Last day of 2010

"Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard, and you're kind, amazing things will happen." - Conan O'brian 

That best sums up my year. 2010 for me will always be remembered as the year a door finally opened up for me. It's an opportunity I have been wanting for years, and I'm thrilled to just be working for a great company. I'm just hoping I can keep up this momentum into the new year. 

I'm not really one to make new year's resolutions because I can never keep them. I would always make the typical resolutions, but I think we set the standards too high that we have a hard time following through. We get discouraged and end up not keeping any of them. So I have learned to not make them, and to just live each hoping for the best and to not take anything for guaranteed. 

I was reading the Chicago Tribune last week and found this article, "20 Resolutions worth keeping." It's a list of resolutions I can definitely live by this year and thought I'd share it with you. 

1. Bake and eat a new dessert each month. 

2. One night a week, leave the dishes in the sink, the living room cluttered and the mail unsorted. Pick up a good book, and read for an hour. 

3. Start a piggy bank. 

4. Take a massage therapy class, and share your new skills. 

5. Learn what your kid/spouse/partner is listening to/reading/watching, and launch into a discussion about it. 

6. Make bread from scratch. Mix and knead and work the muscles. Play with the dough. Inhale the baking aroma. Slather warm slices with real butter and jam. Indulge. 

7. Wear more color. 

8. Schedule a monthly bubble bath. 

9. Turn off the TV, and pick up a martini once a week. Dim the lights if there are two of you. 

10. Take in a theater performance at a local fine arts venue. 

11. Find a recipe you have never tried but has always intrigued you - duck l'orange, beef Wellington, Lithuanian bacon buns. Set aside a Sunday afternoon, and make it. 

12. Apologize to someone you have hurt. 

13. Make a list of your favorite funny movies. Keep it near the TV. Buy them all if possible. Use as needed when life seems dark. 

14. Make a list of your favorite weepy movies. Keep it near the TV. Buy them all if possible. Use as needed to release a cleansing cry. 

15. Go to bed early once a week, even if you're not sleepy. 

16. Speak your mind, and confront a nagging grudge without regard for consequences and without bitterness - the way kids do. 

17. Paint the dining room deep red. 

18. Choose a topic that interested you as a kid - The Three Stooges, dinosaurs, Roberto Clemente - and learn as much as you can about it. 

19. Buy a pack of CDs or a zip drive, and back up everything on your computer that you'd cry if you'd lost. 

20. Pray, meditate or just sit quietly with no distractions or noise for 10 minutes a day. 

(Bill Daley, Wendy Donahue, Judy Hevrdejs, William Hageman, Brenda Richardson, Heidi Stevens, Shamontiel L. Vaughn) 

What will you remember the most in 2010 and what's your resolution for 2011? 

Happy New Year!

Bad Day

“The only difference between a good day and a bad day is your attitude.” - Dennis S. Brown

It took me almost two days to realize that I had a really, really bad day on Wednesday. 

I was sore all day yesterday and found a huge bruise on my elbow and it took me awhile to figure it all out. I walk a mile in downtown Chicago to get to my internship, and was walking extra careful the whole way because the sidewalks were really icy. Of course, when I was all but a block away, I wipe out on some ice. Didn't even see it coming! 

We went to an event at Navy Pier where I ended up carrying three bags of toys clear across the pier, because it was taking forever to get a cart. If you've been or never been, it's over a ten minute walk from the front doors to the festival hall near the back. Add three huge shopping bags to that, I thought my fingers were gonna fall off! And it would be my luck to have one of the bags break on me and toys all over the floor! 

Then I get a call that the I didn't get a job I interviewed for last month. The worst part of this is I knew her! She also brought her son into work that day so I pretty much end up watching me the whole time I was there doing my interview!  Don't get me wrong, I love her son, but I was there for over four hours for this interview turned babysitting. I really wasn't an ideal job, but it paid well and it was a temporary position, so even if it didn't work out I could eventually move on. But it would've been really nice to make some money, even for a few months. 

Coming home the train announcement was wrong so a whole bunch of people, including me, got off at the wrong stop! 

I think I was so tired by the end of the day, my brain couldn't process just truly how bad the day was. It needed a whole extra day just to process it all! I'm still alive, a little achy, but nonetheless still here. It was a bad day, not terrible, I've had worse. It was just a bad day. We all have them, but it's how we deal with them that makes the difference. I didn't even occur to me two days ago what a bad day I was having. Makes me realize just how much I can take and still survive. 

How do you deal with your bad days? 

Never settle

"Never settle. When you really have your heart set on something, it's better to strive for it and take opportunities and risks that will help get you there." - Unknown

This internship is keeping me very busy! But I'm loving every minute of it! 

Of course my mom is still insisting I become a nurse, like everyone else and that they have moved on but me. But have they really? Or did they just settle? 

I know for sure that my friends from high school who are now nurses did not start college thinking they would be nurses. One was in her third year of graphic design and another was in two classes away from his computer science degree, we even celebrated his graduation party! They were so close to finishing but somehow ended up in nursing. It's sad that they didn't follow through because they had a potential to be great in their original chosen field because it's what they wanted to do. The other group of friends did finish a degree in something: psychology, marketing... but couldn't find jobs so they all turned to nursing too, but they at least gave it a shot. 

Why settle? Why not follow your original passion? Did they give into the pressure from their parents? Did job security and money mean more? 

Some have honestly told me not to give in and I think are a little jealous that I'm doing something I love. I think some of them are genuinely unhappy with their decisions. Yes they have a job that pays well and yes they can support their spouse/family, but there's gotta more to life than that! I think it's awesome that they are saving lives everyday, someone's gotta do it! But not everyone is cut of for it! 

I don't know where this internship will lead me. Of course I''m hoping to get fully employed, but for right now I'm learning from a great company, meeting new people and making new contacts, and doing something that makes me happy. And after two years, that's all I can ask for right now. If this doesn't work out, I can at least say I tried and move on from it. But I won't ever look back years from now and regret not doing something or wishing I should have done this or that. I can say I actually did it!

Ever settle? Was it the right decision?