11 of 2011: Good Life

It’s gonna be a good life, good life, good life, oh, it’s gonna be a good life, good life, good life: Oh, please tell me what is there to complain about. – One Republic

Looking back over a year of blessings.

1. I finished my master’s project; I will graduate in a year.

2. I mentored my first student teacher.

3. I received recognition for, and attended, a national journalism teaching conference in Reno, NV.

4. I climbed the Great Wall of China outside of Beijing.

5. My little sister went on a mission to Australia; I am so proud of her!

6. I was in four places at once: Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico.

7. 10 years ago November I went through the Seattle, WA temple; what a blessing that has continually been in my life.

8. I floated the Great Salt Lake (it smells).

9. I travelled through the Baltic countries including Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Finland, Estonia, and Russia.

10. I was chosen to do district level training of the new 2010 Common Core State Standards.

11. The Lion’s Roar student newspaper, for the first time ever, is being printed with two pages of color!

As I look back over the year 2011 I realize it has in many ways been like many others, with ups and downs,tears and laughter, but when I look back on the year as a whole, I ask myself: what is there to complain about? I have good friends, a wonderful family, faith, a good job, and a belief in the goodness of others. I have challenges, but also opportunities. I have grown in faith, experience, and knowledge. It’s been a good year; it's been a good life. And I thank my Heavenly Father for that.

Cognitive Dissonance

I think the universe is trying to tell me something. While trying to work towards becoming this:

I did this to myself,
(see below) on accident:

I have been working on my future-wife skills, not that there is a future-husband yet, but if you build it, they will come, right?

I am cooking something new and exciting once a week, taking pre-natal vitamins, eyeing cute baking-ware in the grocery store; I even substituted in the nursery last week at church and didn't have a panic attack at the onslaught of germs. And I am going out regularly.

At the same time I am working towards nesting, I am also planning trips (in my mind) to Peru, Egypt, India, Spain, anywhere; imagining possibly earning my PhD in education from some university back East, and browsing the latest sweaters and skirts from Anthropologie and wanting to own half of them, the expensive half. I'm holding on dearly to the idea of the single life because that is all I've known.

I am experiencing cognitive dissonance: the flow of two incompatible ideas at once. I have a strange desire to start a nesting phase, and at the same time keep a healthy escape hatch. The result? Butternut Squash and thumb-sliced soup.

Ironically, I was texting a cute boy while chopping up the squash, and thus sliced my thumb.