Ideal Self

I'm in a psychology class right now because that's one of the options for a marketing degree. This made me happy. Psychology is interesting. I thought I'd share a little bit about what we did today and how it got me thinking.

We did a Venn Diagram of "Real Self vs. Ideal Self." As the terms imply, "real self" means how you are now, whereas "ideal self" means how you would like to be. I began adding things like "unmotivated" versus "seeing opportunities to do what I love," and of course there were things that overlapped such as "being married to Jon." I've struggled over the years, particularly recently, about what I want to do with my life--what I want to be. I'm married, so I've got one thing down. I know I want kids, so I don't have to worry about that. But as far as career, I'm sort of stuck. I should be deciding this. I only have a year and a half of college left. I'm taking a business degree, but I don't want to be a businessperson.

I have a lot of interests: music, making things, acting, art, writing, child care, tutoring, flower arranging, and even stand-up comedy (that is one thing I have not had the boldness to try yet). There is a huge number of things I could do with these interests, and I've thought of many of those things. The problem is that my resources are limited, so I'm going to have to be creative to come up with something that works. I also don't want to do just one thing. That's boring. I'd love to be a singer/writer/actress/painter. But how will I get there?

So I finally decided what I want to be, and it's not what I expected.
Here's what I want to be:

Are you ready for this?

What I want to be is...

Ambitious.

Surprised? Maybe not. I tend to be unmotivated because sometimes I don't feel a lot of support. Jon likes playing and singing with me sometimes, but I rarely get to do crafts with people, and Tell City, Indiana doesn't exactly have a community theater program. To overcome these kinds of things one has to have ambition. That's how people reach their goals and achieve their dreams. I feel a conviction to do some kind of performing because that's a talent God gave me. Because of that, I'm going to need all the motivation and ambition I can handle to do what He wants me to do.

My request to everyone who reads this is that you pray for me. If you have something you want me to pray about, I'll certainly return the favor.

Thanks for reading!

What do you want to be?

Beads!!!

It's been a long time since I posted! I really do want to keep up with this. You know, cause I actually want people to read it someday. I'm going to be famous one way or another.

Speaking of famous, I can sing :-) I auditioned for one of those national-TV "talent" shows almost two years ago, and here's what happened. I had a ton of fun with three friends in Atlanta, and I waited for the calls we never got (we really didn't know what to expect), and then I waited to see the Atlanta auditions in hopes that we might see glimpses of ourselves or people we had seen (or even auditions of people we had seen) there. My friends and I waited every week for the Atlanta auditions to show. But guess what? They didn't even show Atlanta. The entire city was cut from the program. How lame! But through the whole process and from watching the show a few years in a row I've decided that's not the way to showcase your talent. It's not worth it. I won't go into a rant about judges' and producers' decisions about who gets on TV, but I will say their process is no good.

But anyway, my point was that I might get to sing with my brother-in-law's band sometime--I think in the spring. Maybe. I don't remember what he said. But the show he talked about is going to be in Nashville. So that's exciting! Jon and I were singing with him around Christmas some of his own songs. He said I sang them better than the girl that used to be in the band. That was flattering :-)

I guess if there's anyone reading this, he or she is wondering why this blog is titled "Beads!!!" Allow me to explain. A few days ago I counted my buttons... sorta. I counted how many would fit into a jar I had and then counted how many times I could fill the jar. Then I counted my other set one by one. I found out that I have around 6000 buttons. I should not buy any more.

Then, today, I organized a couple of my sets of beads. I have three sets (one of which is in several parts): "fancy" beads, pony beads, and kids' jewelry beads. I organized the pony beads and kids' jewelry beads. By the way, I have many more beads than buttons, in case you were wondering (but some of them are very small). Today I decided to sort by beads by type because I feel that it is more efficient than sorting them by color. Also they were extremely disorganized. So I spent several hours sorting these beads (not the tiny ones), and now I am happy with how they are in their boxes. They are only slightly disorganized.

Here are pictures from part-way through my journey.

Do not fail to note that I did all this on carpet. I enjoy losing beads and weeks later hearing them like a reverse hailstorm in the vacuum cleaner.