Appetite for Life

On occasion, I feel a little overzealous-ed and my creative juices get flowing. Today is one of those days where I want to be experiencing it ALL. And so, here is my latest addition to the blog.

Sometimes we get lost on the road to where we want to be. Sometimes others influence where this journey is taking us, but it is not theirs; it is our own to determine. And life is just that, a journey.

Choices. Ifs. Adventure.

I don't want to get lost on my own journey, I want to work to fulfill every piece of it. I'm working to make every decision I make a good one, so the next one is just as good - Creating a rippling effect, a good choice avalanche of sorts.

I want to get the most out of the years I have here on this beautiful planet. I want to preserve that planet for generations to come -- call me an Earth Muffin. I want to learn all the time -- call my desire insatiable. I want to travel and see sights and hear stories -- I want to listen and learn from others so I can learn about myself. I make jokes and take little about myself seriously -- call me a feel good entertainer for my family and friends; I strive to be sunshine in their lives, the warmth, the brightness [and no, I don't mean it in the "the world revolves around me sense" although if that's how my future husband would like to treat me would be JUST fine]. I study nutrition because I believe what we put in our bodies is directly seen outside of it --it is in our good complexions, our shiny hair, our strong bones and muscles; I want to keep my body as fit as it can be so I can be here as long as my time is allotted for me. I don't know if nutrition is the medium for how my journey will travel, but for now, for now at least dietetics will suffice, until the next leg of the journey begins.

There is no point in waiting around for something, carpe diem, wage war against fear. That is the first step to enjoying living. Not just being alive, but living and loving life. So while I get the most out of what I've got the chance to take part in...keep feeding me, because I have an appetite: for good food, good company, great living.

Live your own life, choose, write your story.

Discovering What Makes Me...Me

Took a few quizzes to determine how I tick as a person. I know, from my freshman year in high school that my Myers-Briggs test shows I am an INTP. My test on right or left brained dominance shows:

Right Brain/ Left Brain Quiz
The higher of these two numbers below indicates which side of your brain has dominance in your life. Realising your right brain/left brain tendancy will help you interact with and to understand others.
Left Brain Dominance:	(16)
Right Brain Dominance:	(16)

Not all too helpful, ha.

And finally, as an assignment for class my strengths are as follows [out of 34 possible options these are my top five].

Your Signature Themes

Many years of research conducted by The Gallup Organization suggest that the most effective people are those who understand their strengths and behaviors. These people are best able to develop strategies to meet and exceed the demands of their daily lives, their careers, and their families.

A review of the knowledge and skills you have acquired can provide a basic sense of your abilities, but an awareness and understanding of your natural talents will provide true insight into the core reasons behind your consistent successes.

Your Signature Themes report presents your five most dominant themes of talent, in the rank order revealed by your responses to StrengthsFinder. Of the 34 themes measured, these are your "top five."

Your Signature Themes are very important in maximizing the talents that lead to your successes. By focusing on your Signature Themes, separately and in combination, you can identify your talents, build them into strengths, and enjoy personal and career success through consistent, near-perfect performance.

Futuristic

“Wouldn’t it be great if . . .” You are the kind of person who loves to peer over the horizon. The future fascinates you. As if it were projected on the wall, you see in detail what the future might hold, and this detailed picture keeps pulling you forward, into tomorrow. While the exact content of the picture will depend on your other strengths and interests—a better product, a better team, a better life, or a better world—it will always be inspirational to you. You are a dreamer who sees visions of what could be and who cherishes those visions. When the present proves too frustrating and the people around you too pragmatic, you conjure up your visions of the future and they energize you. They can energize others, too. In fact, very often people look to you to describe your visions of the future. They want a picture that can raise their sights and thereby their spirits. You can paint it for them. Practice. Choose your words carefully. Make the picture as vivid as possible. People will want to latch on to the hope you bring.

Strategic

The Strategic theme enables you to sort through the clutter and find the best route. It is not a skill that can be taught. It is a distinct way of thinking, a special perspective on the world at large. This perspective allows you to see patterns where others simply see complexity. Mindful of these patterns, you play out alternative scenarios, always asking, “What if this happened? Okay, well what if this happened?” This recurring question helps you see around the next corner. There you can evaluate accurately the potential obstacles. Guided by where you see each path leading, you start to make selections. You discard the paths that lead nowhere. You discard the paths that lead straight into resistance. You discard the paths that lead into a fog of confusion. You cull and make selections until you arrive at the chosen path—your strategy. Armed with your strategy, you strike forward. This is your Strategic theme at work: “What if?” Select. Strike.

Learner

You love to learn. The subject matter that interests you most will be determined by your other themes and experiences, but whatever the subject, you will always be drawn to the process of learning. The process, more than the content or the result, is especially exciting for you. You are energized by the steady and deliberate journey from ignorance to competence. The thrill of the first few facts, the early efforts to recite or practice what you have learned, the growing confidence of a skill mastered—this is the process that entices you. Your excitement leads you to engage in adult learning experiences—yoga or piano lessons or graduate classes. It enables you to thrive in dynamic work environments where you are asked to take on short project assignments and are expected to learn a lot about the new subject matter in a short period of time and then move on to the next one. This Learner theme does not necessarily mean that you seek to become the subject matter expert, or that you are striving for the respect that accompanies a professional or academic credential. The outcome of the learning is less significant than the “getting there.”

Input

You are inquisitive. You collect things. You might collect information—words, facts, books, and quotations—or you might collect tangible objects such as butterflies, baseball cards, porcelain dolls, or sepia photographs. Whatever you collect, you collect it because it interests you. And yours is the kind of mind that finds so many things interesting. The world is exciting precisely because of its infinite variety and complexity. If you read a great deal, it is not necessarily to refine your theories but, rather, to add more information to your archives. If you like to travel, it is because each new location offers novel artifacts and facts. These can be acquired and then stored away. Why are they worth storing? At the time of storing it is often hard to say exactly when or why you might need them, but who knows when they might become useful? With all those possible uses in mind, you really don’t feel comfortable throwing anything away. So you keep acquiring and compiling and filing stuff away. It’s interesting. It keeps your mind fresh. And perhaps one day some of it will prove valuable.

Maximizer

Excellence, not average, is your measure. Taking something from below average to slightly above average takes a great deal of effort and in your opinion is not very rewarding. Transforming something strong into something superb takes just as much effort but is much more thrilling. Strengths, whether yours or someone else’s, fascinate you. Like a diver after pearls, you search them out, watching for the telltale signs of a strength. A glimpse of untutored excellence, rapid learning, a skill mastered without recourse to steps—all these are clues that a strength may be in play. And having found a strength, you feel compelled to nurture it, refine it, and stretch it toward excellence. You polish the pearl until it shines. This natural sorting of strengths means that others see you as discriminating. You choose to spend time with people who appreciate your particular strengths. Likewise, you are attracted to others who seem to have found and cultivated their own strengths. You tend to avoid those who want to fix you and make you well rounded. You don’t want to spend your life bemoaning what you lack. Rather, you want to capitalize on the gifts with which you are blessed. It’s more fun. It’s more productive. And, counterintuitively, it is more demanding.

Interesting, very interesting...although I probably could have told you futuristic would have been my first one and that learning would be in my top 5.

Writing History

I've spent the past three hours cutting out Calcium bookmarks for a children's fair at the zoo. Yes, you heard right.

Things are thankfully, and unfortunately for the workload, coming to a close with classes. Next week I have a paper due in my Biology of Human Aging on 'changes in metabolism as you age' that requires only peer reviewed articles. I haven't started. I work better under a bit of pressure, and obviously working on bookmarks for tomorrow is more important than a paper, ha.

I did a health fair at the YMCA today and again doing things tomorrow at the zoo. No telling when you'll work.

Came home to find the house smells of nearly burnt chicken which is funny considering I'm actually skillful in the kitchen. So what if I like to experiment and end up messing up, it's all about the experience along the way, right? It is both a blessing and a curse that no one but myself had to eat the chicken concoction I created. Wizardly in the kitchen...until I find out the smoke point of Pam happens sooner than the smoke point of EVOO [yeah, I abbreviated extra virgin olive oil].

It's been raining the past three days and while it does not make for a productive week/end I have found that it is comforting. The constant blowing wind took the day off to pass drops of water from the clouds. My slowly dirtying car has received its own car wash, no more red dirt particles or pollen. The dormant grass is turning green and the weather is as it would be at home [mid 50s]. It is comforting and the growing amounts of green almost reminds me of home, trees, grass, rain on the windshield of the car. No howling, just silence.

The longer I am here experiencing the weather Oklahoma has to offer I'm determining that I really am writing my own history, making my own story, and coming up with things. Oklahoma, the chapter after my undergrad, the chapter after CCHS, and so on and so on. I'm not saying my story is meant for a biography - I'm not fast paced or fascinating [I have one speed...slow] but it is something I will be proud to say I took the leap of faith to apply for and experience.

Writing a story worth reading, a story with a [hopefully] happy ending.

Write on.

MYLYB

Fear

We are creatures of habit because we like to control things. Fear is something every person has and many of our fears can be classified out of our need to control; our need to see the entire situation, everything.

Fear of the unknown.
Fear of the future.
Fear of change.
Fear of the ocean.
Fear of the dark.
Fear of aging.
Fear of flying.
Fear of new situations or places.

We strive so much to keep things in our deeply organized comfort zone that we fail to realize that putting ourselves in places of fear allows us to grow, to conquer what scares us, to take life by the horns and lead the way. By conquering that fear we are literally taking better control. It really is all about that first step; nothing to it but to do it [my personal phrase for being a procrastinator, telling myself in the mirror, though not as often as I should].

I have been praying for clarity since I've come here to Oklahoma [what do I do next, where do I go, what's the next step, how do I know I'm making the right decision, where is a SIGN?]. It doesn't work that way though, does it?... no, of course not. No one has clarity on their path in life, an owners manual would take all the fun and all the life lessons out of things. I digress. I realize now clarity is not something I can just get by praying for it or wishing on a shooting star, and definitely not something I should expect at least. I should simply pray for trust and patience [as I have also been doing] so that when I am meant to take that next step I take it on with all the passion of a person with a plan, a plan laid out for me long ago.

So tonight, I won't pray for clarity. Tonight I'll continue to pray for patience and trust in the Lord. Tonight I hope that you will do the same.

SYLYB

April Sunshine

It's been a lot longer than I expected to be since I last updated the blog. Mom left this past Wednesday after her week long stay, a much needed visit.

It's funny, I have only lived here for three complete months; exactly three months ago was my first day at the hospital. So many experiences had so far and still so many still yet to have. I'm already thinking about how the rest of the summer will fly by and I'll be starting clinicals before I know it. Clinicals, the dreaded clinicals. Don't get me wrong, I'm trying to be extremely open minded but I know where my passions and 'likes' lie and it does not involve charts. I go the way of wellness and overall health, art projects and crafts, organizing and list making. Details about a person's pre-albumin levels or hematocrit aren't really my forte. I just need to get through them and I'll be fine. Where I'll end up when I'm done is still a mystery [location, profession, etc], and funny enough by the time I finish with those ten weeks I should probably be looking for a job, or something. Of course, I'll have to wait six weeks before I can take the boards exam to ACTUALLY become registered and licensed...logistics. [Audibly loud *sigh placed here] One step at a time.

I'm not attached, have no dire need to go back to Ohio [although I love Ohio with every fiber of my being, it will forever be home], I'm ready for whatever adventure, whichever way the path takes me. Again, trusting and praying for clarity and patience is essential here.

So, in the mean time, to fill the void of loneliness and heartache from being away from my loved ones those hundreds of miles away I'm making little retreats to look forward to. There is the obvious road trip west that I am extremely excited for [I made a 500+ playlist for the car today which took surprisingly way too much time...okay, that's not ACTUALLY surprising]. My new friends and I also created a List of things we need to do while we're out here. Middle America means getting as many experiences as I can, despite the rumors that I have heard there is not much to do around here. We're planning trips around the Oklahoma area, down to Texas, and making sure to do certain activities while we are in the area that we haven't done in a long time [ergo the roller skating shenanigans]. I've also agreed to take part in Muddy Buddies [http://muddy-buddy.competitor.com/] in October, which will be interesting since I loathe running of any kind, although 7 miles total of running, biking, and obstacle courses can't be that bad. Never mind that though, think about all the mud, and obviously the laughter. That should be about the time I finish up with my clinical rotations as well. Celebratory romp in the mud anyone?

In other news I walked ten miles yesterday with Monica and Carie around Lake Hefner [http://www.google.com/maps that business]. Nice stretch of the legs and sunshine on my shoulders.

Yes, this weekend was quite enjoyable, a little poolside action, a few movies, some frozen yogurt, a few restaurants, putt putting, and a completely unnecessary but much appreciated VEG OUT day. I should have worked on homework, projects or papers, but really, I'd rather waste time on my beloved Macintosh. I work better under some pressure anyway. This week I pledge to be more productive than I was not this weekend. You heard it here first folks. I'll keep to that word, I have to, deadlines are coming up!

Online locations I wasted my time today:

iTunes store
youtube.com
apple.com/trailers
imdb.com
facebook.com
hulu.com
google.com

Miss you. Love you. Bye.