Ringing in April

It's only 2 hours until April. So, I figure now is as good as a time as ever to add another little gem to my blog. No promises on the value of said gem, though. This might only end up to be a .25 carat blemished little sucker. Thanks for loving me anyway. :)

It has come to my attention that I'm ridiculous.

Oh wait...we already knew that!

Exhibit A:

Being ridiculous must run in the family...

But it's true.

Allow me to clarify.

Perhaps it is better said that I have recently been forced to confront the awful truth that I am a still, no matter how much I talk about being a grown up, I'm still a little bitty girl. I am unable to deny that I am so terrified of making the wrong choices in my life, that sometimes I deny myself even living.

figuratively, silly.

No, I don't spend all my time hiding in my room, wrapped under the bed covers refusing to come out. Far from it! I actually probably don't spend as much quality time with my bed as I should. Case in point: it is now officially past my make-believe official bed time. But I'm not in bed. I'm on the couch. Watching Univision (because no one else is home and I can get away with it!!! Not that that's ever stopped me before though :). I think my pretty bed is jealous of the couch. Poor thing.

...but I digress...

What I'm trying to say, is that when it comes to certain aspects of my life, I live in so much fear of making the wrong choice that I never choose. I just sit there biding my time and waiting to choose without ever actually choosing.

Lately, I've been proverbially smacked upside the head with a glimpse of what life would be like if I stick to that path. Now I'm not claiming to be a psychic or storyteller, but I can kind of see how the decisions I make now will play out in the future.

And if I keep pretending the decisions before me don't exist, I won't be unhappy.

But I also won't be using all of my gifts and abilities to their greatest levels.

I'll be running at 50 or maybe 75% of capacity.

And here's the problem:

I WANT TO USE IT ALL!

So friends, as you help me ring in April (and may it be filled with warm, lovely weather, and may we not all get fooled too badly tomorrow!), I ask that you help keep me accountable.

Don't let me get lazy.
Don't let me keep sweeping my junk under the rug or stuffing it in the closet.

More to come soon.

with details.

hopefully.


For now, my camita is calling. :)

Brick Wall

I was just pondering life. Specifically my life, and this little analogy came to mind. I actually think it's spot on to how I feel right now which really makes me excited because usually my analogies require a lot of stretching for them to make sense at all.

Anyway, right now I feel like I'm standing before a brick wall.

I'm not talking a brick retaining wall. No, I mean a legit brick wall that's, say, 10-15 feet high. And it stretches on either side for forever, or at least too far for me to walk around it.

The thing is, I want to get to what's on the other side of that wall. Now, mind you, I have NO CLUE what is on the other side of that wall, but I do know that I feel impelled to get to that side. To see what is over there. To fully experience life. Because up to now I've only been able to experience what is on my side of the wall. But I know that there is a lot more on that other side if I could just get over there. And I feel like God is calling me there. He wants me to come to that other side. Probably even more than I do.

The tricky part is I can't go around the wall (it stretches for seemingly forever, remember). And I can't go through the wall because I don't have any tools or any cool superpowers.

So I stand before the wall and look up. Because up is the only way I'm getting over it. But up scares me. Because up is going to be a lot of work. If I could walk around the wall, it would be easy. Because I know how to walk. And even if I have to walk a long ways, I'm experienced at it. I know I can do that.

And if I could somehow go through the wall, that would be great too. Because either a) I'd have some wicked awesome superpower that would let me do it, b) I'd have power tools that I could use, or c) even with just a chisel I could take my frustration out on the stupid wall for being so difficult.

So really, my only option is to scale the wall myself, which makes me really nervous, or just give up. And I don't want to give up. But I know it's going to be really hard and challenging and long if I try to do it by myself. Which means, in turn, that I need help. And I don't really like asking for help either (stupid feminist ideals!).

But it looks like that combined with faith and trust are my only options.

Time

I've been really encouraged by some friends lately. I am very blessed to have some great little (and big) fountains of wisdom in my life. I don't think I realize how much God intervenes in my life in small ways. I'm always sitting around waiting for the big things to happen that I forget that every part of my existence is dependent on Him.

I also have been struggling a lot with the idea of time. I know that money doesn't and can't buy happiness. It is more of a crutch or bandaid than the solution for all life problems when it comes right down to it. But I do spend a lot of time wishing for just that, time. This is at least partially due to me being stuck on the idea that given enough time, I can do anything. Which is mostly true, but you can't discount the guy who makes all of that possible.

The biggest complaint that I have right now is that I'm realizing that I really don't have enough time to do everything. It isn't all feasible. Unless I turn out to be like Methuselah and live almost 1,000 years. And one of my bffs reminded me that if I imagine all of the great things that I could possibly do in life and have the greatest life that I could imagine and multiply it by a thousand, what God can do is still way bigger than that. My mind can't even comprehend that greatness! And the coolest thing is that all I have to do is follow his will and let him guide me. And see, that's the catch. Because no matter how hard I try it is still this enormous struggle for me to have faith and just believe, to trust that He has a plan far greater than my wildest dreams. I know in my head that I can't be self-sufficient and that I have to trust, but my heart is a whole other ball field.

Life....hmmm....

Sitting here nursing a mug of sleepytime because I have a headache and its 9:55 and I should be in bed and flirting with sleep in about 5 minutes. That's depressing. It used to be ridiculous for me to even bother trying to go to bed before midnight. Maybe I'm normal now, but I don't know. I kind of miss my late nights.

I was chatting with one of my bffs last night. She lives in El Salvador so I don't really get to talk to her much anymore which is also kind of sad, but legitimately so. We were talking about life and how we wish we could be back at school with each other, complaining on her couch and eating tres leches cake or THE cake (you know which cake I'm talking about) and then deciding by the end of it that we would survive. Cake and her couch and each other always made life seem right somehow. Anyways, now I could really use that because I feel like my life is at a giant crossroads and I'm just a little ant sitting in the middle not knowing which way to go.

The giant dilemma of my crossroads centers on a few things.

My job. To stay or not to stay. To wait for the right something else to come along or to grab the first decent opportunity that I get. ...to just quit tomorrow. I don't like it. To be honest, it's lost any luster that it originally had. The only scary thing is I don't have an end date where I know I'll be done with it. Post-college jobs aren't like college ones, where you know that at the end of the summer that you'll be done and so if you can just bear it until then, you'll be good. Nope. Now I have to be a grownup and stick with it unless I find something else. Otherwise I'm going to be living in the car that isn't even my car and eating ketchup packets for sustenance.

Okay, so that was a little dramatic. but still.

Grad School. The question isn't to go or not to go anymore. We've got harder questions to deal with now. You know the types, the W questions. Where to go, when to go, what the heck to study. And then there is the one, lovely, token H question-How the heck to pay for it. I thought my life was supposed to get easier once I graduated. I will have the slip of paper that says I survived 4 years of hard work and diligence, qualifying me for all of the wonderful jobs that all types of great companies and people want to offer me. Isn't my ideal life picturesque? Instead I'm greeted with the fact that I am in educational limbo right now. It seems like all of the jobs that I'm qualified for don't even require a bachelors because the pay grade is so low. The other jobs that I really want to do require a masters and/or several years of experience. Neither of which I have right now. Shoot. And I'd go to school tomorrow if I could to start working towards that, but then there comes the catch 22, I don't know what to study yet anyway!!!

Aggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is how I feel right now.

And I know that God has me here for a reason, and I'm sure it's a pretty darn good one. But I just want to learn my lesson right now and move to the next thing. I'm ready to like my job and to be excited to go everyday instead of dreading it and counting the minutes until I can leave. I don't want to spend 9 hours of everyday in a place that I don't really enjoy doing things that I don't enjoy, plus another 2 hours travelling and preparing to go there everyday.

Needless to say I'm trying to sort a lot of things out right now and I'm doing an awful lot of praying too. And I'd be eating cake too, but I feel like sitting on the couch with just my computer and an entire cake would be a bit much. Haha...I'll just stick to my tea and my chocolate dipped digestives for now (shout out to Libby for getting them at world market for us!).

Quick little update

I was just talking to a friend on the phone and she asked if I had a blog. And I said that I did, but that I'm bad about posting things. So that was the proverbial kick-in-the-butt reminder to actually add to my haphazard collection of blog posts. I'd just like to say that I really do have the intentions and desires to keep up with this, but I'm kinda bad at the following through part. But, you know what they say: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions..."

That being said, here's a little taste of what life looks like for me right now...

Work
I work 8:30 to 5:30 most days, unless call volume is really low, and then sometimes I get to go home early. That is usually one of my favorite surprises from my supervisor. I can usually guess when she is about to ask me if I'd be okay with leaving, and I start to get really excited...and then I immediately log off of my phone so that I don't get a call right when I'm trying to leave.

I also started taking Spanish calls at the end of last week, so this was my first full week being in the Spanish queues. It's been interesting for sure. I'm afraid that I seem like an uneducated person a lot of times, just because I jumble my words, go tongue-tied, and get ahead of myself quite a bit. Plus I have this weird mix of accent that nobody can place. I blame Andalucians for teaching me to "comer las palabras". As it turns out though, the more I practice, the better the calls go. I'm hoping I continue to improve.

Sports
I joined the a local Ultimate Frisbee club for Summer League this year so for the last little while I've been learning about and playing Ultimate with some pretty great people. I'm far from perfect, but I'm slowly learning how ultimate offense and defense is works and how to execute plays correctly. Granted, the main part of ultimate that involves the actual throwing and catching of the disc, isn't my strong suit, but I like to think I'm working on that as well.

Travel
Besides relocating once to NW Arkansas this summer, I've also travelled back to Greality to see Keith Urban (OMG, yessssss!) and drag my belongings to AR, gone to St. Louis for the first time ever and eaten the best Spanish food that I've been able to find this side of the Mississippi (think albóndigas, paella, jamón serrano, aceitunas, etc), and moved all of my possessions (again) to Springdale. Next in store: another trip back to northern Colorado in order to visit a friend from Spain!!!!! I know it seems kinda silly to be going back home....again...for a three day weekend this time (but still!). The way I look at it, I don't know when I'll be able to see any of my Spanish friends again, and let's be honest, 800 miles through one country is a heck of a lot easier to arrange than travel over however many thousands of miles it would take to get back to my favorite peninsula.
I think I'll take this opportunity and run with it, thank you very much!



Hopefully I'll add something of a little more interest soon.

...don't hold your breath, though, kay?

Livin la Vida Arkansas

Hey ya'll

I'm not dead, yet (just thought you should know that).

I am back in Arkansas, though. I moved back tentatively with the goal of finding a job in two weeks or moving back home if I didn't have one. I knew it was going to be tough to achieve that goal, but hey, I think life likes a challenge every now and then. And the Good Lord came through and found a job for me my first day back. And I know He's got a sense of humor because I'm working 8:30 to 5:30 (and I hate mornings), and I'm talking with strangers on the phone (and I hate talking with strangers on the phone).

Funny how I felt like I needed to get a job in a specific field so that I could use all of my wonderful, awesome skills in this super job and save the world. I'd be superhero Amber. Maybe I'd even wear a cape and have super powers like flying or xray vision...okay, so probably not the cape, but I'm still holding out for flying!

I think God's reminding me that He's the one who does the saving, silly. I'm just a method to the madness if I'm humble enough to allow that. If I'm not humble enough to be a participant, then I only get to be a spectator. You always learn those lessons when you least expect them. You'd think I'd be prepared for that by now, but no, I'm just a silly little human. I don't learn well. It takes a lot of practice and a lot of messing up....and then more practice, and eventually you work out most of the kinks. But never all of them.

That's the funny thing about life.

Or maybe that's the beauty of it.

Either way, I'm excited to see where this ride takes me. And you. And I hope you're excited about that too.
Hey look, I rhymed :)

_________________________________________________________________

As a quick note, I'd like to point out that the blog style and background has recently changed due to an itching to update to something more fun and to play with blogger's new template designer. But I would like to highlight the picture. Look at that beautiful background. I saw it as one of the provided options when I was designing and I did a double take because I thought I recognized the place. And I DID recognize it.

You'll never guess what it is.

Alright, I'll tell you.

It's the Plaza de Toros in Sevilla where they hold the bullfights.

I've been there. I've seen a bull fight there. I'll prove it.

Look at my picture:

(Hi Yesi!)

And look at the background picture.

My picture:


And the background picture.

See, I told you. How cool is that? I mean really, I never thought that I could say that I've gone to one of the places where a cool artsy picture like that was taken. But I have. Booya.

Now go shoot of some firecrackers and enjoy all the Independence Day festivities!

The end of the world as I know it

Finals week is here.
My last finals week.

Ever.

...or at least until I go to grad school...if I go to grad school.

WEIRD.It's strange to think that in 5 days I will leave behind the only form of life that I have known for the past 17 years and enter into the foreign world of....ADULT. *shudder*
I'm sure it's not really that bad. And, to be completely honest, I think it's going to be a refreshing change from the crazy of college. Not that I don't love crazy, or search for it. But I can't say that I will miss staying up until 4 studying for an exam or writing a paper. Nor will I miss the part about racking up massive amounts of loan debt (although now I get the privilege to pay that debt off...hmm).
That being said, this ending is bittersweet for me. Sweet in the sense that I will finally get to be really independent (after I finally find a job and move out of ma 'n pa's house of course) and get to finally put into practice all of the things that I have been learning about. Bitter in the sense that this life is leaving me and there is nothing that I can do to change that. Even going to grad school right now wouldn't change anything because I would be leaving behind this wonderful community of people whom I have relied upon for the past 4 years. We've grown together, suffered together, cried together, and gone on vacations together. Saying goodbye is definitely going to be difficult, but I rejoice in the fact that I have all of these memories with some of the most incredible people ever. Like staying up until 4am on a regular basis my freshman year just to chat, last minute camping trips and weekend vacations, watching Las Tontas con la Naty, and suffering through Senior Seminar with the best support group ever.
Everybody that I've come into contact with has helped to shape my life and I hope to never forget them. May the Lord bless everyone's paths as we approach the cliff of graduation and jump into the unknown.
Catch you on the flipside!