It's All About the Journey

Just wanted to share a sunny picture. Hope you enjoy it!

I had a pretty great weekend :-) Brit Boy and I didn’t go anywhere special or doing anything out of the ordinary, but it was a good quiet weekend and I had a chance to reflect on something I just accomplished. So all weekend, I was basking in the glow :-)

For those of you who are new readers or those who may have forgotten since I didn’t bring it up much ;-) , I was taking a freelance and features writing course over the past several months, well it was actually a year and a half. I didn’t bring it up a lot because there wasn’t much to tell from day to day and also I’ll admit, it was a bit of a struggle sometimes :-) But here’s the absolutely beautiful thing that is bursting out of me right now as I write these words…it was difficult, but I did it! And I don’t say that to say “hey look at me”, I say that because I am just so darned proud of what it means for me as a person…something that I needed to prove to myself…that I can see a difficult task through until the end.

I don’t know if I would have been so candid with you all when I began my course eighteen months ago, but it is SO SO TRUE…the truth does indeed set you free! :-)

See, I know me and I don’t have a great track record with things like this. Oh yeah, I’ve gotten through life fine, but I’ve never really made it through the tape at the finish line in this way for a long, long time. So this milestone lets me know that I still have drive within…something that I thought that I’d left in my wake too long ago. But the beauty is that “she” is still in there…the authentic me that I forgot in the flurry of moving across the water and becoming a wife. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t regret my journey over here at all, but some days it has seemed like my determination dropped off somewhere over the Atlantic. Well, with the completion of my course, I feel that I went diving deep and found my drive again. Hallelujah! :-)

I turned in my final lesson on Friday and I immediately began to smile on the outside, the inside, and everywhere possible :-) I know that this may seem a modest milestone to the wide world, but in essence it is EVERYTHING, because today I join countless people all over this planet who are celebrating something amazing in their lives…whether it is large or small. We all wake up every day and are bombarded with terrible news and so I think that this makes it even more important to celebrate those joyous moments in our lives that make our hearts sing! :-)

I haven’t found out my final grade and of course I’m intrigued to find out the result. However, I mean this with the truest honest heart…I have already made the grade. I took the journey…so the destination is just the icing on the cake. I’m truly grateful in this moment and I just wanted to share my joy with you all.

Have a great day everybody!

My First Blogoversary

Today is my 1st blogoversary! When I started this blog a year ago, I had no idea how much I was going to love going on this journey. As I’ve written before, this blog came along at a time in my life when I needed an outlet and it has been a great catalyst in my life. I’ve also been able to connect with some fantastic people from all around the world. I’m a Georgia girl, who came across the Atlantic and settled in England, and then kept traveling around the world everyday on this magic carpet that we call the blogosphere. I've met some great friends. What a ride! (smile) 

During this past year, I have had lots of fun along with some low points, but in the end, it’s all been great to look back on the highs and lows. And it’s all been great to experience it all alongside my hubby Brit Boy. 

Here are some of the things that I experienced and enjoyed sharing here on my blog during this first year of blogging: 

April 2008 - I got my unlimited leave to remain visa, which allows me to settle here and that was a wonderful step. We celebrated our wedding anniversary and the visa by going to see the play “Speed the Plow” starring Jeff Goldblum. 

June 2008 – We went to Wimbledon... what a thrill that was. We attended the Nelson Mandela birthday concert and we were able to see him speak briefly which was very moving. 

August 2008 – We went to the Madonna concert in Wales. 

September 2008 – We went to the Stevie Wonder concert. He was amazing! Stevie Wonder is Brit Boy’s favorite singer, so my hubby’s grin was a mile wide during the concert (smile) 

October 2008 – I was in the thick of trying to get my absentee ballot in for the election and after many attempts I got it in. This showed me that I have more persistence than I ever imagined. LOL. 

December 2008 – We went to the Simply Red concert. And at the tail end of the month, I had my visit to the US Embassy and it turned out well. On that day, Brit Boy and I got separated twice and found each other again, but I discovered for the first time since I’ve been here that I’m still able to take care of myself. And that was a great turning point for me, since I’ve relied so heavily on my husband since I’ve been here. I loved that day! (smile) 

Since the start of 2009, the big events have slowed down a bit, but it’s still been fun to share my life experiences with all of you my dear readers and commenters who make my day when you come to visit me. So I want to say a big thank you to you all!!!! (smile) This blog wouldn’t be what it is without you all. And thank you to all of my fellow bloggers for welcoming me into this world….what a pleasure!

On Patience

Just an update, we’ve gone three nights now without the honking of our car alarm I’m happy to report :-) I’m still not sleeping soundly as usual yet, because I’m expecting it to start all the noise again. I’m crossing my fingers that we’re in the clear. But I imagine it will float out of my mind the more days we go without incident. So it’s all good. I didn’t realize how much it had freaked me out the first time it happened. Anyway, that anxiety will pass and it’s onward and upward :-)

We should be seeing some action with our shower getting fixed tomorrow. Thank goodness. One of my dear bloggy friends said that I have the patience of Job in dealing with this :-) I tell you, my hubby and I have had our moments when we really have been ticked off by this whole ridiculous situation and we’ve let their office know it. We seem to always run into supreme red tape in dealing with things through them. I think it’s just that we have to go through a third party to get to our landlord, so there is a lot of dropping the ball. We know these people so well now ;-) It’s almost comical. LOL. Brit Boy and I always joke about us developing the patience of Job in dealing with these people, so I laughed when I read my bloggy friend’s comment :-) I’m just glad that our perseverance has seemingly paid off.

I thought about that word… ‘patience’ and how it has cropped up in our life together as well as individually. I think about how Brit Boy and I had to be really patient in waiting to be together, simply because we had been born an ocean apart. We spent lots of time apart and sometimes it felt like we were never going to see each other again. There were many, many, many partings at airports that make me shudder when I think about them. But loads and loads of patience got us through those times. When we have to go through a million hoops with our landlord it often reminds us of our life the past few years, as we’ve worked on being together. Sometimes we feel like we are in the perpetual hoops zone…lol. So I guess that I’ve got to the point in my life where I’m seeing all of this as a huge lesson in patience for me. I’ve rushed through so many things and emotions in my life in the past, so now I laugh when I see myself in action, a bit more mellowed out :-)

Of course sometimes I just say, “forget that”, and I let it rip. LOL. I guess I’m a work in progress…aren’t we all (wink). I think a balance between both is where I am now and that may be the best for me.

So I wondered about how others feel about this. Do you find yourself more patient now or less patient as you age? Do you find that a happy medium is best for you? Or do you say, to heck with patience? I’d love to hear what you have to say :-)