A Final Word

I think that writing these pages has helped me to learn more about myself. I never realized how much expressing internal thoughts into words can really help you to better understand yourself. I have learned that in order to ventilate, you have got to let it out. People, especially fellow students, do not like to hear all of your complaints. Everyone has got enough of their own stresses to not have to deal with yours as well. Journaling is a great way to get bothering thoughts out of your head so they do not just sitting there. It has also reminded me though that giving my worries, fear, and even ambitions to God through prayer and conversation with him, I can find greater peace in my life.

Journaling has restored confidence in myself and allowed me to grasp more troubling concepts. Putting your dreams, your observances, and your fears into words allows them to become more real so that you can continue to either reach them, dig deeper into them or overcome them.

This class has made me a lot more comfortable about my future. "What am I going to do with my life?" has become a more exciting question and less of a troubling one. I have realized that I do not have to have one answer to that. I have accepted that I am allowed to have more than one dream. It all depends on where the opportunities in my life present themselves and my drive to pursue them. There does not have to be and really should not be a set path in today's careers. Innovation is constantly changing our scopes of focus and if we fail to see take those turns in the scope, than we certainly will limit ourselves. We will not only we limiting ourselves, but will be putting boundaries on our field. It is an integration of field of study and ingenuity that will put creativity into an awesome new functionality. Jane Detter is absolutely correct in saying that creativity is becoming the language of today's job force. If we do not think outside of the box, than other countries will move into our box.

It is incredibly important for business people not only to catch sparks of creative energy within their own companies, but to acknowledge innovation in other fields such as science, computers, communication, health ect. Recognizing and contributing to those fields will be essential to the mobility of our economy.

Creativity and Innovation make the world go round. Think and listen. Respect the world around you. Take risks. Ask the Lord for his help. Love and be loved. Be happy and smile. That is all there is to it.

Energy (or lack thereof)

I really feel that the amount of sleep you get affects how you see the world day to day. Without having enough energy, we miss out on the details of life because all of our energy seems to be more narrowly focused (get the job done and get to bed, that is all our bodies are saying).

That is why sleep is so important to me, becuase I know how wonderful it is to enjoy the simple things in life, listen to bird chirping and stop to smell the flowers. Also with energy, you are able to formulate more creative ideas because your mind wants to think outside of the box and not just "get things done."

College definitely makes you gain an appreciation for sleep. I will never take sleep for granted again.

Time Flies

I do not know how it got to this point in the semester. How is my car already covered in pollen, how are my eyes already swelling up, how am I already preparing for finals, and finalizing summer plans? How is it that so many of my friends will be graduating in a few weeks and I do not know when I will see them again? Time baffles me. How does it seem that a place in time is so far away and then it comes and you wonder where all of that time behind you went. I look at these group projects of ours as an example. We had ample time to work on them, to figure out when our schedules would work, yet somehow it is not done. I hate to procrastinate. I get so frustrated when people will not give up a little bit of time because they think they are already too busy. Maybe they are busy, but if they keep being busy then they time they could be doing other things, like spending time with people, building relationships, is lost. I realize that we (esp. at Wake Forest) everyone can use the busy excuse every once in a while, but when we keep backing down on our responsibilities, our relationships, that is when we need to reevaluate.

I pray to God all of the time to help me to prioritize according to his plans for me because honestly that is all that matters in life. He will guide you and lead you where you are supposed to be, sometimes we forget that by trusting God life can be a lot easier. We do not need to worry about the future or the past, but just need to live in the moment and let God guide us. This does not mean that time will not fly by trusting in the Lord, but it will help us to live in the moment.

That way we will not get so caught up in the goal, but will learn to enjoy the ride.

It is when people are driven by their temptations that we go off course from the path that God has laid out for us. It not only affects yourself, but it also affects people in your environment. For instance, if you go off drinking and having fun after bailing on your group for a project saying that you have no time, then you are not only going to be hurting yourself, but also your group. They will probably have to make up for the work that you did not do. You may even end up convincing them that it is alright to put the project off. That leaves the rest of the group cooking for 3 hours in the middle of the night when they learn that this unreliable girl is wrong!

Thus I learn that time flies especially when you do not want it to. I would have loved to go to sleep when I was first in bed at 11:30, starting to write this blog, but now I have a bunch more soup in my fridge and my stomach is very full from sampling everything 3 hours later and I am finally back in bed. I do not even stay up this late on weekends, my group better appreciate this.

Life is Blind

It is sometimes very troubling not knowing what is coming next. When are we going to fail or succeed? When are we going to be scared or excited? When are we going to feel love or remorse? When are we really being blind to the obvious?

Only God knows. We must be patient and trust that the path he has laid out for us is exactly where we need to be. How do we follow that path? Follow the Lord. How? Pray, believe, love yourself, love your neighbor, love God.

That easy? Nope. It is not easy being blind but faith is blind. Work with it. Struggle.

Inspired

I have been meaning to write on my blog for a while now, I do not know why I keep putting it off of my list. I just have not felt particularly inspired of what to write about. Tonight, however, I was inspired. I was inspired by all of the other entrepreneurs at the Reward's Ceremony tonight. Hearing about what my peers are doing makes me realize I have that drive too. I know I do, but recently it has not been coming out. I think I have been kind of holding myself back for a while. My first semester freshman year I was really getting involved in so many great things, then I joined a sorority and kind of forgot about a lot of those things and got involved in other great things. I do miss the Entrepreneurship Society that I used to be involved in and I miss some of the other things that I started to get involved in too. I think that I need to re-evaluate what I need to give my time to for my future.

I need to feel the excitement that I used to feel with my jewelry business again and maybe for another venture too. I just keep putting it aside when really it is something I am very passionate about and I want to see where I can take it and take opportunities up that are presented to me like so many of the students at the rewards banquet tonight have.

I decided that I need to be more in touch with the other entrepreneurs on campus because I can see that we all have this energy toward our ventures that is very inspiring. Maybe I should start to go to E-society again and suggest peer groups to share ideas within smaller groups and help each other. I am already eating with a fellow entrepreneur tomorrow for lunch to get me excited to make some moves with my business.

Every Step, Every Breath

How should we count the moments in our lives? Is there really a measure of time when it comes to living? Minutes and hours and days.. they fly by before our eyes. But time is only a perception, is one persons day really longer if there is more meaning to it? Should moments be counted in the amount of "stuff" we check off of our lists or by the amount of people we talk to or by the time we have wasted in our days? Can moments even be qualified?

I think our lives should only be measured by the experiences we have with each step. Instead of measuring moments in the amount of time it takes for moments to pass, to simply come and go, maybe it is time to start to let go of the factor of time and take each step with every breath and simply live. To live in our world without time... maybe that could be less stressful.

What really matters... family

Lately I have really been thinking about how truly important my family is to me. With such a wonderful family who supports me and loves me and laughs with me and at me, how can I ever feel lonely or unsatisfied? My parents are two of my best friends and even though my brother is mean to me a lot of the time, I know that he would do anything for me. My grandparents support me to no end and love to here about everything I am doing. My aunts and uncles over the years have become my friends too. And even though all of my cousins are younger than me, ranging from 16 down to 7, all so close to me that all of them are like siblings.

I think that is why sometimes I really wish that I had not gone so far away from them when I came to college. I never wanted to be thought of as a home body and just wanted to get away from the small town that I grew up in, but I never thought about how I would feel being that far away from the people who have always been there for me and who I love so much. There are very few times at school when I have really been upset because of being homesick like when I came back for sorority recruitment during winter break freshman year. However, I think that maybe it has been an ongoing feeling of discontent that I have really never been able to place a specific reason on before. After I graduated from high school I moved 4 hours away from my home to live with my aunt and uncle outside Philadelphia where most of my dad's side of the family lives. I thought that this would be a good way to adjust being away from my mom and I really wanted to get out of town. I loved it and thought that I would be fine coming to college after that because I would have had a nice adjustment period, however, maybe to me home is where the family is. It does not matter which part of my family that is, but I really do love to be around them. I think it is extremely unique how close my family is including our extended family.

Family is something that really matters to me. I need to remember in college how important those relationships are to me and make sure to keep those ties strong so that I do not feel like something is missing in my life. I need to make sure that I do not just call my mom to talk to her everyday, but also need to make sure that I talk to my aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents on a regular basis too. That is something so far that I have not been very good at. I think that it is important for my cousins to have me in their lives because at their ages they probably would love to be able to talk to their older cousin about things that they are troubled with. I need to be there to talk to them about things that they are not comfortable talking to their friends or parents about. This needs to become a priority of mine before time passes by before me and I was never there to be there for my family.

I have always felt the love and comfort that my family gives me and I want them to feel the love I have for all of them too. I cannot let the tight ball of yarn holding our family together become loose.

"And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity."
Colossians 3:14 New International Version