Life is Good!

I'm back! I swear. It's for real this time.

I've been writing this whole time, just not on here. (Hopefully I'll get to show you all what I've been working on soon, but we'll see...) I've been doing a lot of journaling, in addition to the project that I'm working on. It's been nice. I haven't really, properly kept a journal in years. I mean, I have this blog, but it's not as personal as some of my journals are. I just haven't really felt the need to. Lately, there's so much going on in my life (or at least, so much that I'm trying to get going in my life), that I really have felt the need to keep one, both to keep everything straight in my head and to have a record of what I'm thinking and feeling to look back on later. I have a feeling I'm going to look back at some of this stuff years from now and say, "What the hell was I thinking????", but for the time being, I'm muddling along and trying to make sense of my life.

And speaking of making sense of everything..........GUYS! I'VE FINALLY FIGURED OUT WHAT I'M GOING TO GRAD SCHOOL FOR! 100%, without a doubt! After a short of epiphany after I had been going to physical therapy for my rotator cuff injury for a few weeks, I remembered how much thought I had actually given to going to school for physical therapy or athletic training when I was in high school. I had thought about it a lot while in PT for my ankle/foot stress fractures my first couple years of high school, and then the hype of going to school at AB for the PA Program took hold, and I got caught up in that.  In going to PT the last couple months (which I'm done with now! Woot! Shoulder is almost back to normal, though I'm still doing a home program.), I've realized how much I like doing that type of stuff and love the atmosphere of both PT offices I have been in. I can't really describe the feeling I had when I realized it,  but for the first time, I was imagining what it would be like to do that for a living, and everything felt right.

Then, after I had already made this decision, looked up stuff about WVU's DPT program and contacted a woman at Broaddus about volunteering/shadowing at the PT facilities there, I was going through some of my old writing notebooks that I'd kept since high school, and found notes about looking up AT/PT stuff for after high school.

Damn.

If only I'd looked through this old stuff sooner (or gone to PT sooner), maybe I would have figured all this crap out earlier on and not wasted a year. Maybe I would be where I'm supposed to be already, instead of having to wait another year. (I had already missed the deadline for the May program of my preferred school by the time I realized all this...by like a week. -_- Talk about disappointing.)

But the important thing is, I have a clearer vision of what I want to do with my life now...and it allows me to really get motivated for it because I'm excited about it.

I've also realized a lot about myself in the last few months, through a lot of reflection and self-analysis. I feel a lot more secure about who I am,  and I'm happy. I've finally accepted (again, as it seems I have to remind myself of this a lot in the last few years) that I can make myself happy all on my own, without anyone else's help. I just have to focus on myself and what I want out of life. As long as I'm working toward a goal, I'm good. I'm happy. It's when I feel like I'm stuck and don't have a goal to work toward that I get down on myself. That's pretty much what happened over this last year. Right after graduation, I had all these ideas of what I wanted to do, but I wasn't really passionate about any of them. I liked them all, but I didn't love them. It made me nervous and doubtful of myself, which just led to a downward spiral, at least in my mind, whether other people could tell or not. It affected everything in my life, including my relationship. Ultimately, my indecision about everything, coupled with the stress he was already under, was what broke us. I'm pretty sure of that, and given everything that was going on at the time, I can't blame him anymore for the decision he made. It was honestly for the best.

But now that I've made a damn decision, everything feels different. It feels amazing, and I'm excited about what the future brings, instead of dreading making a mistake.

Okay, well, enough rambling for tonight. I'll be back with more soon. I plan to have a bunch of posts in the next week or two. There will be writing, Music Mondays starting next week, as well as an April Photo Challenge I found that I want to participate in. So, lots of hopefully good stuff to come!

Good night, everyone!