The One With Many Names

I have been writing this blog over a period of about six years. I have changed the layout many times. However, I have used two titles for it. The first, Purple Orange Chocolate, was a silly inside joke between two fifteen year old girls who used to spend way to much time hanging out at their school (that story involves pocket dictionaries and the word 'chowder-head' and I really don't think anyone other than mL and I would have ever found it interesting.) The Aspiring Writer was my second title and was supposed to create a transition between the junior high girl who started this blog as a class project and the high schooler who continued it because she wanted an archive of her life.

It seems fitting that I would change the title of this blog once more now, as I'm beginning to figure out my place in this crazy adult world. I'm stumbling around trying to figure out what I want to be doing and who I want to be doing it. Unlike in high school, the various roles that I play in my life no longer seem to define me. Instead, I feel that I am finally comfortable with being seen as I really am in every situation I am put in to. I no longer have the need or the desire to put on an act for my family, friends, or coworkers. If the people in my life do not like the way that I am they will have to learn to tolerate it because I will not allow others to mold my personality anymore.

It's strange that this new confidence should surface within me while I'm going through the biggest transition of my life up to this point. With my move into my increasingly independent adult life, I have been transitioning into being a new person. Just like this blog, I have given myself a new title as well (or decided to go by a different one, at least.) While I continue to be referred to by my old name at home and with old friends. Catherine, shortened to Cat by my friends and coworkers, is the name that most people will know me by as I meet new people for the rest of my life. My family and oldest friends, though, will always know me as Madison or Madi or Mac or any other variation they have come up with over the years.

What the last year or so has taught me, however, is that my title, my name, does not define me in any way. Whether I am being called by Cat or Madi or Shasta (more inside jokes that have probably been long forgotten by everyone else,) I am still the same person.

So the new title of this blog is The One with Many Names.

And after all,

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

Ramblings...

I know I write about change a lot, but lately I've been amazed at how much can change in such a short period of time. Change can be started by the most simple of things: a phone call about a job interview, a Facebook message sent in the early hours of the morning, or even an interjection into a conversation that you weren't actually part of. Those things happen all of the time. I send messages on Facebook almost daily and I'm always talking to people (whether or not I was part of the conversation to begin with.) What has really caused so much to change is the fact that I've wanted this change and I have actively taken part in making myself a happier and more positive person. With that, I've found that I have more friends and more opportunities. 

A year ago I was a new high school graduate with plans and ideas about my future but no real friends. I thought I knew who I was... but it turned out that I had tried to force myself into being something that was not quite natural for me. I can't really say that I have it all figured out now, but I have a better idea. My first year of college taught me a lot about the things that I don't want to be doing for the rest of my life and the things that I do still enjoy but cannot see myself making a career out of. I met all kinds of people but was not quite ready to come out of my shell enough to be friends with most of them. I watched. I listened. I came out of it as a person who could accept that I don't really know where my path is going to take me yet. I know now that there is still so much more about myself that I need to learn. I also know that in order to learn more about myself, I need to be more open to doling things that I wouldn't normally do. 

This was going to be a blog about my sister's graduation party last night as well as the two people who have become my best friends over the last couple of weeks... I don't know what happened to that. Maybe after I get back from camping with Ian and Megan next week. :P In the meantime, I hope anyone who reads this is enjoying life as much as I am these days.

So This is What Happiness Feels Like

In the late summer of 2010, I was desperate to get a job. So desperate that in my flurry of applications and complaints about nothing happening, I ended up with two jobs. The first was just a summer gig; watching my cousin, Jack, who was three at time. My afternoons were spent watching Backyardigans and corralling my favorite little boy on the planet. Not long after I started that job, I was contacted about Boondocks. Before I knew what had happened, I had been hired. That was the beginning of journey.

For the rest of the summer, I was so busy training and working that I didn't babysit Jack as often. At first I was awkward and quiet around the kitchen. Now, just short of two years later, so much has changed. I am the one that is working in that having fun and goofing off when we're slow and I am the one that the newer people look to when we're busy. My confidence is not always strong, but I do feel a lot better about running that place than I ever would have that first summer. However, as things always seem to go in my life, just as I am getting really comfortable with my situation, things are moving again.

Looking back at this blog that I wrote in my first month at Boondocks, the words seem familiar. It's like a very good friend wrote them. I understand what they're saying and I remember being there. Still, I find myself laughing at everything I thought I knew back then versus everything that I know that I don't know now. The girl who wrote those words and the girl who is writing these right now are two very different people of similar backgrounds. Their values, their beliefs, their priorities... Everything is different. There is one difference that definitely stands out, though.

This girl. Right here, right now. She's happy.

It took today, my last leadership meeting at Boondocks, for me to realize just how... not me I've been for a long time. I was sitting at that table, looking around at the people who I've been working with for quite a while and saw what my mom has been telling me for months. Those people aren't good for me. No matter how much I have loved working at Boondocks at moments in the past, what I have ahead of me is so much better.

Last Tuesday, I received a call on my way to school. When I listened to the voice mail asking me to schedule an interview with Cafe Zupas I literally screamed. It's a good thing I was still in my car. I immediately called the guy back, but it wasn't until two days and five calls later that we actually managed to get in touch.

My interview was with the district manager. So far, he seems like an absolutely great guy whom I will love working with. We talked about everything from my goals in college and work to the differences between how Zupas and Boondocks run their kitchens. I expressed my love for cooking and my desire to work somewhere that will give me more guest interaction. It was the longest interview I have ever had.

At the end he set his pen down and said "I'm torn with you. Let me just tell you, I am going to hire you." I freaked at this point and I don't really remember what the specifics of the rest of our conversation were. He said that he didn't know whether he should hire me as a prep cook or a line server. He wanted my personality out front but I had expressed interest in cooking and the hours and pay were more what I was looking for.

After some discussion and negotiation we came to a compromise. I am officially a line server at Zupas and I cannot wait to begin working. The atmosphere there is going to be so much more positive and I am just so determined to make this the start of a happier and more productive me.

I will never forget the lessons that I learned while working for Boondocks. I have grown so much as a person since I started there and I have met quite a variety of people. Still, moving forward I am able to take all of those things that I learned and put them into action in a brand new environment.

Everything is looking up right now and I'm happier than I can remember being in a very long time. There are definitely good things coming up in my future.

<3

So Different, Yet the Same

Parking at Weber is often ridiculous. In fact, if you arrive anywhere between 8:01 and 11:19, you are typically going to spend up to an hour driving through parking lots looking for someone is leaving right that second. I was one of the people who did this several times a week until I realized that it is so much faster just to park at the Dee Events Center and take the shuttle to canvas. That is where I parked today.

After getting off of the shuttle, I noticed that the walkway headed toward the Union Building had white and purple balloons lining it every few feet. I was confused until I saw a sign saying "Wildcat Welcome" with an arrow directing people toward the UB. I was then hit with a realization. Today was Wildcat Welcome. How have we managed to get through an entire month of 2012 with me only barely realizing it? It's crazy really. I remember going to wildcat welcome last year with Carley and our friend Claire. We were all so excited.

Now, a year later, and Claire is in California. Carley and I are going to Weber on very different schedules and having completely different experiences. But back then we were all in the same place; we were all Layton High seniors with big dreams and hardly any clue what we were actually doing. I think that could really describe most of the people that I knew from my senior class at the time.

Where did the last year go? Somewhere between my own Wildcat Welcome and now I managed to graduate high school, work through the drama that is Boondocks during the summer, and survive my first semester of college. I feel like all of this went by in a blur.

And guess what?

I still feel exactly like that Layton High senior with big dreams and no idea what I'm actually going to do with my life.

How is it that some parts of our lives leave us feeling like a completely different person and yet other, more eventful, periods of time end with us feeling like the exact same person we were? It's almost as if I've been standing on stage. The scenery behind me is constantly changing, yet I continue to stand there, looking into the audience with absolutely no idea of what is going on.

The more likely possibility is that I just haven't taken the time to notice all the ways that I've changed in the past year. I'm sure if I spent one day with any of my friends from high school (minus Kara who is the only one I'm still really in contact with) they would be able to tell me any number of things that seem different. Or maybe not. Maybe the changes of the last year were so subtle that they aren't easily noticed right now. Maybe those changes haven't really been completed yet.

mL would certainly be able to point out differences in myself that I haven't noticed. The big difference there is that I haven't seen her in nearly three years. I was going through such huge changes in my life around the time when she moved to Texas that I'm not even sure if we'd be compatible friends anymore. Who knows how much she changed during that time frame.

Anyway, as you can see, my brain wasn't really focused on Human Development of The Short Life of Francis Macombre today. I spent most of my classes thinking about how different things are now and how not different I feel.

Happy February, everyone!

Discovering Potential, Uncovering Dreams

Today, in a (rare) conversation with my dad, I was explaining to him why I was not liking college as much as I had originally expected. I told him briefly that WSU was not meeting the high expectations that I had created for myself through years of dreaming of what my college experience would be like. If we want to be really honest about it, I haven't been meeting those expectations either. Later on in our conversation I was describing to him the loop that I feel I have been stuck in since entering high school. The loop looks something like this:

So I am always cautious of myself when a great new career idea comes to my mind. I try not to let myself get too excited about the possibilities and I try to be fairly rational about the whole thing. What will be best for me? Could I really move across the country from my family? Would I be able to find a job in the field at all? If not, does my major afford me any back up options? Would I still enjoy it 30 years from now? Most of these questions are hard to answer without any experience with them.

My latest idea, though, is something that I believe would leave me with enough options to thoroughly look into it. So what exactly is it that has drawn my attention away from an English teaching major (again)? 

It really started as a result of conversations that I have had with my favorite junior high English teacher and my favorite high school English teacher while I've visited them this year. The thing is, the more they tell me about their difficulties with the administration and the students who really just don't seem to care, the more I think that I wouldn't like being a teacher in the long run. I think I would be passionate about it in the beginning and I probably would love most of the students that I taught. The problem that I have seen, though, is that it does not take much, after a long enough time in the industry, for the job to lose its worth.

That very thought has been in my mind for a few months now. The solution, some other career that I could be passionate about for a much longer amount of time, was what I was lacking. Rediscovering an old dream was what got me set on this new plan. Being a book editor at a publishing company is something that I have daydreamed about since I was 12 years old and my sister, Wendy, and I would talk about how much we loved reading and writing. Who knows if she remembers or not, but we used to talk about how we both wanted to go into publishing. As I grew up, though, I was struck with the reality of just how many of the children who dream about becoming a book editor actually really do.

Really, though, how many of those kids still really want to publish books above all else by the time they're in college? Even more importantly, how many of those college students actually leave their home states in order to join the field that they've been dreaming about? How many of them decide to stay home, close to their families, in a career that they know they can break into more easily?

I'm hoping that my logic here isn't completely wrong... I started researching possibilities today. I've even begun a plan. Most of the high profile publishing companies in New York offer summer internships for college students. I'm going to start putting money away so that by the time I'm a junior I can honestly afford to start applying to spend the summer of 2014 in New York at whatever company accepts me.

That's my new plan. As of today, I'm planning on changing my major to English with a minor in Communications. I'm going to start making a list of books to read and I'm going to spend a lot more of my time reading. I really, really want this. Maybe I'll even find a way to do it while living in Utah. However, for now, I'm not going to let those kinds of things hold me back. I think it's time for me to really look into a new dream. I've been so focused on becoming a teacher for so long that I haven't really thought about anything else that interested me because I thought there was no way I could do it. But I can. And I will.

New Year, New Goals

I meant to get around to writing this much sooner. I mean, four whole days into the new year and I haven't written anything?!? That may be a first. Here's the thing, though, I don't spend nearly as much time on the computer these days. It's one of the many pieces my New Year's resolution.

I believe I've talked about New Year's resolutions in the past. At the end of 2009 I talked about writing a journal because I wouldn't have to be careful with my thoughts. Two years later, I realize that what I should have actually been working toward (and keeping a journal could still have been my method of doing this) would be making my thoughts more positive. No matter how much I have denied it in the past, I have always been very focused on what goes wrong with my life. This way of being has contributed to bad moods, grades lower than I am capable of, and more than one lost friendship.

What does all this have to do with my 2012 New Year's resolution?

It all begins with a desk. Or, more correctly, it all begins with the lack of a desk.

All through junior high and high school, I would always do my homework (when I actually did it at all) around my kitchen table with my sisters. This worked out well mostly because, in high school and junior high, I never actually had to put much effort into my work. It all came easily to me. What were a few distractions when I could probably do the math problems in my sleep anyway?

One of the things that I learned last semester was that college works requires concentration. Unlike in high school or junior high, my professors are not going to accept the bare minimum from me. I have to work hard on every assignment, every paper. I have to read the textbooks and retain the material. I have to be able to focus. Working around the kitchen table just does not encourage anything of the sort. So I asked my mom for a desk for Christmas.

She actually had me looking at them with her once or twice. We swapped links to websites while she was at work but could never find anything that looked like it would work in my room. I figured that I probably wouldn't be getting a desk for Christmas.

Guess what?

I got the coolest desk ever.

Anyway, the night that I got my desk set up in my room I had my mom come and see it. I mentioned how I thought my walls were boring since I finally took all of my old Science Olympiad medals down. The comment that she made is really what got me thinking about my New Year's resolution in an odd way. She said that most teenagers have posters up on their walls. Simple enough, right? Not that strange of a comment. I have never had posters on my walls and that is kind of weird. I decided then that I needed to get some.

In my search for good posters for my room, I came across the Dalai Lama's A to ZEN of Life. After reading the poster, I decided that I must have it. Each letter of the alphabet is represented by a saying such as "remember that silence is sometimes the best answer" and "stop procrastinating." There are twenty six of them (obviously) and I plan to focus on three of them a month. At the same time, I have a bunch of more physical goals that I plan to work on each month (i.e. going to the gym twice a week.)

My New Year's resolution could be considered one thing (becoming a healthier and happier person) or it could be split into well over 30. Still, I have broken it down into a calendar of goals, an idea that I stole from my friend Jocelyn.

Four days in and I can tell that it is going to be tough. I've been stuck in a not-so-great place for a while with no attempt to really change my thoughts or behavior. This is the year, though. It's time for me to be happy with who I am. For real. No doubt. No questions. No need for reassurance from others.