Changes.

So today I realized it is almost my birthday. I'll be 25. Birthdays aren't even fun anymore. You know why? Because in 4.5 months I will be almost 30. Right now, if you use the principles of rounding I'm 20, but in just a few short months that number shoots up to 30! 3-0! That's old. Next thing you know I'll be finding grey hairs, have wrinkles, and tits down to my knees! I feel like I don't even know enough to be an adult. I always wanted my first child at 25 because that's how old my mom was when she had me. Plus, it's just a nice age to have children. You aren't too old, but you aren't too young. It's a respectable age to become a mother. That means if I were to become pregnant tonight, I would have the child towards the end of March. But there's a lot I want to accomplish before that time. That means that in order to have them accomplished by the time I pop one out (if I keep with my age of 25 to be a first time mother) I have anywhere between 9 and 16 months.

My Goals

1. Become A Health Freak.

I love running. I guess I shouldn't necessarily say "running" as much as I should say "running on the elliptical", it's a lot easier on my poor bad knee (which by the way is back to it's swollen, extremely painful state) I love running so much because it gives me "Me" time, it allows me to think, to destress, gives my knee a chance to get stronger and hence not hurt as much. I love how it makes me feel after a long run then a hot shower, I'm happier on days where I've ran, I sleep better at night, and it gives me something to look forward to when I've had a stressful day at work. And I won't lie I like how it makes me look as well. But I go through stages. Some weeks I'll go run 5-7 miles everyday, and the next week I won't go at all. I need to make it more for a routine thing. Maybe tell myself 3 days a week, and do it. I want to learn how to be more like my friend Jessie from high school. She hated junk food and would reach for an apple before she would anything not nutritional. I've been pretty good at this for awhile now too. I don't allow myself to buy junk food and I hardly eat fast food. I think about what I'm eating and how it makes me feel. I force myself to drink a ton of water as well. And when you actually pay attention to how doing all of these things makes you feel, you wonder why it's so hard for some people to do. But I want to know about different vitamins, what they do, which foods have them. I want to know more about living in a healthy manner in general. I want to eat a balanced diet at each meal. I want to learn correct portion sizes. I want to know it all!

2. Find A Job

Yeah, technically I have two of these right now. Two part time ones. One is a lot more promising than the other, and uses my Psychology degree. However, it's at the bottom of the totem pole. This company is known for promoting within, and advancing their good employees up fast. (I have all intentions of putting my everything into this job and building a career...hopefully). But I'm going to have to agree with Nate on this one. Right now I'm not getting paid nearly as much as I deserve. I have a Bachelors Degree, which I'm required to have for this job, yet they don't want to pay for me having it. So I need to push myself. Keep looking for other jobs. Step out of my comfort zone and apply for higher level jobs. I'll never get anywhere if I don't. I want a job that pays well, has good benefits, a job that I enjoy going to everyday, and has good hours, and hopefully no weekends, or at least not as many as I'm working now. I know, I know, that's what everybody wants. But I need to work harder at finding that for myself. Or at least finding the best match that I can. Like I said, hopefully I found that at my one part time job, but if not, I'm going to need to remove myself from the situation and not stay there forever, like I did with this job I took at the nursing home. 

3. Finances

The word "finances" isn't really a goal. Let me further explain. I want my student loans under control and paid off. I want to do better at keeping a budget, or for that matter, even balancing my checking accounts. I want to build up my savings account. I want to start putting money towards a 401k, and I want to start a college fund for my as-of-now-nonexistant children, because I don't want them to ever have to struggle with paying off their student loans like I am. And if that means that right now, at this point in my life, that I have to live with no cable, slow internet, and not live in a fancy dancy apartment, that's ok with me. However, by working on Goal #2 my finances goal should become a lot easier. 

4. Learn to Cook

I seriously think I was either A. Born in the wrong generation or B. Am secretly an older woman stuck in a younger person's body. Maybe I'm just an old soul. I don't know. But I like keeping a clean house, I like organizing and decorating and wouldn't mind being a stay-at-home mom. But you know what really bothers me? That I can't cook. Yeah, I make fun of myself for it a lot, and yeah, a lot of you do too. But really...I don't like it. I hate it. I want to be that lady who has supper ready for her husband when he comes home from work. Looking like an angel in a cute little dress and 3 well behaved children playing outside with the neighborhood children. So that's why I've decided I'm going to actually attempt to make a bunch of the recipes that I've pinned on pinterest. Of course I'll start easy and get more and more advanced the more comfortable I get in the kitchen. I want to have a signature dish, like my mom has her delicious macaroni and cheese. I want to learn how to grill (I've heard grilled watermelon is delicious!), and I want to learn how to use the broiler. This weekend I'll be at Nates apartment for the whole weekend, and I think I'll tell him I want to cook us supper. And lunch. Not breakfast  because I'm a cereal type of woman, but you catch my drift. 

5. Live Alone

My lease with Lilly and Nick will be up in September. Neither one of them live here anymore, but Nate and I travel between our two apartments and each practically have two of everything, one at each place, so I don't really live alone. I want to become more independent, rely on myself, and have complete decorating, rearranging, bill-paying, cleaning, EVERYTHING responsibility all on my own. Not for very long because I'm afraid it would get a little lonely (Unless I got my chocolate lab!) but maybe sign a 6 month lease, on my own. The problem right now is that I can't afford to live on my own. Going back to goals #2 and #3. Right now I live in these shit-hole apartments and I could probably afford to live here on my own, but there's no way in hell I would. Just last night there was a big fight outside the front door around 3 in the morning. Nate luckily got home from work about 2 minutes before it started. We were watching it from my bedroom window. There were about 12 men and they took this guy and knocked him to the ground and started kicking him. Hard. In the side. In the head. Everywhere. All in a giant circle around him. Then I saw a girl yell at them to stop and tried to break it up...and I'm going to make an assumption that it was a gun, but all I saw was one of the men open up his jacket and the girl threw up her hands and walked back inside without another word. This fight went on for a good 30 minutes. I was so scared I made Nathan hold me all night. Nate says him buying a gun had nothing to do with me living here alone, but I'm pretty sure it is. I don't know why else he would tell me he wants to teach me how to shoot it, makes me keep pepper spray on my headboard, to run the air instead of keeping my sliding door open at night (even if it's cooler outside than inside), and to not take the trash out at night without him. Now these apartments aren't as horrible as I'm making them sound right now, because this fight was obviously a first time occassion. But are they safe? During the day I'd say yes, but there are some pretty sketchy individuals around here the later it gets. Anyway, back to my goal, I'd love to live alone, but I don't want to live alone in the ghetto.

None of these goals are necessarily hard but they do all require discipline. I'll have setbacks, and some days/weeks/months I'll probably completely fail at them. And that's ok. This has been the worst year of my life (or scratch that, that would be my junior year of high school) but I wouldn't trade it for anything. One of my life long goals was always to move and live in Florida. No, I wasn't there very long, but I can say I did it. I accomplished that at the ripe young age of 22. I went from being terrified to drive around in a small hicktown, USA to driving a 16 passenger van on the interstates of Tampa. I've grown so much since this time last year and I love who I've become. Now I just need to add the icing on top of the cake. These few goals. I know I can do them, I'm not even worried about it. I just need to buckle down and actually do them. I'm obviously going to have to start with Goal #2, Finding A New Job, while at the same time, working on Goal #3 Financing. But just today I bookmarked a thousand (exaggerated estimate) jobs for me to sit down and write cover letters for and send my resume in to tomorrow. That's a start. It has to start somewhere! I'm excited for this next chapter.