What am I passionate about?

There are a lot of things that I am passionate about.  The biggest being my boys.  They make me want to strive for better.  They make me want to become a better person.  If it weren't for them my goals and things wouldn't be worth pursuing.  They give me a reason for being here.  I want to create a better life for myself and for them.  Sure, I could still have my goals and such but the boys give me so much more motivation.  The whole reason I am pursuing this self-discovery journey is to become a better mom to them.  Sure, I want to do this for myself but they are the main reason I want to feel better about myself.  I have a lot of work to do to get there but I am willing to do so.  I do still need to figure out what steps to take but I am getting closer to figuring those out!

What do you like to do in your spare time?

Because I don't have a job right now or the kids at the moment, I seem to have a lot of spare time.  I love spending time on the computer chatting with my friends, crafts, and reading.  I love spending time with my friends online because they know the true me and they still support and encourage me without passing judgment or harsh opinions.  I also seem to be a pretty crafty person.  I can learn to do just about any craft with ease, but my passion in the craft category is stitching.  I feel like it is so relaxing and therapeutic.  I get lost in it.  I find it very calming and I can think about things going on or I can concentrate fully on my project and not think about anything else.  The patterns just amaze me too.  It's wonderful what can come from a needle and colored thread.  I also love to read.  I want to read every book on every subject, fiction or not.  I love getting lost in a book!  I love the knowledge you gain, I love that feeling you get when you have finished a great book and it makes you go back and think about it after you're done with it.

What Would I Do, Even if I Didn't Get Paid For It?

I've known since I was little that I have wanted to be an interior designer.  I would love to do this whether I got paid or not!  I enjoy it and seem to have a natural ability with it.  Now there if there was one thing I could do that I love and make enough money doing that to support myself financially I know what the would be.  Okay, actually, I have two I  would choose.  The first would be my stitching.  I so wish I could stitch fast enough to sell my finished projects and make enough to pay all my bills.  It would be a stretch so I don't think it's realistic.  It just wouldn't make ends meet.  The other would be to become a chatter online. I love it and my online friends really know the true me and they are so encouraging and positive, who wouldn't want to do that!  However, I have become aware of the fact that I have an addictive personality.  When I do something, like chatting I crave it so much that I neglect what I have to do, like dishes or laundry, with what I want to do.  I know I am addicted to chat because if i'm awake I have to be there.  I know chat is a very positive atmosphere so I crave it too much!  It's like smoking, which I do too.  I can't or don't want to function without chat.  Without it, I get very depressed.  I know I need to tone it down but I really don't want to either because it is helpful too.

What do I Love to Do?

Well, I knew how to answer this question right away because I love to do just about everything.  I know I want to be more specific than just saying everything but I didn't really want to list everything either because it would take forever to list them all.  It took me a bit but I came up with I love learning by reading and experiencing.  I seem to be a knowledge junkie.  I love gaining information about anything and everything.  I do seem to learn best thru experience.  The combination of both a knowledge junkie and learning thru experience means I want to read everything I can read about any topic and I want to do those things!  The more I read the more I want to learn!  So I guess I do have a lifetime to read and learn.  I never want to stop learning!  I believe I know where my need to learn comes from, my OCPD (Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder).  My need for knowledge come from my need to be perfect.  I feel that I have to know everything in order to be perfect.  I know I will never achieve this but yet I still strive for this need to know it all.  If I don't I feel like i have failed with it.  Then I start getting down on myself, especially for not reading more to gain that knowledge.  I will say that there is one thing I like to do almost as much as learning and that is crafts, especially cross-stitching.  Whether it's scrapbooking, or doing paint-by-numbers or my stitching, i just seem to get so lost in crafting and being creative!  I have to concentrate so much on what I am doing that I can't really think about much else.  This does bring up another example of how my OCPD affects my thinking.  I feel that, take stitching for example, I need to do EVERY single pattern or project there is!  Do you know how many cross stitching patterns there are in existence?  Millions probably!  So this also stresses me out not having them all done.  Kinda crazy huh?!!

If I Could Do One Thing for the Rest of My Life, What Would It Be?

If I could do one thing for the rest of my life it would be to like myself.  I want to like myself as a person.  I don't mean physically, I mean internally.  I have a lot of issues to deal with to get to that point.  I want to be satisfied with my decisions and right now I am NOT happy with them at all.  I want to change myself so that I am a person I like.  My decisions throughout life, for the majority, have not been the best and due to my upbringing I am constantly putting myself down about them.  I want to make good decisions so I can stop feeling so guilty all the time, especially about where my life is currently at.  From my goals, to my kids and oh so much more!  I want to be myself.  I cannot care for the boys if I don't take care of myself first.  So I need to learn to love myself and make good decisions!

What Are My Goals?

The next 3 or 4 posts all have to do with what I am passionate about!

Financial - To be financially stable is my goal here.  I really need to find another job so that I can achieve this goal.  I hate having to depend on others financially.  Take today for example, today I had to call my aunt yet again to have her fill up my gas tank.  I am also out of smokes and I'm barely making it by puffing on my electronic cigarette.  It sucks!  Probably tomorrow I will be without internet and have to go to the library to use their WIFI.  I am not asking to be a millionaire, I just want to be able to support myself on a monthly basis.  So tomorrow, I will be looking for a job on the computer whether it is at home or the library.

Relationships - I have a lot of work to do in the relationship category.  I kind of like being single but at the same time I get lonely too.  I have a lot of friendships but they are mostly, if not all, online.  That is okay but I like hanging out with people in real life too.  I definitely need improvement in my relationships with family.  From my extended family, to my mom, siblings, and especially my kids.  The one relationship I need to work on the hardest is my relationship with myself.  For the most part, I just do not like who I am!  Sure I like things about myself but the negatives outweigh the positives.  I guess, again, that is what this whole blog is about!

Fitness and weight loss goals - There is always room for taking better care of yourself and I am no exception to that.  I, for the most part, like how I look.  I do have about 30 pounds of baby weight I would like to lose.  I would also like tighter stomach muscles again.  I have been doing 100 sit ups frequently and they seem to be helping!  My diet, or choices of food I way, is a joke tho.  I tend to gravitate towards sugar and carbs.  I should probably look into additional ways to exercise to keep fit as well.  I also believe that personal hygiene need to be addressed here.  For awhile, I'm talking months, i was not taking care of myself hygiene wise.  I was showering only when I had to, about once a week on average.  I wasn't brushing my teeth, I'd change clothes only when I showered and I was only brushing my hair after a shower as well.  As a result of this, I need to go see a dentist and when brushing my hair before, I would get awful knots out and now my hair is't nearly as long as it was.  My hair went from down to my shoulder blades to shoulder length.  Well for the past week and a half or so I have been showering, getting dressed in clean clothes and brushing my hair every day.  What a difference in my mind set and the way I feel about myself.  I can definitely tall a big difference.

Career or work - As I stated in my financial goals, I need to find a job!  I have called Papa John's to get my old job back.  However, Papa John's is not what I want to do for the rest of my life.  My ultimate goal is to own my own interior design/architecture firm where I can design houses from the ground up.  I want to create or help create the floor plan and be able to decorate the interior of homes.  To do this I will need three college degrees; interior design, architecture, and a business degree.  I have tried college sooooo many times and boy, do I struggle with it!  I just wish I could finish what I start.  I seem to have poor self-discipline skills.  One day I WILL get there!

Who Am I?

This is a tough question to answer without doing the classic, 'I am a mother,' 'I am from Michigan,' answers.  I've thought about my answer for most of the day.  My answer is that I am me!  Good or bad, I am me.  Now I cannot go through my entire set of life events that got me to where I am and who I am today, but I will say that each and every event and thought I've experienced has made me who I am today.  This is kind of the whole reason I have this blog actually.  I do NOT like where my life is at and therefore I do NOT like who I am as a person.  So I have been doing a lot of research to figure out what and how to change the things I don't like.  Now let me state that I don't hate everything about myself nor do I think that I need to change everything about myself.  There are definitely areas that need vast change and improvement but there are some areas of myself that are great.  There are also areas the would be okay if left alone but I feel could use some improving.  I know that nobody is perfect but I'd at least like to like myself more and I believe that for me this is the way to do it.  I hope to make this journey of improving myself a life long one and I realize that I did not get here overnite so I do NOT expect it to change tomorrow.  I hope to learn a lot about myself, about who I am, in the process.  My next personal entry will be about 'what I am passionate about.'