School Daze

LOL! I have not posted in so long I almost forgot where the blog is... Just kidding! My life is amazing: and the reason is God! I have returned to Florida as a resident again and I'm loving it. Of course life never goes the same path twice just like lightning never strikes the same place twice (Sidebar: Is that a myth?). I am in Florida; however, I am not even remotely close to living in the same place I was accustomed to prior to this move. I am an urban girl now (urban as in city dweller... ). The funniest part is how I am teaching at a private school right in the heart of inner city Tampa and loving it! Is it coincidence or destiny that most of my life experiences up to this point prepared me for this job? I'll let you be a judge. The school where I teach is an exemplary Step-Up Florida funds recipient and uses the following resources to help them connect with parents and students: technology (especially blogging), heavy parental involvement and support, student work and behavior recognition, and so on. I felt like I was made for this job. I laughed when the principal asked me if I knew anything about blogging and technology. Do I know anything about blogging and technology?! Me? The same chick who wondered if it was a mistake to attend Full Sail University and work towards her Masters in Education Technology? Me? The same person who has blogged off and on semi-professionally since 2006 and even had her own domain name at one point? Ha ha! I don't see how God couldn't have His hand in this situation. It is a blessing to me to know that I can see God in the small details. No, I don't believe this part of my journey is coincidence. I truly look forward to the day when I can really look back at the tapestry called my life and see how the dark threads wove together with the bright and golden threads to make a beautiful work of art when it's all said and done. I am determined to keep blogging about my life and share the journey with you: even if it's only six months at a time ;-) Hit me back if you're still with me... By the way, my friend at Gardening in the Boroughs of New York, You have completely inspired me to get my bee hives going one day very soon. I love what you're doing up there!

The Road Not Taken

Note: This post was a haught mess yesterday. I hope it appears more legible today... Good afternoon everyone!! It's been two (er, or four) weeks and I've been struggling to get back out there and make writing a regular task again. Life goes on... I have no idea what I'm going to write about today except maybe that I want to talk a little about purpose. Is it overrated? I mean of course I recognize that I have a purpose. I know that I wasn't the result of millions of years of evolving amoebae and slime or a huge explosion that somehow miraculously formed planets and life with detail and order and mathematical precision. Nope, not buying it. I guess when I say purpose I wonder if the emphasis that is placed on purpose is misguided. Is EVERYONE really supposed to be famous? Seriously, like is real purpose when hundreds, thousands or millions know my name but don't know me? What about those people who live and love and die who never get on television or published in Who's Who and may not even own a television? Was his or her life a wasted one? I don't know; just putting it out there, I guess. I'm thinking about my life's purpose because my life is at a crossroads. It's not that I don't have any options or choices: I actually have more than I bargained for. How can I describe it? Maybe it's like the poem by Robert Frost called The Road Not Taken. If you have time, read and really meditate on the words:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;

took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim Because it was grassy and wanted wear, Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,

both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I marked the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

--Robert Frost

I think this poem really sums it up for me. We have so many choices, so many talents, so many options, but one option appeals to me more than all the others: To take the road less travelled. It's convenient to choose to common paths (college/university, trade school are great ways to build knowledge and skill sets). It's convenient to be like everyone else. The fact is, you don't meet up with much resistance and its probably just easier to get along in this life. In this world of sheep and herd mentality it's so easy to choose the lower, broad road and to do what most everyone else is doing. There is a pull to let the status quo equal purpose. At the end of the day, I feel that status quo/culture/convention is just someone else's ideal of the meaning of life. People fight and claw and stress and die trying to obtain someone else's comfort zone masquerading as true purpose. Some people live and die never taking the time to see if the path they were on is where they really wanted to go or if there was ever another path to choose. Some people just get carried along by the others on the path they were standing near and never stop to question where the mob was going. Ok, I realize that it's not wrong to lead a "normal" life. I'm not saying that everyone should join PeaceCorps and I'm not saying that having a "typical life" is wrong. If that is the path a person wants to choose to do, then more power. The idea is clear for me: There are two paths; There is wear and tear on both paths; both paths had not been travelled in a while, but in the end it was the path that held a little more intrigue, a few more mysteries that called to Robert Frost and that calls to me. Going down a different path may never lead you back to the other road, but I want to see the difference taking the road less travelled by makes in my life... How about you? Let me know your thoughts!

Happy New Year's...Again!

She lives...She lives!! Happy New Year's everyone! Some of you may or may not remember spritely little me, but I have, once again, returned from "outside space" to the Blogosphere. I hope this post finds everyone well and well favored. It has been approximately one and a half years since my last post and with good reason: I lost everything in the Fire. What fire you say? Oh, just the Conflagration of Circumstance, you know, the Flames of Remorthia Olilith deep within seething bowels Middle Earth otherwise known as tragedy of the highest degree. Yes, I know, drama. Now you may find a hat shop in my former domain (www.momwearsthehats.com). That is because I released my domain name back into the wild world of DNS to be re-captured by someone who would give it better care and a loving home. Nevertheless, I never really stopped writing I just stopped typing and posting on Blogger and Facebook for a while as I reconstructed my life. Unfortunately, that reconstruction began after my world was demolished. One arrest(not mine), adjudication withheld with a smidgen of probation and community service (still not mine) later, I am a single parent with three boys who had, until this point, never been without both parents in the home and had a stay at home mom for most of their lives. I never finished the Master's program I was in for Educational Technology and I moved to an entirely different state to put the pieces of my life back together. No one wants to really say goodbye to a marriage. That's not why people get married. There are so many freaking disadvantages to divorce: decreased life expectancy, grief, increased likelihood of living in poverty especially if you have the children, stigmas and unfounded fears from married people (that's another post for another day ;-)), However, life goes on. This is not a pity party. This is actually an announcement: 2013 is the beginning of something new and brilliant in my life. I have so much to tell you all and I don't even know where to begin. I'm newly divorced, newly single with benefits, and newly enlightened about the God I serve. I am learning so much about the strength that I didn't know existed within me, and how I needed to tap into this hidden superpower of mine(as my 4 year old would say). I now have the ability to see what is not there and make it happen just because I believe that my God will make it so (faith). I also discovered my Achilles' heels (Heels was not a typo: Let's tell the truth; we all have more than one weakness). In spite of my faults and things, I'm going for my Masters of Fine Arts...somewhere, somehow, but that's not the point: The point of the matter is that after several months of soul searching, why-ing and why-ning about my life, I am no longer living my life for someone else's satisfaction and pleasure. My life is my own canvas to be covered by the Divine paint of God's will embellished with the glitter of my desires and visions. I'm not "doing school" to prove anything to anyone else. I'm not scheduling my life around people and their activities just to keep their emotions at bay. I'm doing this for myself because my God is with me and He loves me so. God really wants to give me the opportunity to shine for Him. I have no New Year's resolution but one: Live for God, Move for God, Breathe for God and glorify Him with my life til I die. That is all...