{"id":1050,"date":"2015-09-03T20:12:22","date_gmt":"2015-09-03T20:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/?p=1050"},"modified":"2015-09-03T20:12:22","modified_gmt":"2015-09-03T20:12:22","slug":"new-priorities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/?p=1050","title":{"rendered":"new priorities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve spent my summer in a bit of a slump.<br \/>\nMy whole life just seems a bit slumped.<br \/>\nI&#8217;m still waiting for that moment where I discover I&#8217;ve grown up.<br \/>\nLike this should all be leading up to adulthood and it&#8217;s not.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1061 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/11781709_10152997700515025_7689505730202640478_n-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"11781709_10152997700515025_7689505730202640478_n\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/11781709_10152997700515025_7689505730202640478_n-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/11781709_10152997700515025_7689505730202640478_n-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/11781709_10152997700515025_7689505730202640478_n.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>I feel like I&#8217;ve spent the better part of my life working &amp; waiting for good things to happen, so a\u00a0life I loved would somehow fall into my lap.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not saying I&#8217;ve been lazy, I certainly haven&#8217;t.<br \/>\nI put myself through 5 years of collage as a single mom, I averaged 3 to 4 hours of sleep a night. I finished with a 3.84 grade point average.<br \/>\nThat&#8217;s not lazy.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But I couldn&#8217;t find a job afterwards.<br \/>\nBecause I couldn&#8217;t or wouldn&#8217;t sell myself or my work.<br \/>\nThat&#8217;s a lack of confidence.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t find the contacts I wanted and needed,<br \/>\nor make a lot of friends.<br \/>\nAnd that&#8217;s because I&#8217;m awkward as hell with people.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m can be\u00a0easily discouraged, but thats still not <em>lazy<\/em>.<br \/>\nBut it&#8217;s probably been the\u00a0biggest factor of my downfall.<br \/>\nI\u00a0<em>allowed<\/em>\u00a0other people to discourage me to easily, I asked them to define my value, and let my own perceptions of what they thought\u00a0limit me.<\/p>\n<p>I always wanted to be an artist, and artist of any kind. Someone who made things.<br \/>\nBeautiful things people would want and cherish.<br \/>\nBut\u00a0I took to heart\u00a0what my parents had told me that there are only two types of artists in the world.<br \/>\nProfessional and Starving.<br \/>\nAnd the world only had room for\u00a0a handful of the first, so unless you were really <em>really<\/em> good or really really lucky, you better have a back up plan.<br \/>\nI understood that as &#8220;<em>you in particular better have a back-up plan.<\/em>&#8221;<br \/>\nSo I could make things, maybe great things, but only as a hobby.<br \/>\nBecause grown-ups need a real job.<\/p>\n<p>So I did the stuff I thought I was supposed to do, I finished high school, got a job, fell in love, got my heart broke, found a slightly better job.<br \/>\nAnd all of that time I was somewhat unhappy because I wanted to be somewhere else <em>making<\/em>. Be somebody else.<\/p>\n<p>I had hoped the design\/web thing would be that thing, where I got to be creative &#8211;\u00a0<em>enough<\/em>. Where I got to make &#8211; <em>something<\/em>. Maybe it still might. Maybe I just need more practice.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1057 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/11067605_695710640533872_363420057902955872_n.jpg\" alt=\"11067605_695710640533872_363420057902955872_n\" width=\"676\" height=\"584\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/11067605_695710640533872_363420057902955872_n.jpg 676w, http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/11067605_695710640533872_363420057902955872_n-300x259.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 676px) 100vw, 676px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>But for now I&#8217;m going to focus on something I can do today and\u00a0commit\u00a0my self into my knitting. And hopefully by the end of the year I will have a functioning retail site.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m well aware my ingrained awkwardness and low self esteem will always be obstacles. But I need to do something, I need something that gets me up everyday (besides the dogs).<br \/>\nSomething that helps make me independent again \u00a0and helps me find a place I really feel I belong.<\/p>\n<p>Much of this new passion has been spurred on by several online classes I&#8217;ve been taking about selling one&#8217;s\u00a0crafts. And a very supportive community of other crafters.<br \/>\nBut another driving force has been a recent trip up north to Grand Marais on Lake Superior. A\u00a0lake, no matter where on her shores I come too rest I feel at home.<br \/>\nI still\u00a0want to travel and see Europe and Ireland and maybe even still Japan.<br \/>\nBut I don&#8217;t want to come home to here. To my current life.<br \/>\nI written about my growing dislike for<a href=\"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/?p=476\"> living in such an urban area<\/a>, that&#8217;s definitely part of it.\u00a0Living somewhere I can see the stars at night definitely appeals to me.<br \/>\nNo,\u00a0instead I want to come back to that lake. Where I feel I have the best chance of finding a life I&#8217;m never tired of. Maybe even where I am supposed to be.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m kind of tired of playing it safe, and saying things like if I just do this for another (insert number here) years I will be able to do this thing I&#8217;ve always wanted to do. So I will be more aggressive. I will throw my self out there more. Maybe that(insert number here) can be made smaller.<br \/>\nI know this will be hard and there may be much suck ahead of me. But I owe me this much. I owe that dreamer I used to be this.<br \/>\nMy parents may yet be right, but I will happily embrace the\u00a0life of a starving artist over this backup plan with no heart, if thats what it takes now.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve spent my summer in a bit of a slump. My whole life just seems a bit slumped. I&#8217;m still waiting for that moment where I discover I&#8217;ve grown up. Like this should all be leading up to adulthood and it&#8217;s not. I feel like I&#8217;ve spent the better part of my life working &amp; &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/?p=1050\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">new priorities<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1050"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1075,"href":"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions\/1075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rainymorning.com\/blob\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}