ...

Here's my weekly update on my journal goal this year: January 5th: What was your last major accomplishment? I'm all for small victories. The last major one was finding a job outside of the retail world. It's been a nice break not having to deal with customers. January 6th: What is one possession you could not live without? My laptop...and my phone. I don't think I'd be able to live without Instagram. January 7th: Can people change? I think if they really want the change, they can. Maintenance of said change is hard though. But I think if you've invested your whole self in the change that you want, then it's possible to achieve and then maintain. For me, I need a good support system to even achieve change. Maintenance has always been pretty easy for me if I've worked hard enough for what I want. January 8th: What is the last "good" you ate? Taste wise? The beginning of the month I went to Tucanos. It was really, really, really yummy....