My first entry that actually is just musings - July 30, 2008

I've already been married for 3 months and completed over a year of employment at Best Buddies. I've lived in Florida for a year and four months - in that time I've gone home to see my Dad 3 times (and gotten a new baby brother) and gone home to Mom 10 or so times. When I stop to really look back at the past year and four months, it just flew by. In my freshmen year of college, the thought of three more years seemed like an eternity. In terms of my experiences and how I changed in those four years at college, it probably was an eternity but looking back, it just whizzed by. I don't know if this is something of a mid-life crisis but I've recently been feeling so overwhelmed with the magnitude of what I want to accomplish in what seems like such a short period of time.

I'm married at 23 - this, was an unexpected gift. And now that I'm married, I want to have a baby at 25 (it seems arbitrary but I'd like to get started early to avoid the many healthy problems that my mom suffered through in having her babies at 30 and 35). And before having a baby, my husband and I want to get out of debt (a cumulative amount more than our annual income), own a home (I have a sub-prime credit score which will take at least 7 years to repair), loose a combined 100 lbs (I just had cookies for dessert and rice and platanos with my dinner...), we want a certain annual income (about twice what we're making now) and Master's degrees (we haven't even taken a GRE). So when I do the math, I'll be ready to have a baby in my early 30's...more than five years after my goal.

Time just seems to be escaping me.

Mike tells me I just need to take one thing at a time. In the words of Stacy's away message, plan the work and work the plan. But I've always had trouble seperating everything. I guess it's the fatalist in me - I need to pay down my debt, but i don't make enough money, and if I don't make enough money, I can't go back to school, which means I'll be stuck in this job forever, and...well, I think you get it. This is where my mind goes.

Most recently I've been busying myself with projects:
- Catching up on work - I've been checked out the last few months and there is much to do
- Revitalizing the Theta Iota Chapter
- Single-handedly running the first ever SLU auction at our national convention in DC (a trip I'm not even sure I can afford to take)
- Creating a consulting firm with my sister-in-law
- This blog
- A pretty agressive job search
- Reading more...

This is the same approach I had in college - if I keep myself busy enough, it'll all just come together. I guess the hope is that one or more of these projects will bring me to some peace and a sense that it will in fact all be ok.

The largest benefit of having a husband is the confidence that you are not going through any of this along. The detriment of a husband - now you're failures are no longer just yours. If I fail, I've failed him as well.

I assume the most important part of it all is to try and keep some perspective and not let the emotion of it overtake me. Something my friend Sarah says comes with age. For despite my Mrs. status, I am only 23.