A "Blogger" I'm not... but perhaps I can be a journaler?

Soo... yeah. Long time no post.

In the rush of everyday life (and absence of plants on which to brag about) I lost any sort of inspiration to write.

HOWEVER... I did get a fancy new journal. My sister gave me a pretty purple Leuchtturm book for Christmas so I could indulge myself in this little interest in Bullet Journaling I'd developed.

No, it has not turned my life around. I do not track my emotional states or list the things I find myself grateful for in it, and the spreads are NOT the handwriting- or analog-graphic-design-porn you see on other bullet journal blogs, though those layouts were inspiring I was researching the system.

With coffee. Like ya do...

It's a planner. It's job is to help you plan and remember stuff. I list what I have to do for the day and sometimes note what actually happened or was accomplished on a particular day. I bought a bunch of planner-specific stickers to use in it - indulging my inner 9-year-old, who had a sticker collection on notebook paper - and I use a different colored highlighter each week. There are also loads fewer scraps of paper with random lists floating around my bag/car/kitchen because of it.

Part of why I wanted to do this post was to throw out some not-gorgeous bullet journal layouts. I see a lot of people afraid to try it because their handwriting sucks or they can't draw. Every bullet journaling blogger on the internet will harp that "that's not what it's about" as they showcase pages that look like what I'd imagine an ecstasy-fueled layout and design Instagram feed would.

Pictured: NOT MY JOURNAL. It is beautiful, but what average planning person has the time or skill?

I want to show the other side. Look at this crap:

It's clumsy, messy and smeared. There's a lot of bare, unused space. It's badly thought-out in some places and crudely executed in others. My weekly spreads improved as I experimented and figured out what works for me, but the important part is that it functions, even when it looks blah.

Even if they aren't ga-ga worthy, I do enjoy making layouts. I research what other people track and come up with my own take. For example, some people make fancy spreads to remember upcoming birthdays. Facebook accomplishes most of that for me, so I made a movie premier tracker instead, with spaces to log when I saw the movie, where, with whom and what I thought of it.

Six months was about as much as I could fit on 2 pages. I'm kinda behind on the more recent movies.

Habit trackers are rampant on BuJo (see how with the trend I am?) posts. I tried it for March, only to realize I do most things so infrequently they're not really worth tracking. But I have kept an ongoing record of my attempts at the treadmill, which is kinda cool I guess.

You might notice the milestones list on my treadmill page. Not that I've met any of them yet, but I've always liked the idea of having written, quantifiable goals. Part of my down-ness the last few months has been a realization of the fact that I don't have any real, plannable goals in my life. There are things I want, but nothing that has been something you could make a step-by-step plan to achieve. Honestly, I didn't even really care whether I could run a mile or not when I started. I still don't, if we're being up front here, but if I bribe myself with new stuff for hitting certain benchmarks, I'm way more likely to keep trying, even through some damn shin splints (yeah, I learned what a shin splint was last month!).

No, this new dot-grid journal has not made me a better, more functional, more punctual or more enlightened person in any way. I had my "make-a-list-when-you-need-a-list" process down and it worked all right. Now my lists are simply bound together, along with my random thoughts, idea dumps, doodles and discussion notes for me to review as I desire.

Here are some other not-Pin-worthy pages I happen to like.

"The Eventually List," where I dump all the gotta-remember-to's and oh-I-really-should's that swim in my head.

The day I got the stickers :-D Plus doodles and the weekly spread I'm mostly sticking with lately.

My overview for the next 3 months and April. Note that I messed up the spacing 

for April at the top of the left page. THAT'S OKAY.

Attempting something new

It's finally happened. The result of dissatisfaction in customer service and not using my degree and professional experience to work for me has led to creating a profile on a ghostwriting job site.

I did a little reading before setting up the profile. Ghostwriting is obviously not the place to go for public recognition of ability and isn't steady work for a newcomer. But I miss writing. Lack of blog posts aside, there's a creative buildup in me that Pinterest, reading and cooking haven't been able to alleviate. I want to create something again. My first attempt at NaNoWriMo was a gigantic flop, I admit, but it did make me realize how much I miss creating stories or informing people through the written word.

There is also a secondary reason for pursuing the ghostwriting opportunity. The amount of money that goes from my earnings into paying off debt has begun to bother me. Several websites suggest securing a second income and devoting all earnings toward paying off debt. If I can start getting gigs writing things for other people, it would be a nice way to start really chipping away at student loan or other debts.

So while I wait for my profile to be reviewed, I'm browsing the job posts, seeing what might be easy to break into, while visions of creative bliss and freed-up income dance in my head. Goodnight!

On dancing

I am not, and probably never will be, a dancer.

Well, a partner-type of dancer. I feel pretty awesome breaking it down solo to some 2000's pop-punk music.

More or less like this, but with lots of directing my hands at the dog. 

However, throw in a second person with some expectation of synchronization, and it all falls apart. This is something I discovered with Brian after watching a few seasons of Dancing with the Stars. Watching the celebrities struggle with their partners to learn different styles of dance, he would tell me about the steps and rhythm of waltz, quickstep, salsa and whatever other dance was on the show. Then he would try to show me.

It's not as much a "two left feet" kind of thing as much of an "I can't tell what your motions are telling me to do" sort of issue.

However, unlike the plethora of other things that I'm really really not good at, I still pursue dancing. I love grabbing Brian's arm at events, while cooking or when a good song comes on and making him dance with me. Just now, when the Avicii version of "Hey Brother" started, I decided it was time for him to put down Skyrim for a couple minutes and dance with me.  Even though I constantly miss the cues to turn under his arm or step on his feet, I spend the whole time laughing. It's one of those weird things I enjoy being bad at, which confuses me, because most things I'm bad at I simply avoid as much as possible.

I'll never be a dancing queen. I'll probably never feel like one. But for some reason, in this instance, that's okay.

Looking toward the 2016 gardening season

Well hello there, and good evening. It's about 10 p.m. two days after Christmas 2015. I'm getting groggy after traveling back from Fort Worth today, then jiving on over to Moody for a second Christmas meal. The new sets of purple cookware I received from my mom are sitting around the piano, along with the rest of the stuff I haven't bothered to unpack and Brian is watching Lethal Weapon 2.

I wasn't interested in watching a movie this cold, rainy evening, so I've been Pinteresting. Upon reflection on my Christmas gifts and hobby interests of late, I've had to admit to myself that I'm just one of "those" Pinterest people; the ones interested in cooking, decorating, sewing and gardening who are really only good at showcasing their best-looking results on the internet for others to aspire to repeat.

Don't pictures like this just make you sick? None of these appear to be 

returning in 2016, if it makes you feel any better.

 

My gardening ventures this year were mostly failures. Yeah, I posted a lot (and with plenty of enthusiasm) as I was getting started, but all I got were two bell peppers about the size of walnuts to show for everything. I didn't even bother taking photos of them, I was so disappointed. My tomato tree was kaput by September. About three rounds of radishes were eaten by rabbits before I finally got some to grow, then I never went back to check on the pot, so who knows what ever happened to them? The garlic bulbs died, the fancy purple flower plant died and the pea vine made two pods then also died. I managed to kill the first basil plant I'd had any luck with in two years about three weeks ago as well. Soo... yeah, I still have a lot to learn. 

 

 

I actually did shed some over some plants. What can I say, you get attached.

All of this said, I still found myself looking through the pins of others for wintertime gardening tips and ideas. I'm still dead-set on composting, but I need to find a way to convince Brian it won't be as stinky as he's convinced it will be. There are also grand-brainstorming-stage-plans of taking the raised bed from last year and converting it to a table-height bed to both move it into a sunnier location and avoid having my precious sprouts consumed by local vermin. 

With all the failures of this year, I am taking away some lessons. 

ONE: Fertilizer isn't necessarily just an indulgence.

With only one of four pepper plants making fruit, there had to be some reason and inadequate nutrients is my first guess. The plants were not as leafy as plants I'd grown in the past, though they stayed green well into November (one even made blossoms). I would like to try them again, but utilize epsom salt, as recommended in a variety of articles, and perhaps some liquid vegetable fertilizer on a schedule. 

TWO: When starting from seed, start way earlier.

Again with the peppers, I started my seeds in late February. It took until almost October to see fruit, as measley as it was. So this year I will locate and start my seeds in January. Plants are easy to keep indoors at that point, so I don't anticipate a problem waiting until March to move them outside. 

THREE: Buying established plants isn't something to be ashamed of.

While I enjoy the process of germinating seeds and nursing sprouts to become fully-fledged plants, I can appreciate the convenience of buying plants that have already been through the slow startup stage. It's really a crapshoot, in my experience, on which has a better success rate, so I might as well use up the seeds I have and buy plants for other items I'm interested in growing. 

So I have some starting pods a friend sent me last summer, as well as a few seeds that never made it to the dirt last year that I will try to plant next month (yes, I'm familiar with the "packed for" dates on seeds, but you never really know unless you try). I'll also try to plan for an update from raised bed to REALLY raised bed and attempt some indoor gardening with an herb set I received from the same friend mentioned above for Christmas this year. 

It's strange to me that failure -- even repeated failure -- in gardening has not caused me to shy away from the task. I go into it with the goal of produce in mind, but enjoy the process of planting and growing so much that the lack of results doesn't really ever bother me. I guess if I just keep getting a few victories each year, eventually I'll have that bountiful harvest everyone on Pinterest is apparently so adept at getting.

Here's the goal: actual amounts of food I can do something with.

NaNoWriMo -- I have not been writing

I have not been writing, despite the zest I had two weeks ago to hit 20,000 words by the end of the month. Is it really that surprising though?

It's so easy for life to get in the way. To let life get in the way. Brian has been sick. I got a little sick. I'm in the middle of becoming a full-fledged employee at the pharmacy instead of a contract worker. I'm thinking about the upcoming holidays. We went to Ren Faire this weekend with friends. Yeah, it's easy to let things get in the way.

I did get a pretty sweet hat there though.

Someone I knew in college maintains a blog I've started to creep follow and is trying to accomplish a post-something-every-day challenge this month. I'm starting to wonder if she had the better idea. Prompts are much easier to follow for me than some open-ended "write something" challenge.

It's not that I'm completely devoid of ideas, I just don't have any that are cohesive or I feel the need to ramble on about for thousands of words. Or I feel like there's just so much to say, I'm too intimidated to start on them. For example, I've toyed with the idea of writing a major dissertation on where I feel I am in studying aikido; my strengths, weaknesses, goals, roadblocks, etc. It would fill a lot of space, yes, but would require me to make outlines and rough drafts and possibly publish in parts, and I just don't feel that engaged with the idea yet.

I also thought of doing a reflection on this year's attempt at gardening - yeah, the one I wrote so many blogs about then kind of stopped mentioning? Most everything died. I got two red bell peppers that were smaller than golf balls. I wonder if it needed the magnesium I saw about half a dozen articles suggest. My tomato plants shriveled (except the one random one I planted in the box that decided it wanted to be ground-cover but never make fruit; it's still green and happy out there). Rabbits ate two attempts at radishes. The third, container-attempt have had something chew on them, but in fairness have maintained foliage for a couple months. The herb tower dried up. The basil still looks all right, but I don't know if it will survive the winter. Aaaannnd... that's about it.

In regards to the hat above, it was the first step in my goal of building a costume for Ren Faire. Brian and I both agreed that we've been going for so many years, it was time to start dressing up. He can't decide between being a musketeer or going with a steampunk idea. I was bouncing between a pretty standard wench costume and a pirate. Finding this hat though kind of cemented the pirate idea. The rest of the costume exists perfectly in my head, I just need to find the other pieces in the real world.

Anyway, the point of that was that I also thought of writing out a complete character sketch for the pirate I wanted to be. If you're going to dress up, you might as well adopt a persona as well, right? I even started writing about her during a break in my new employee orientation today. The bones of a backstory with the barest traces of fleshing out.

Every time I try to write an actual story though all my inspiration peters out within a couple paragraphs. It's not that I don't intend to write much, I just can't seem to stretch it out. Blame the three years of journalism?

I suppose I have managed to write more, even if nothing is related. And I think about writing more now, but it's coupled with the frustration of "Why can't I think of more to write about??" Baby steps, I guess.

If I have learned one thing it was that I shouldn't even try to drink decaf coffee in the evening. I tried that first night I wrote something and I could NOT fall asleep. Sticking with tea or alcohol in the evening, methinks. Maybe this quote will spur my next writing venture:

Hemingway apparently didn't say this, but I'm willing to give it a shot (har) anyway.

Word Count: 713
Total Word Count: 4,722

On assertiveness and criticism

Brian and I traveled to Alabama this weekend for the American Tomiki Aikido Association Fall 2015 seminar. For two days we got to play with unfamiliar partners, learn alternate approaches to the techniques we study at Full Circle Aikido and in general be immersed in the martial art.

In the week or so leading up to the seminar I had been contemplating starting to document my training journey (four years in is better late than never, right?). I wanted to talk about what I was currently focusing on, what I'm trying to do better, what I'd like to learn in the future, etc. etc., but one of the things on my mind from the seminar now is more personal.

I confided in Brian that there were a couple people I'd wanted to work with at the seminar but did not get to. One I decided I'd rather wait until next time, the other I'd started to get the feeling just didn't like me much, so I defaulted to staying away. Brian told me what I already knew and had been trying to do: just grab the people I want to work with.

I've never been an aggressive person in any sense and the idea of just walking up to someone and saying "Let's work on this" is only slightly less terrifying to me now than it was to me ten years ago. Approaching people does not come easily to me. I don't have any problem working with someone unfamiliar or practicing unfamiliar techniques with people, I just don't like to be the one to instigate things. I want someone else to approach me or, even better, to be assigned a training partner.

From group projects in school to my freaking adult life the prospect of approaching someone makes me intensely uncomfortable. I feel like I need the security of someone else choosing me to stifle that fear of being an undesired group member, to say "hey, you're not completely repulsive and I wouldn't mind being in close proximity with you for a while."

Isn't that pathetic?

Stemming from these thoughts is the admittance that I also do not take criticism well. The slightest non-glowing comment is enough to make me want to admit defeat and walk away from any endeavor. Honestly, it was one of my biggest problems in newswriting too, but not one I talk about.

If I had to guess why, it would probably be that I did not receive a lot of criticism as a child. I was always an A student. The oldest child. Generally an independent worker. There was little need for my teachers or parents to tell me what I was doing wrong, so it happened so rarely I never grew any kind of endurance for it.

These have been two of my most prominent flaws -- in my view -- lately. Maybe it's why I've been itching to get back into my quiet solo hobbies, the kinds of things I can do and show no one and never have to deal with anyone else's input on the final product. Maybe I'm just getting frustrated with actually wanting something and being in my own way of getting it. Or maybe I just need some damn sleep so I can go back to being the moderately-adjusted adult I've grown into being.

A few diabetic thoughts

Today is Friday, but it's the Sunday of my mid-week weekend. Tomorrow I'm back to work for Saturday and Sunday, so I'm trying to enjoy this day off with nothing to do. I did the grocery shopping and even made a big dinner yesterday, so there are leftovers in the fridge to get me through quite a few lunches and don't-feel-like-making-a-mess dinners.

I was making a cup of the new French Vanilla coffee I got yesterday and somehow started contemplating my current frustrations with my diabetes. Most of the people reading this blog are aware that I am Type 1 diabetic and I have been since I was 8 years old. Lately (meaning for the last couple of years, but this year in particular) I've been working to try and get back into checking my blood sugar regularly. I'm getting a lot better, especially using this phone app, Diabetes+, that lets me log everything from my glucose and insulin to activity and carb intake.

When I first started using it, I did log EVERYTHING.

It's becoming more of a habit for me, which is good, even though it's still only sporadic that I actually get to test four times a day like I should -- generally I only make it to two or three times.

But the more awareness I have of what my blood sugar is actually doing, the more frustrated I get about it, particularly the morning highs that have apparently been getting me for a lot longer than I've been aware.

Morning is usually the time I don't forget to test. It runs high at that time, so there are a lot of purple/high readings. It almost makes me start to hate purple. Almost.

For example, last night I went to bed with my glucose at 117, which is right in line with the 80-120 goal. All I did was take my Lantus (the long-acting insulin) and go to sleep. When I woke up today, my blood sugar was 177. Up sixty points after just sleeping?

It's not an isolated thing. The night before my glucose rose 38 points, and the night before it shot up by 80.

It's why most of the line graphs the app generates look like the world's worst roller coaster.

I am aware of the "dawn phenomena," where the liver will dump glucose into the blood during the night. Theories on why vary, but the one I remember is the body thinking that the blood sugar is dropping, so the liver dumps its store into the blood to bring it up. Regardless of why, it's a bitch to control.

Aside of rises in blood glucose beyond my own control, I'm also learning that I probably have less of an idea of how many carbs are in what I eat than I thought I did. This has led me to just take insulin for what I think is in something, plus a couple extra units depending on what that food did to me in the past. Some horrible offenders are pizza and coffee. The fat in pizza causes a delay in the processing of the carbs in it, resulting in a delayed spike in blood sugar. I don't know what it is about coffee, but even when I drink it with just half and half and Splenda, I have to correct for 25-30 carbs worth, even though I probably only ingested less than 10. Members of some of the diabetic Facebook groups I'm in have reported similar spikes, even when drinking coffee black, so my theory is that it's something to do with the caffeine content.

Yet I just keep coming back...

In general though, getting back to monitoring myself has been frustrating but will be worth it. I feel more in control when I KNOW what my glucose is doing, not when I just make a vague guess. It's costing some time and definitely some money to keep all the supplies in stock, but all necessary evil.

I have to commend my doctor, also. She gave me the kick in the rear that got me to actually try taking care of myself again. She hasn't ever really lectured or belittled me, either, but she works with me to try and figure out carb ratios and correction scales that will actually help keep things in check. Honestly, I'd forgotten about her suggestion to use a 1:8 ratio in the mornings and 1:10 the rest of the day until maybe a couple of weeks ago, and it really brought my lunchtime readings back down.

Yes, the number of readings per day is still under-par, but there's much fewer purple/high readings in the last couple of days, which makes me happy.

In case anyone thought diabetes was an easy thing to deal with, hopefully this will make you ask some questions and be interested to learn more about what's involved with controlling this disease. I'm free to take a crack at any questions you may have. :-)

Projects and thoughts of reinvention

Hello random readers. A bit of non-plant oriented thoughts to share today.

I realized how "meh" I have been feeling with life a couple weeks ago. An old friend will ask me how things are going and I don't have much more to say than "fine." It's not that things are going badly - things are much better now compared to last year - but I don't feel excited about anything. There's no passion or force guiding my thoughts or actions.

Reflecting on this, I tried to think of times when I was excited. Usually, they happened when I had some kind of short-term goal or project in mind. A book series I was determined to finish; an item I wanted to sew; a garden to plan; a drawing to complete; a push-up goal to reach. Any time I had one of these, there was something to think about during long work hours. The creative gears turned and I brainstormed ideas for variations and improvements to projects waiting on my return.

Lately the only way I've been able to get this kind of release is by picking and choosing recipes to try, but by the time I get home other tasks would take precedence or I'd simply be too tired to take action.

I'm tired of just floating through the day, waiting to go home so I can watch reruns of TV shows (because everything is in its summer sabbatical) or go to sleep. Besides being tired, I'm lacking a initiative to actually start a project. The last thing I tried to sew, a pajama pant project, I didn't get past the first leg. I have one book left in a trilogy I started last year, but finishing another series butted in to that plan, and I haven't been able to drag myself back to it (I did re-start the Harry Potter series though, go figure). The garden is at that watch-and-wait point, so there's not a lot of active work required unless I wanted to buy more plants, which is the last thing I need to do at the moment.

As a branch-off to this vein, I was thinking about a possible project: reinvention. Sort of, anyway. For a long time I have admired "nice" clothing and people who always look put-together. Despite this, I have always found myself defaulting to T-shirts and jeans, not bothering much with my hair and almost never wearing makeup.

Almost all the clothing tutorial pins I've collected are for skirts, though I almost never go out in skirts unless it's a job interview or a formal occasion. Like a lot of women around my age, I have an infatuation with 40s and 50s era women's fashions.Thrift store dresses are one of the easier items to repurpose, but I don't have a lot of reason to wear them now that almost everyone I know has graduated and there aren't any weddings scheduled to happen in the near future.

It's unfortunate that I feel I need a reason to look nice, but with a job that requires scrubs, a hobby that requires a gi and no energy afterward to do much more than sit or sleep, I just can't justify dressing in more than pajamas or a glorified version of them most of the time.

There's not really a point to this rambling. I just feel better writing it out for future reflection.

Kitchen territorialism

It's been a long time coming, but I finally admit to being territorial over my kitchen.

I reflect on this now as my roommate and his girlfriend prepare dinner tonight. I've jumped up multiple times to make sure they were using the right utensils, not using metal on my nonstick pots, not throwing recyclables in the garbage, etc. Mostly, I'm glad they got started while I was at work.

I cringe at the thought of other people using my utensils and ingredients, but I don't know why. My mother never worried about us kids in the kitchen. My party-hosting friend in college never cared if us dorm-dwellers got our cooking fix in her kitchen. But ever since I moved out on my own, I get kind of wiggy about people using my kitchen.

An accurate depiction, as little as I'd like to admit it.

To be fair, I didn't have an issue with my college roommate. Maybe because I felt the duplex we shared was more "hers" because she found it originally and asked me to room with her that year. We shared stocking and cleaning duties, so I guess I just didn't mind when she wanted to use it because it was quite literally half hers.

Living in my own apartment, however, I guess one would become possessive over things. The kitchen was full of food, tools, utensils and decor that I purchased. Some items, like the microwave, were gifts and loaners, but whenever someone would try to prepare something I had a habit of hovering and critiquing.

Brian learned this the hard way. When we started living together, I would ask him to help me make dinner sometimes, but I always had a problem with how he did things, or I'd get annoyed that he didn't know where basic things, like towels or cutting boards, were stored. I guess I can't really blame him for leaving the food prep to me now.

Maybe it's because I've lived with people inactive in the kitchen for so long now that I became territorial because I feel I'm the only one who uses it. I know where everything is, how much of each ingredient remains, what needs replacing soon, what substitutes I can create for different ingredients, and I think I resent having to tell other people. Part of me thinks they should know, but the other part knows why they don't.

Anyway, dinner is being served. I am doing my best to appreciate not having to prepare it tonight and not think about going in to figure out what's misplaced or depleted or improperly used or cleaned...

Reflecting on my 20s thus far

Not long ago I read this Buzzfeed article titled "17 Things Twentysomethings Need to Chill Out About." If you've read any number of posts in this blog not related to my plants, you know that the last couple of years I have struggled in the job realm. Those difficulties and the secondary ones that stem from joblessness and job searching and wondering what in the heck I want to do with my life made this listicle hit really close to home. I wanted to reflect on some items in the list today.

1. You didn’t study the right thing at university.

Is it bad that I was wondering if I was on the right path by my sophomore year of college? I remember starting my very first newswriting class and having a hell of a time getting interested in it. I struggled with the vague directions and made-up news assignments. But by Newswriting II, I kind of enjoyed it. The class required us to pick a campus beat and find stories from it to turn in. This made it interesting, as I chose the College of Fine Arts (where my next choice of major probably would have fallen, had I decided to change).

I think now about returning to school to start over, but I'm not sure what to study. Design and hospitality cross my mind a lot, but I fear getting burnt out in these industries as easily as I did the reporting one. 

2. Your uni[versity] experience wasn’t as fun as everyone else’s.

I do regret not taking some of the chances I was offered in college. Traveling, studying random subjects, getting involved with different groups, even going to more parties. I was actually to a happy point of being able to stay up late and hold my liquor fairly well before I graduated. Two months into the working world and my habit of staying up past midnight every night was gone. I drink far less now, so my tolerance is also significantly lower. It's all to be expected, I'm aware, but I do miss being the age where it was expected to make terrible decisions (and share the resulting stories).

3. You have absolutely no idea what you want to do with your life. and 4. You don't have your dream job.

This is a topic I've blogged about before. I am 26. I was a reporter in the "real world" for about two and a half years (maybe a little longer if you count my internship), and the impression of experiences were not always enjoyable. I did like parts of it, and I got to meet a lot of really awesome people and learn really cool stuff about a whole variety of topics, but the eternal stress of deadlines apparently isn't the way I work. Yes I need a deadline to really get going, but maybe I was just too young to discipline myself into meeting them all.

Then again, maybe I was too young for the professional world in general. Looking back, I can see all the mistakes I made. If I went back to it, I might be able to do better. But for now, I'm still washing out the bitter taste the reporting industry has left in my mouth.

It's a very humbling experience, however, to know that you're qualified to work in an office or professional environment, earning a very livable wage and holding nice vacation and health benefits, but sending all of your job applications to gas stations and retail and customer service positions. I don't know how many coworkers I've come across in my last few jobs who were surprised when I told them I'd been to (and graduated from) college. "What are you doing working here?" they ask.

The truth is it's a combination of fear and desperation. I'm afraid to get back into a professional job again because what if I fail at it like I did the last time? What if I get fired just a few months in and have to go back to looking for another job? It's overwhelming. So I take low-pay, low-hours, entry-level jobs when I can get them just so I have some money coming in and do not have a long employment gap in my resume.

The jobs are easy. They have low expectations. I don't bring the stress of them home with me in the evening. Once that drawer is pulled and the money is counted and till is balanced, I go home and don't worry about it anymore. As some kind of professional, the stress follows you well beyond your eight hours per day. Your back is tight from sitting all day and worrying if what you turned in will be good enough, if your supervisor has some hidden agenda against you, if you may be walking a razors-edge line and not even know it.

But I know this isn't the kind of work I want to do for the rest of my life. Yes, I want something more. I just don't know what it is specifically yet.

8. You’re not able to afford to buy your own place.

I've actually been quite lucky in this area. From the time I started my first reporting job until now, I have managed to keep up with rent, even while job hunting. A very strange turn of events led me to living in a house as I am now, which is much preferable to having been forced to move back home (number 5 on the original list). However, I have felt stuck in Central Texas since about the second month of living here in 2011. I find myself dreaming most days of moving back to the eastern part of the state, under the pine trees, but the whole not having a great job and trying to help the fiancee settle the estate means we could be here a while.

But why shouldn't we? This house is paid for. We would only have to pay property taxes on it once per year. It's kind of hard to maintain (having never tried to keep more than a one bedroom apartment moderately clean before), but we have a roommate for now paying rent, a small yard for my plants and both of us are working. Neither are great jobs or hours or pay, but there is income. Moving would mean finding new jobs, new places to live, etc. I honestly think I'm okay staying here for a little while while we try to save our money back up.

12. You feel like your time is running out.

I've had an itch to travel the country or even to another part of the world for years now. I was actually planning to go somewhere in 2013, as I'd worked over a year at the paper I was at and would have actual vacation time to use. Then my position was cut, and I had to start a new job and try to rebuild vacation time from scratch there.

Obviously the time and money situations haven't improved. I'm still dying to visit other states and cities and even countries. I feel like the older I get the harder it will become to do these things (especially if I don't get in good with some company). Brian and I took the Amtrak to Fort Worth last weekend and picked up several brochures and a magazine of the routes the train takes. I'm enamored with the routes that go to Nashville and New Orleans and Memphis. I want to traverse other cities, try new foods, listen to local music and just escape the annoyances of my life for a little while.

As it becomes less likely looking that I can really travel abroad, I shift my focus. I've wanted to go to Louisiana for months now. It's just a state over. I've actually visited Shreveport before, but I want to visit the French Quarter. Try a bakery, visit a jazz club, take a ghost tour. Be a freaking tourist, you know? I guess someday, but damn I wish it was sooner.

17. You’re getting old.

I know for a fact I'm not the only "twentysomething" worried about this. I found my first gray hair a week before my 23rd birthday, and it's far from the only one there now. My forehead and corners of my eyes are already showing signs of where the wrinkles will be.

These combined with the item discussed above really make me feel like time has gotten away from me in this decade of my life. But I look at the other people I know in my life, the people who have survived their twenties and still seem happy, and I have hope.

Some of them struggled working multiple part-time jobs well into their 40s before they found a well-paying full-time position (regardless of whether they enjoy it or not) and make time for activities they enjoy outside of work hours. Some branched out to do their own thing a few years before turning 30 and now travel and do everything they wanted to and seem thrilled with how things are going (but no one really broadcasts all their insecurities).

On the flipside, there are a few items on the list I seem to have conquered. I have not yet had to move back home (#5), I'm not a flippant spender (#6. You're rubbish with your finances) and I am a decent cook (#7. You're a terrible cook). I am engaged (#10. Everyone around you is getting hitched), though planning a wedding has taken a backseat to everything else going on. I've dated around and know the relationships that ended did so for a reason (#11. You're hung up on someone). I know that my friends are struggling with the same assortment of things I am (#13. You're not as cool as your friends) and the changes in my body seem to be for the positive (#15. Your body is changing).

I guess I'm saying I know that there is still time to grow and improve myself when the first digit of my age is no longer a 2. I'm just hoping that everything I want to accomplish is still doable by then.