changes

inspired by pyang.

WHAT is going on around here? It's very strange to me to hear about so many people getting engaged...getting invitations to weddings that are addressed solely to me and not to my entire family...being around newborn children...hearing about people being pregnant...

On the one hand, I'm stuck in this mode of fresh-out-of-college-first-year-in-the-real-world where I still feel relatively young and clueless and despite my complete lack of social life or spare time - I'm somewhat carefree. (And I say that very loosely and will surely suffer another meltdown soon). I feel like I have my whole life ahead of me and there are a lot of possibilities - none of which are certain, no direction towards which I feel strongly pulled - just going along day to day trying to make the best of things and if it's a good day, even enjoying myself here and there. (Don't ask about bad days, they're vented enough).

On the other hand, I realize I'm 'growing up' and it's very bizarre thinking about "real-life" things like paying taxes, thinking about insurance premiums, and the biggie: buying a house. (Or in my case, a box). This whole real estate episode (which is a continuing mini-series) has been a rude awakening to a lot of factors of growing up: investment, debt, loans, mortgages, credit...basically MONEY. (Evil, evil, evil).

Well...if only I could design a flow chart in blogger. (Haha, those of you who are laughing...mock on). But I suppose I wouldn't be me if I wasn't constantly charting plans. In order to minimize the trauma going on in my head, I've charted things into timeframes. The immediate goals are the close on the apartment and move and settle. Once that is set, I will rebudget my teaching time to not spread myself so thin, while staying within the financial range necessary for mortgage payments. This will free up my Sundays to go church hopping and hopefully find a Christian community again, which was the unfortunate part that fell out of the equation since moving here. In the relatively longer, but really just less immediate timeframe I suppose I'll have to think about making some changes to my career and getting married or something, but that's clearly taking a backseat.

I wonder if God's laughing at me. I think He must spend a lot of time laughing at how stupid our plans are when we think we have it all figured out. After all, if my life went the way I planned it out 6 years ago, I'd be in California right now (and scheduled to be married by next year). Clearly priorities have taken a turn...haha. I hope God knows what He's doing bc I sure as heck don't!