Future, What Future?

What do you do when you begin to wonder if you're truly cut out for the career path you've started down? What do you do when you begin to question everything that you've been striving for? It seemed so clear initially, everything made sense. But as time passes, it becomes less and less clear. I went for the more practical career, the one that was respectable and made sense. I've always loved animals, always been good with them. But the science of it all makes my head spin, makes it hard to enjoy what I'm doing. So I start to wonder, is it for me. And then I come back to, god, what a failure I would be again if I gave it up with just two semesters to go. But then, what does it say when I dread going back and trying to wrap my mind around all these complex procedures. I love animals, but is that enough? And more and more, I'm thinking not. I find the science interesting, fascinating even, but the understanding of it often eludes me.

Starry Night

One of my favorite paintings is Van Gogh's Starry Night. I honestly cannot tell you exactly what it is about it that I love so much, but it's just so striking and unique and beautiful to me. I gained an even deeper appreciation for it after I saw the Doctor Who episode "Vincent and the Doctor." It is, to date, the best Doctor Who episode I have ever seen and my personal favorite. If you haven't seen it, go watch it; it's beautiful.

A few months ago, my mom and decided to go to a studio that has a paint and wine type of deal. You look at their online calendar to find a painting you like and sign up for it. A lot of times people get wine or beer to enjoy while painting but my mom and I decided to skip that part and just paint. They walk you through the steps of painting the piece and at the end of the time period, you've got yourself a completed painting! Starry Night proved to be far more challenging than either my mom or I expected and neither one of us was thrilled with the results. We decided that if we combined our two paintings, it might actually look halfway decent. Guess I better cancel any plans I had of being a famous painter!

Life Is Good

It's been going on two months since I last blogged I'm ashamed to say.  I could say that finals and all really got to me, but honestly it's more been the fact that I haven't been in the mood to just sit down and type.  But I have been pretty busy so that has definitely contributed to the lack of updates of any kind.  In any case, I successfully completed my first semester back at college with all A's which was super exciting.  I honestly don't think I've ever had that good of a semester at college ever.

In addition to successfully passing all my classes, I also passed the test I needed to get into the Veterinary Tech program on my first try.  That was a huge shocker for me.  I had to get a minimum score in four different

areas (Reading, Math, Science, and English) in addition to also getting a minimum comprehensive score of 60%.  The test cost ~$40 to take each time so I really wanted to pass it in two goes at the most.  I knew I could nail the Reading and English sections because those have always been super easy for me, but the math and especially the science would be more challenging.  Going in and taking the test, I was sure that I had failed it.  The science section turned out to be significantly harder than I had expected so I was sure that I hadn't made the minimum score I needed to pass.  But when I finished, lo and behold, I had passed with a 78.7% comprehensive score.  I will fully admit that I cried when I got back out to my car, I was so happy.  I also managed to freak my mom out accidentally when I called her as soon as I got back to my car and I was still crying a bit when she picked up.  She, of course, immediately thought something was wrong.  Whoops!

Awake and Alive

I realize that I really haven't posted anything since last September other than my one post recently so I thought I would give a bit of an update on what's been going on since then since life has changed quite a lot, thankfully for the better.  So back in September I was dealing with a lot of personal issues.  I was severely depressed, even suicidal.  I was cutting again and just generally in a very dark place.  I had hoped to return to school during the fall semester but didn't get everything done in time so unfortunately was unable to take any classes.  I ended up just working.  Honestly, it's a bit of a blur, but I was not doing well during that time.  I tried going to counseling which didn't end up working out but towards the end of December I finally got myself together enough to apply to CNM.  I was accepted and started looking at classes.

It was at this point that for whatever reason I kind of stepped out of the dark zone I'd been in.  Maybe it was just the fact that I was actually making steps towards doing something more with my life, I'm not sure, but I enrolled in six classes which turned out to be a bit ambitious.  Most importantly though, I finally settled on a major.  I've been jumping around with my major since I first went to college in 2009.  I wanted to do photojournalism, then wildlife biology, theatre, and vocal performance, to name a few.  When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a vet because I loved animals so much.  Well, I guess some childhood dreams aren't totally crazy because I'm working my way towards a degree as a veterinary technologist with the goal of graduating in two years.  From there I'd like to hope that I'll go on to pursue my doctorate in veterinary medicine but as that will require going out of state, that's up in the air.  My long term goal is to be able to focus on horses/farm animals.  For now though I'm focusing on just getting the courses done that are required to just get into the vet tech program.

I Chose This

(Brief warning: This is my kind of defying the world speech, just so you know.)

More and more I'm discovering that the career I've chosen is probably one of the toughest out there.  Not necessarily physically or mentally or anything like that, but emotionally.  When you work so hard to try to get that part in that play or movie that you really want and you feel like you've done a good job and then you find that it was all for nothing, it's crushing.  You feel like a failure.  Or, at least I do.  But what if that's what you love, if that's your passion?  You keep going.  You cry those tears and then you pick yourself up and keep going, keep trying, hoping that in the end all your hard work will eventually pay off.  I've known that this was going to be a hard road, filled with a lot of disappointment and pain.  I've always considered myself to be a fairly strong person, able to push back the pain, the tears and put that smile on my face even when I felt like I was falling to pieces.  My choice of career is going to test that.  Am I going to be strong enough to suffer disappointment after disappointment and still be able to pick myself up and keep going?  Is my determination enough to get me through?  And with that, do I have the strength and will to finally begin the seemingly impossible task of losing all the weight I have to lose to try to fit in to the skinny world of Hollywood.  I've had people tell me that I'm choosing the easy career, that it doesn't really take any kind of effort to act.  But it does.  It's already tested me in so many ways.  So many people don't understand what it's like to get inside the head of a character, to become someone you're not.  I can do this and I will.  I'm going to prove to the world that I am strong enough to do this.  I can become one of those skinny Hollywood girls and I will.  Just watch me!

This post was originally published on Sunday, December 11, 2011.

Back To School?

Okay you see that picture.  That could be me in a couple years.  Well, not the food, but you know, the hand garnishing that amazing looking dish.  Okay, I'll give you some context so you can stop looking confused, or if you're not looking confused, well, then, I don't know.  Anyway, since moving back home, there are times when I'll flip on the tv, not very often, but on occasion when I'm eating or doing something in the kitchen.  Most of the time there's nothing good or appropriate on so I've taken to watching Food Network, because, hey, I like to cook and bake and its always interesting to see what other people are fixing and get some good ideas.  My parents noticed this since I fix dinner a couple days a week and usually when they get home that's what I have on.  As we were watching one of the shows while having dinner a week or so ago, my dad made a comment that I should consider going to culinary school since I like to cook so much.  I was a bit surprised, because, well, culinary isn't exactly one of the "practical" college degrees that my parents used to always suggest I go for.  Now don't get me wrong, I know my parents have always had my best intentions at heart when they suggested those practical degrees, but I know I could never do something like business or accounting or even something like being a teacher.  No, no, no.  I would die of boredom or in the case of being a teacher, I think I would lose my mind trying to deal with kids.  I like kids, I think they're cute and all, but I only like them from a distance if I don't know them.  The only kids I actually like dealing with are ones that I know and even then I don't think I could do that everyday unless they were my own.  But that is in the far distant future and not something I'm going to worry about right now.