Ups and Downs...

This is my favorite of our engagement pictures. I think that this is the one that best shows our personalities and many of the qualities of our relationship. This day was a perfect day for us. The weather was grey (that's good for picture taking), we went to the Children's garden on HC's campus, we had Miss Lucy with us (what you can't see is that she is darting around behind the photographer randomly getting into things and barking at us), and Brad's parent's were there with us (Brad's dad was on Lucy duty, thank goodness!). It was a very enjoyable day.

There have been some very difficult days and weeks recently for me. I'm not sure that I'm really happy with my job, I have a bachelor's degree and feel the need for something in which I can use my education. I'm simply not challenged in my current position and thus get bored a great deal of the time. I have had a lot of money issues lately. My spending habits and debt from college are now catching up to me and making it difficult to afford to live daily life. Today for example, I had to round up all of the bottles and cans in my apartment and take them to Meijer in order to get $5 to buy something to take to work for lunch tomorrow. And so this has me thinking, how do others do it? And, if I'm in this bad of shape, how bad are other's out there who make less than I do and have a family to support? How on earth do they do it?

So, though times have been tough, I am so very lucky to have the support and love that I have surrounding me from my fiancee, family and friends. And, I have realized that going through these difficult times makes the good times seem so much better.

Reality

So, I often refer to reality as a bad thing. Whenever I have a weekend off and leave town for the weekend, I usually complain about returning to "reality". When I awake in the morning, I often groan and try to turn and run back to my dreams and away from the reality of a new day. Then there are the times when I lock myself in my apartment, close the windows, turn on some music and escape reality with a good book.
If anyone on the outside realized the effort that I exert trying to avoid my own reality, they would surely assume that I lead a difficult, unhappy, loveless and insecure life. This however, is light years away from the truth. I lead a wonderful life! First and foremost, I have people around me who love me and care for me. I am engaged to the most wonderful man that I have ever met. He alone makes me feel loved, happy and secure. I have a family and friends that I know I can turn to whenever I may need them. Clearly, people are not the part of reality that I am running from.
I also have a fabulous job that I love with wonderful benefits that pays me well enough to lead a comfortable and secure life. Sure, there are difficult days at my job, but for the most part, I enjoy the challenges that each new day brings to me. My job is obviously not the part of life that I am avoiding.
I live in a nice apartment with nice things in a pretty, safe community where I can go to sleep at night with my windows open and not hear the sound of cars or trains or neighbors' voice, but instead I hear a dog barking in the next building, crickets in the field or cows mooing in the pasture 150 yards away. The my home is not the part of reality that I am hiding from.
I have a reality that should be embraced, what is it that pushes me away from the reality of my life. I often wonder if it is really my brain grasping and wanting more. I think that I will make an attempt to just appreciate what I have and not hide from my life as it does not exist in an infinite amount of time. Perhaps if others realized that their reality wasn't so bad, the real world could be a much happier place.

I have joined the group!

So, after a couple of years of following other people's blogs, I have finally decided to start my own. Chances are that it will not be overly exciting for the most part, but I have recently felt the need to journal my thoughts on my life and the world and see what others think of my ideas. So, please leave comments and positive or negative responses to the things that I write on here. I want to know what you are thinking and what is going on in your life!

I have many fabulous friends and people in my life that I am unable to keep up with on a regular basis simply due to time restraints and distance, you know who you are, so this is part of my effort to reach out to you and share my side of life!

Hopefully if you are reading this, you do know quite a bit about me, but in case it's been awhile he's a brief update...Brad and I were engaged on June 21st of this year, his parents' 40th wedding anniversary. It was a complete surprise to me, I mean I knew that it was coming at some point, but had no idea that it would be that month, let alone that day. I thought that he'd not even looked at rings since we had never looked at them together. He did a fabulous job though! We are planning a May 2010 wedding...stay tuned for details!

I am working at the hospital as a scheduling coordinator. I do all of the scheduling and staffing for all of the inpatient care units within the hospital. I usually work 12 hour shifts, so it is often a bit grueling and overwhelming, but I really do love my job. We have recently implemented a new scheduling software and I am one of the 2 main "superusers", so that has added a bit of spice to my summer at work!

So, that is a bit about me and my life at this point in time. Please stay tuned for more about my day-to-day life, wedding plans, my views on different issues and probably some personal rants here and there!