When to Quit

            The blog has resurfaced! To say it has been a long time since I’ve written for fun is an extreme understatement. Allow me catch you up to speed with my life. I graduated from UW-Madison this May with Bachelors in history and a certificate in gender and women’s studies. Right now, I’m working as a bartender in Madison but I’m so excited to announce that I recently accepted an offer with American Family Insurance that I will be starting in October. For anyone close to me in my life, they know the struggle of me wanting a “big girl job” but the anxiety of not knowing what I wanted or how to go about it has been on going since basically the start of my senior year. Besides this big news, I’ve been slowly attempting to transition to a vegan diet after being a pescaterian for the past two years. It’s been an exciting process but challenging at times, especially when eating out or when I remember how delicious sushi is. Beyond my diet, I started dating someone in February and he has somehow managed to take on the task of my ceaseless worrying. Plus, he loves his cat as much as I love mine, so its pretty great. There you have it dear reader, my life in a convenient recap after an almost year and a half hiatus from this blog. Now on to the actual post.

People say college is four of the hardest years of your life. I think that’s a lie. Don’t get me wrong, dear reader, college was hard and there were definitely tears shed over late night cram sessions, term papers, and final exams. But what they don’t tell you is how hard life is right after college. I naively looked forward to the end of college as a positive step towards less stress in my life and being “an adult.” However, until recently, this summer had been one of the most stressful in my life. But as often is the case with extreme stress, comes learning opportunities too.

The end of college meant many of my friends accepting adult jobs, and moving forward with their lives. While I was, and am, so incredibly proud of their hard earned accomplishments, I couldn’t help but compare myself to them. Me stuck at a job that left me stressed and dreading going to work and not sure which direction I wanted to go career wise. Don't get me wrong, I had great co-workers, I just couldn't imagine myself staying. Wasn’t I supposed to know what I wanted to do by this point in my life? Wasn’t the time for uncertainty limited to the freshman year of college filled with undeclared majors? I felt like I was going backwards in time. I used to be so certain of the direction of my life but as everyone grew up around me, I felt myself becoming less and less certain of what I wanted my life to look like. That leads me to this summer, riddled with stress and anxiety, knowing I wanted to leave my job but not having another one lined up, despite resumes and applications sent. I agonized for weeks over whether or not to leave a job that left me unhappy despite it being irresponsible. But I did something crazy and put in my two weeks.

It occurred to me that I always try to live my life keeping my personal happiness and mental wellbeing at the forefront and I had been neglecting both of those. I put my two weeks in, feeling a weight come off my shoulders. I swear it was like the universe was cheering “its about time!” because everything starting working out for me. I’m not religious but it definitely felt like there were some higher powers at work. I went from being completely broke to accepting a bartending position with an old manager who wanted me to work at his new location. I got a job interview with American Family Insurance and they ended up calling me back a month earlier than they were supposed to with an offer because they were so impressed with my interview. But perhaps most importantly, I felt better physically and mentally. I went from being riddled with intense anxiety back to enjoying the things I love. I’m reading again, I picked this blog back up because writing is something I immensely enjoy, and I’m getting back to my passion of food that’s good for me and for the environment. I finally feel like myself again.

Now, if you’ve made it this far through my personal story, you’re probably asking yourself the “so what.” So what does this mean to me? So what does this matter beyond I had a few minutes to spare and this link happened to be on my social media page? My hope is that it may serve as a loving reminder to those who may need it. Life can be incredibly hard. You may feel as though you’re stuck in a rut, perhaps mentally or physically or both. You might be afraid or apprehensive of change. After all, change can be an incredibly scary thing. I left a job for the unknown, only because it made me unhappy, something many may consider a foolish decision. Change is intimidating, but sometimes leaping into the unknown, whatever that may translate to within your own life, may be the best possible decision. If you feel unworthy or incapable of making changes to make yourself happy, please know that you are not. You deserve happiness in your life in whatever form that may take. After all, life is not meant to be lived in routine duty.

-T

These are just some photos to recap my hiatus because apparently adding photos is something bloggers do? Call me trendy. 

Reassurance

New year and a shinny new blog to go along with it! It’s been literally months since I’ve posted, I’m sorry dear internet friends, I must have written the beginning to this blog countless times these past couple months and I always lost the ambition to finish it, but I persevere and here I am. And which brings me to what I’ve (finally) decided to write about for this post. But let me quick catch you up to speed on my life since mid-November. If for some reason you have been living under a rock in regards to my life or if my bombardment of pictures wasn’t enough, I got a cat! Cue gushing. He is this scruffy mass of fur that I scooped off a friend’s porch (Thanks Schatzman family!) and is an absolute rascal. He eats food that doesn’t belong to him, consistently wakes up too early to pester me, and coos like a pigeon to assert his cuteness. Overall, I’m just smitten. Otherwise that’s probably been the biggest change, Spring semester classes are in full swing and they’ve kept me pretty busy. Let’s get back to the thought in question, enough talk of cute kitties.

Today’s topic is rather a dense one for me to unpack and is a good portion of the reason why it’s taken so long for me to finally write it. For those of you that are very close to me, you already know that the fall semester was one of the hardest times of my life, I was dealing with some depression and as well just an overall feeling of lack of belonging as well as direction in my life. As someone who has attended three different universities, it has been difficult to put any type of roots down in one place, this semester actually marks the longest I’ve been at a school since high school. My freshman year was spent at Carroll University before doing a semester abroad in Aberystwyth, Wales and then jumping to UW-Madison halfway through my sophomore year. It was a lot of transitioning followed by a breakup with someone I had dated for five years, needless to say I finally feel like the dust is settling after these past three years. I’m at a school that I absolutely adore and am still discovering the things that I enjoy, but I would be lying if I said it wasn’t hard to get to the place that I’m currently at.

My entire life, I had always been the person who knew what they wanted from their life, the planner and the person with the sense of direction. Lately that has really changed, I have ideas of what I’d like to do, for instance, when I graduate but no real concrete plans; I am not 100% certain what I want to do with my degree or where I want to live or even what type of person I hope to emulate, just ideas that keep changing and are increasingly, but not surprisingly, shaped by the people I meet. For me this is something I have had a lot of trouble coming to terms with and I think that part of the reason for that is that the people around you always seem like they have it together. There is such a struggle for…perfection? I’m not even sure if that’s the word I want to be using. We see peoples lives through their accomplishments or from their social media. Accomplishments that we often don’t see the work that was put in to earn it and, in case of social media, the time spent behind a screen to come up with the witty caption or perfectly constructed photograph. If you’ll excuse the pun, we only get the snapshot of their life that they’ve carefully organized for the public to see. Perhaps my stating this is simply a reassurance for myself, but perhaps, dear reader, it can also serve as a reassurance for you too. We often don’t fully realize what someone’s life is like, and we tend to assume that they have a better sense of direction than we do. But here is a confirmation that often times, someone’s life isn't as polished as we would believe. Life will continue on, at times we will feel lost, but there is comfort in knowing you are not alone.

-T

Bigger Picture

I haven’t written in a while and a great deal of the reasoning behind that is due to the fact that I have been so caught up within my own life and the stressors that lie within the realm of my personal concerns. As many people my age, indeed many people in general, I tend to get caught up within my own life. My greatest concerns and fears are all things that directly impact my own life. I am a product of a ME generation. Today in my English class, a thought was planted in my head. My professor asked her lecture hall what her students, my peers, thought of issues facing the world today. Issues such as sexual assault on college campuses, refugees, and racial discrimination and inequality. In the recent attack on Paris, world affairs have been jolted to the forefront of many minds, across the United States as well as the world. Certainly this has been the case with my own life. There is that phrase again. My own life. In the same English class I mentioned previously, my professor (we are talking about literature from the 1960s this week) put a timeline of events from 1950-1962 on the lecture slide and it made me think of all the historic events that have taken place already during my lifetime and how that timeline would compare to a timeline from my personal life.

My life:

1995: I was born on September 2^nd

1998: My first niece was born (I’m the baby of my siblings for those who are weirded out)

2001: My family moved from Racine, Wisconsin to my current home in Yorkville, Wisconsin

2009: Started high school and my first nephew was born

2010: I joined my high school’s dance team and I had my first kiss

2011: Started my first job at Culvers and received my driver’s license

2012: Attended Badger Girls State

2013: Graduated high school, started college at Carroll University, and turned 18

2014: Studied abroad in Wales, traveled to London, Paris, and Rome, and transferred to UW-Madison

2015: My first time living in an apartment

The World:

1995: Oklahoma City Bombing

1996: Mad Cow disease in Britain

1997: Scientists clone sheep and Princess Diana dies in a car crash

1998: President Clinton impeached (yes I know he wasn’t removed)

1999: Columbine High School killing and the Euro becomes the European currency

2000: Mapping of the human genome

2001: 9-11

2002: Blast in Bali kills hundreds

2003: invasion of Iraq

2004: Facebook is launched

2005: Hurricane Katrina and suicide bombers in London

2006: North Korea conducts first nuclear test and Saddam Hussein is executed

2007: Artic sea ice hits record low

2008: Beijing hosts Olympic Games

2009: Obama is sworn in as first black president

2010: Haitian earthquake and BP oil spill

2011: Egyptian revolution, British royal wedding, and Osama Bin Laden killed

2012: Rover Curiosity lands on Mars successfully

2013: US Government shut down

2014: Nigerian school girls abducted, Malaysia airplane missing

2015: same-sex marriage legalized in US, terrorist attack in Paris

My entire life laid out in a simple quick timeline. If I live to be 100, I haven’t even reached the quarter mark. When compared to events going on in the world at the same time, my life and its events seem small and insignificant. Just a little food for thought the next time you get wrapped up with the concerns that involve your own life. Remember the bigger picture. Your world is shared with 7 billion other inhabitants. Your big events are mere specks in the larger workings of humanity. It is important that we remember that.

-T