So lately, I've taken on quite a bit more than I'm used to. I'm used to just working my full time job. This past summer I picked up a part time job at my church and also started grad school. Compared to my friends who have three kids and three jobs a piece this is seemingly insignificant, but for me, it's a lot. Time management has never been my strong suit, neither has organization. The combination of those two deficiencies causes a certain amount of headache and more frustration than anything else. My parents are both excellent at time management and organization, not sure where I fell off the wagon. Today, I finally got to sleep in and took full advantage of that and slept in till 10; it was just glorious. That's another thing, I need to find a good way to get me out of bed in the mornings. Being a morning person has never been my strong suit, but it has to get better than what it has been this past week.
My parents have been in Paris this past week, and today I believe they're going to Lucerne, Switzerland for a few days followed by a few days in Berlin before they head back home. It's kind of neat to watch them travel more as they get older; Nathan and I have had the travel bug, ever since college for Nathan and ever since my first trip overseas in 2005 or 2006, I can't even remember now, that's pretty wild. My parents hadn't been overseas until 2008 as a couple at least. My dad did some traveling when he was in the military but hadn't been abroad since he and mom got married. In 2008 they went to New Zealand, where I was spending the summer, or rather their winter, there. I saw them for 3 nights in Auckland, then they did a tour of the rest of New Zealand, then went to Australia before they came home. They said they enjoyed New Zealand much more than Australia and dream of going back there when they're retired and spending a few months over there. Then this week and next they're over in Europe. To this, I say good for them!
I like to think Nathan and I have influenced them or inspired them to go overseas more. We always tell about our various adventures and how much fun we have when we're overseas. I think I did get a lot of it out of my system with this last big trip I took. I spent 8 months traveling around the world and had an incredible experience. When I was fresh out of college I had never heard of a gap year so I was making up for lost time. Now, though, I'm happy to stay in Florida for a while and soak in the sun and soak in the deep friendships that I have with people here. I've also managed to go back home to Illinois twice since I've been back, once for Easter and this last time was for Labor Day weekend. In addition to that, I have in the forefront of my brain the need to put aside an emergency fund and am going to try and cut way back on traveling until I have that in place. When March comes around though, I'm hoping to lead a group to Mexico for a mission trip so I'll get a little cross cultural experience in even though I'm taking a break from the overseas traveling that I've done for the past few years.
It seems like everywhere I've been, I've made some pretty incredible friends. Several of them I still hear from in their email updates about their missionary lives and love to hear what they've been up to. Some of them I've lost contact with for the most part, but know that if we were to meet up we'd pick up right where we left off. Nothing quite compares though to those deep friendships I have back here that have taken years of cultivation to grow into the relationships that they now are. While it seems the popular thing to do, I'm content with just having deep friendships for now instead of heading down the aisle to supposed marital bliss. Maybe I'll head that way some day, but for now I'm really happy where I'm at. Not to mention I turn into a wreck usually every time I'm in a relationship for some reason. Then again, it's been a while so I'm not really sure how I'd handle it now as opposed to in the past.
Lately, life has been really good to me. I've been praising God for all the blessings that He's showered upon me everyday. While I have a lot on my plate, I continue to be stable mentally which helps me more than anything. I've also been trying to get back into working out with this T-tapp DVD I have that's just a short 15 minute workout. I did it twice this past week and am going to try and make time for it more often this coming week. Like I said, life has been really good the past few months to a year, so I'm incredibly grateful for that. Hopefully this will keep up for sometime and I'll learn how to better handle stress for future times when life gets rough again as it inevitably will.
I'm going to sign off now, and stop procrastinating :)
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