January Disappeared

Things went kind of crazy town in January.

• I picked up three freelance jobs, one for January, one for next month, one for April.
• I started my internship and I love it and frankly want to spend all of my time there.
• My mom had surgery and everything's going really well and she's already taught herself to drive with one arm. I haven't checked in since my last visit home, but I'm betting she's planning to be back at work soon, if she's not already. 
• This past week, I started up my classes again. I'm only taking 4 classes and going to campus twice a week, but I spend 7 hours on campus one of those days and 9 hours on campus the other. This week, two of my classes were cancelled on the shorter day and learned one of my classes is only happening on my shorter day, so I still haven't REALLY experienced a full week.
• I took a spontaneous trip to Philadelphia for ALAMW. I'd never been on a trip without my parents before, nor had I ever been to Philadelphia, nor had I ever taken a bus that wasn't school related. I also don't do spontaneous very well. But I booked my bus ticket Friday afternoon, took a bus Saturday morning, and decided by Saturday afternoon to stay overnight and came back Sunday. 

I think this is why I didn't want to set New Year's resolutions. I knew this year was going to be turning life as I knew it on it's head and my list of stuff I've done kind of proves in.

I haven't been actively eating better, but I've generally been more active, since I never just sat at home. I've also unintentionally been eating better since my favorite lunch place at work is a sandwich shop where I can get grilled cheese or Eataly for fruit, and my favorite lunch place near school is a diner where I get a ton of vegetables with my meal. Going to school/lunch on campus also means walking up/down several flights of stairs or hills.

I've already pushed boundaries on my anxiety by going to ALAMW. Every single part of that trip was a new experience and I didn't break down or decide not to go through with it. I'd been able to come up with all kinds of reasons to go, but I do think at the heart of it, I wanted to prove to myself I could.

In the four weeks of my part time internship, I've worked...a lot. And I love it and still genuinely want to go in every day, even if that would mean waking up at 7 am. It gives me more confidence that I'm going after the right career and I'm in a really good office space with really good people.

I'm handling a really full schedule...decently. I need to work a little better at balancing sleep, but even this week, when I didn't get any time to recover from being really extroverted at a conference before starting classes and going back to work, I did decently. I found time to relax and still get some things done. I...crashed really, really, really hard today, but part of that was a headache every time I tried to get up. And you know, it's the first week at Schedule Full Throttle. It'll take some adjusting and I'm doing okay with that.

Despite it being a stressful time, I've still been in a good place mentally for a longer stretch of time than I can remember. And that's a wonderful feeling. 

All of the things I've mentioned would probably be on my list of resolutions to handle, yet I've been handling them without actively trying. So, you can definitely say I'm looking forward to the rest of 2014 and what leaving teenage years behind will be like.

--Julie