Farewell, 2013

The year has come to an end and I have mixed feelings about it. This has been the best and worst year of my life. I read a quote recently that some years ask questions and some years answer - this year had it all.

So here it is - my 2013 year in review.

Hope. I baked my birthday cake and made a "24" out of chocolate chips. I talked with my parents and Jason about everything I hoped 24 would hold for me. I was going to graduate, get some job in some city, and finally be in the same town as Jason. I had no clue where I would be in one year - there were a lot of unanswered questions but I had high hopes for the answers. I was ready for what 2013 held for me - or so I thought.

Isolation. Spring was my thesis semester. I only had one friend in grad school to start with, but without classes to force me out of my apartment I rarely came across other humans. I sat at my desk and wrote 12 hours a day - there were multiple 3-5 day periods where I didn't set foot outside my front door. I once broke a six-day hibernation only because I craved a burrito and was determined to find a Moe's. I'm fine spending time by myself so I wasn't lonely, but it was an interesting period of learning about myself and what I was capable of. Which leads us to...

Devastation. It sounds dramatic - but it was. In March, I turned in my thesis and was asked to start from scratch. I felt very lost and very confused and did NOT see it coming. It was a huge blow to my confidence and pride. I looked at every step leading up to that point and could not find where I went wrong - but sometimes you just get screwed. Which was hard for my controlling self to accept.

Dissapointment. I looked up to my thesis chair as a strong business woman who had steamrolled gender roles and taken the journalism world by storm. But not everyone gets to the top with their character in tact. I realized what was actually in front of me with one sentence - "You have to start from scratch - if you're going to cry, go to the bathroom and come back when you're done." The following seven weeks showed that this sentence was just the beginning. And, no, I didn't cry.

Determination. While it may have been fueled by spite, I was completely focused on finishing my second thesis in time to graduate in May. I worked around the clock with the cackling echo of "You'll never be able to get it done in time" on repeat in my mind. I've never had such a challenge and I've never had such a triumph. I finished my second thesis in three weeks.

Humility. I imagine I'll see this again someday with a boss, but I had to learn to swallow my pride. I've been raised that working hard and being a decent human will get you where you need to be, and that's just not always the case. Sometimes you have to obediently do what you're told - even if it means writing a forced thank you email with the head of the grad school copied because otherwise your approved thesis might not be turned in to the school on time. I had to learn that raising hell isn't always the answer - especially if your degree has a gatekeeper.

Risk. Two days after I defended my thesis, I interviewed for a three-month contracting position with Kimberly-Clark. I had my eye on K-C and had applied to multiple permanent positions. I was contacted by a recruiter for the contract but was only promised the three months. In the name of getting my foot in the door, I took the position. This meant signing a lease and moving Jason with me to Roswell on the hope that, if I worked hard enough, they'd hire me full time. In July they pushed my contract through September, in September they pushed it through Halloween, and in October they pushed it through December 31. Two weeks ago I signed my offer for a permanent position - starting January 1st. It has restored my faith in the existence of meritocracies.

Grief. At the end of June, a lifelong friend of mine was found in his apartment days after overdosing on heroin. We were in the same third grade class, sang in middle school chorus, acted in three school plays, and had the same friends in high school. His life took a turn when his parents sent him to military school for ninth grade and he was introduced to some substances. He wrote me a letter every week that year. It's a sad story of what substance abuse can do to such a great life.

Relief. In August, my degree was delivered to my parents house. And I cried.

Excitement. Also in August, Jason and I decided that we wanted to get married. It had always been on the horizon, but suddenly it was right in front of us. We were ready. The conversation went like this. I said, "I'm on the bus. Let's do this. Are you on the bus?" And he said, "I've been on the bus for a while, just waiting for you to hop aboard." Ahh, the romance.

Joy. In November, my beautiful sister Ashley told us that her and her husband are expecting a baby next June - I'm going to be an aunt! I already love the little nugget so much and it's only 16 weeks in fetus years. I can't wait to dress it in rude onesies and pass it back to Ashley when it produces bodily fluids.

Assurance. Eight days ago, Jason and I got engaged. I start my permanent position in a few days. I have a stack of bride magazines on my coffee table. My Etsy and Amazon carts are full of onesies ready to be purchased once we find out the gender of baby avocado. I am right where I need to be.

I feel like I turned 24 a decade ago. I thought I was ready for 2013 and I had no clue. So I will go ahead and readily admit that I can't pretend to guess what 2014 has in store. I guess we'll have to wait and see. Happy New Year!

Here ye! Here ye!

My favorite person ever asked me to marry him yesterday! And I said, "OH MY GOD! ARE YOU SERIOUS!? WHAT? I'M GONNA THROW UP! RIGHT NOW? SERIOUSLY?"....and then I said "yes."


We've been planning to get engaged for months so it's been on my mind. He's not much of a planner so if he set anything up I would automatically suspect a proposal. We actually talked about it the other night and I said that I just wanted to be surprised but I didn't think he could pull off a full surprise because I know it's coming. 

I was wrong.

We were getting ready to go shopping yesterday and he kissed me and said, "Are we gonna spend forever together?" and with my usual attitude I said, "Depends - are you gonna propose?" And he said "Yup." Then he pulled out a ring, dropped to one knee and asked if I'd marry him! I said a lot of "Oh my god! What? Right now! Are you serious? SERIOUSLY!? Ahhh!" 

And then he said, "Let me try this again....will you marry me?" And I said "OF COURSE!!!!!"



Then there were some tears and lots of laughter.

Getting engaged on a Sunday morning meant that all my friends were in church and all his were still sleeping so no one would pick up their phones! But we drove straight to my parents' house to tell the whole family. We get there and everyone was out running errands! So we went to the LOFT and I told the checkout lady. I had to tell someonnnnneeeeee.

When I saw my family later I asked my sisters and mom if they wanted to go get manicures. They kinda said sure and I told them that I need to find a color that goes well with diamonds. It was really fun to see them put it together in those 2-3 seconds. Then we celebrated and called family and friends and had a mini engagement photo shoot. So here come the pictures!

In the car by ourselves cause no one was around:

Doe a Deer

You can now consider me a modern Katniss Everdeen because I am officially a hunter. Get ready for some photos and a little bit of kumbaya. 

Jason's been hunting for about five years now and last year he started to hint that he wanted me to join him. I was originally not jumping at the chance to kill an animal and said that I would go if we didn't kill anything. Not totally sure what I was thinking because that means I was asking to go sit in a tree in the cold at the crack of dawn for a few hours. And that's it. Just sit there.

This year he asked again if I'd want to go and I started to entertain the idea. He said I could just come and sit with him and he'd do the shooting since I didn't want to.

Now if I'm going to get up at 4 am to sit in the cold, I want to be the one taking the shot.

So we went to the range to practice with the hunting rifle. It had been a couple years since I'd shot a rifle so I wanted to make sure I hadn't lost my touch.

Three shots from 85 yards:

We first went out last weekend and, while we saw four deer, we didn't get any. I had a shot and overthought it long enough that they walked away. "Is this the right place? Do I go now? Will they run? Can I make it? I don't know about this."

The rest of the week I regretted not taking the shot so when we went out this Saturday I was ready.

We got into the stand at about 6:30, sunrise at 7:00. Then at 7:45 there she was about 65 yards away. I spotted the doe, placed the rifle across the stand bar, looked through the scope, aimed... and she walked behind a tree. I got a couple glances of her ears. Jason told me to wait til she walked between a gap in the trees. Once she stepped out, I didn't think twice. With calm breath and focus, I aimed and took the shot.

The rifle is so powerful that it makes an extremely loud noise and kicks back enough to bruise. I didn't feel or hear a thing. It really did feel like the whole world went still in the short 30 seconds from when we first saw her to when I took the shot.

The second the trigger was pulled I saw her white belly turn up, meaning she dropped without running and died instantly - partly because I hit the heart and lungs but partly because the gun is so powerful. I think this is a big reason that I feel so zen about it - she wasn't wounded or in pain or suffering, she died in a heartbeat.

We climbed down to check her out. This is the hardest part to describe because I felt very one with the earth. **Kumbaya my lord kumbaya** I said a little "thanks for giving your life" prayer in my head as I looked down at her. I know not everyone is crazy about hunting but if you're a meat eater, I think having a hand in the animal's death just once will help you understand what it takes to put meat on your table. There is a life lost and it deserves your thanks.

Now this deer lived a wonderful, happy, free life in the woods - romping with her friends and eating yummy acorns. And she died instantly. We don't have to go into the lives and deaths of farm-raised beef/pork/chicken but they're significantly less natural than this.

Going into this, I didn't know how I was going to feel. I thought there was a good chance I would burst into tears and try to revive my kill. I must say that I'm surprised at how humbling and natural the whole experience was. I'm glad I went and actually had fun. After the meat is processed I'll be proud to eat it knowing where it came from and how it lived and died.

Down. Set. Strike?

Growing up, football to me meant dad's Eagles sweatshirt and the sound of a Sunday afternoon nap. I grew fond of the sport itself during college at my SEC school and my love has continued to blossom.

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about safety in football and who is responsible for what. I read something that listed what "futbol" was in various countries around the world (soccer) and then what it is in the U.S. - the argument being that this shows Americans are innantely violent creatures.

I then browsed over this link on CNN today and had myself a little read. The article is about how we shouldn't support the NFL because it "causes harm to its players."

Breaking news: I have an opinion.

Has any mother ever put Little Timmy in little league thinking that football is a safe sport where he will be left alone? When looking at no-contact options like soccer, swimming, or track, mom said to herself, "Football seems the safest!" Hell you even have the option to put a variety of NETS in between Timmy and his opponent if safety is the number one concern.

Can we, as Americans, use our brains for a second? Let's be responsible for our choices and actions, people. We all seem very concerned about finding someone else to blame when we should be putting that energy into something more fruitful like electing new congressmen.

Now I'm not saying that the NFL is fully innocent - they have some admitting of their own to do - but football players used to wear a piece of leather over their heads back in the day. We've obviously come a long way already.

Also... are we just ignoring the entire sport of boxing?

The legitimate goal of boxing is to knock your opponent unconscious. THAT IS HOW YOU WIN. We're worried about minor concussions in our football players when boxers are trying to blunt force trauma each other into next Tuesday.

Are we all ignoring this? Or are we just saying "well yeah that's boxing." Because...yeah...it is boxing. Boxers expect to get hit. And football is football. Players should expect to get hit. Cause that's how you play the game.

This is how it would go if I played football: We'd line up, start the play, I'd crash into somebody in some form of tackle, stand up, and say something like, "Hey...that hurt. I don't like being hurt." And I would QUIT. Because that's my prerogative and this is America and we can do Land-Of-The-Free things like that - things like NOT play a sport when we think it hurts.

If you don't want to smack into someone every 30 seconds of a game, football isn't for you. Don't spend 20 years flinging your body head-first at other 300-lb men and then wonder why you have brain damage.

Grow up, America. Put your big boy panties on, accept consequences for your decisions, reopen the government, and quit blaming the world for your priority of a paycheck over health. As my favorite movie Remember the Titans says, "Y'all are acting like a bunch of sissies! Quit it"

News or no news?

I like to be a well-informed citizen.

When 9/11 happened I was 12-years-old and just kinda didn't get it. I was in Mrs. Striby's pre-algebra class and instead of lessons we got to watch the news. Most of us talked and doodled.

My war-hawk attitude was also that of a 12-year-old, in that they hit us so we needed to hit back. I look back at my naivete and feel like I didn't give the day, the time, the victims the respect deserved. Frankly, I was a preteen in the upper-middle class bubble of Alpharetta and the hardest part of my life was finding jeans to fit my 5-foot-7, 95 lb. frame. I hadn't the slightest understanding of grief or tragedy, so there was no way to comprehend the day's events.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I don't really know the ins and outs of our military action in the Middle East - and trying to catch up 12 years later is overwhelming. So I wanted to pay close attention to our action in/not-in Syria. I like the idea of being a well-informed citizen - making voting decisions based on the pletora of material I've read about current events and proposed legislation, always ready to start a moral debate about governmental decisions, and being the one to say, "Yes, but they just came out with a study/interview/new witness that says..." while discussing the news.

Through my six years of undergraduate and graduate journalism school, I tried to stay current - though there is an ongoing joke that journalism graduate school is the best way to insure you don't have time to keep up with actual journalism. During my summer working for Turner in the CNN center, I had my little desk TV tuned in to CNN nine hours a day. I listen to the radio as I get ready for work and the first thing I do at work is check my email and open cnn.com.

I'm doing it.

Now the second part of this story is that I am terrified of being robbed/murdered/raped/jumped - both at night in any type of parking lot and in my own home. This has been the case since I was about 8 or 9 and it is completely irrational. So I Googled how to quit being so terrified of nothing and the number one response was to stop watching the news. And, by golly, I think they're right.

Between the need for ratings and the state of our society, every day's news brings a more shocking headline or gruesome story. I (stupidly) followed the case of a man who was planning to kidnap, rape, torture, murder and EAT children who was just put away for 26 years - luckily before he could carry out any of his plans. I looked through the photo gallery of evidence found in his house which includes a child's onesie, restraint mechanisms, a butchering set, cannibalism videos, a soundproof dungeon, and a cage.

Completely sick. And it's a different thing every day. A woman pushes her groom off a cliff, teens beat a veteran to death for fun, a gunner shoots up the D.C. navy yard. If you pay enough attention to the news these days, it seems that all there is in the world is evil.

I got tired of all the bad this morning so I went to HLN.com, which is usually softer news, and the cover story is "14-year-old girl snatched in Georgia home invasion." So I click on the "Feel Good" tab and the first story was "Were Bama sorority recruits nixed for race?" Not so feel good, huh? So...in one last effort...I click on a link of all the animal stories - because nothing will boost your mood like a puppy. The first two stories were "Teens post video putting kitten in microwave" and "Extreme sadness ahead: Celebs mourn their pets."

So here is my thought. I have an excellent life. Not only was I lucky enough to be born in an incredible country to even more incredible parents, but I've gotten myself to a great place, with a great company, and a great man by my side. Things are really awesome these days, which is not the case for the majority of people.

Life in general is not always great - friends and family pass away, people get sick, bills pile up, relationships crumble, accidents happen. For the most part, people are just trying to get through whatever storm they're weathering. So can we really blame the American public for not wanting to regularly ingest the horror stories we call "news"? I'm starting to think that ignorance really is bliss, and maybe Americans are on to something. Maybe a news hiatus will remind me of all the positive in life, because keeping up with the news is a surefire way to bring yourself down.


To leave everyone on a positive note, here is a great story about a mother openly accepting her son as he comes out of the closet. Here's to the uplifting stories.

Life Mantras

There's a lot going on over here. Now, my friends/sisters have temporarily stopped getting married so after 4 bridesmaid dresses in 10 months, I'm putting aside my role of wedding attendant. But there is still plenty to keep me busy. Namely, my awesome new job. I'm one of those lucky people that genuinely enjoys their first big girl job. Knock on wood.

In the past few months of being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I've been eager to find career advice in any and all places. I've always had a thing for picking a quote that speaks to me and using it as a mantra for a given period of time. Upon entering graduate school, I put a sticky note on my desk with the wise words of golfer Gary Player (whom I'd never heard of before):

The harder you work, the luckier you get.

I worked my tush off through grad school by that mantra, and it got me to the middle of my last semester when I was asked to start my thesis from scratch after turning in all 100 finished pages of it. I had worked so hard, but that wasn't a very "lucky" outcome. There was a lot of confusion and I remember seeing my sticky note and unceremoniously dropping it into the trash can. A few days later, when I'd gotten my bearings, it was replaced by my crisis communications mode mantra:

The greater the challenge, the greater the triumph.

Three weeks later, I turned in my second thesis. And a few weeks after that I walked across the stage to receive my well-earned degree...on time. And, admittedly, the triumph was great. What was presumably taken away from me by having to start from scratch was replaced by a much more valuable sense of self-worth and idea of what I was capable of as a student and, more importantly, as a person. The triumph after thesis two was much sweeter than what it would have otherwise been.

All of this to say that I have found certain pieces of advice and sayings that really speak to me - to say what I feel better than I could, and to embody goals, mindsets, and attitudes the same. So in my new position, I've been seeking out a new mantra - something to ready me for all the corporate world has to offer and something to remind me to work hard and keep my character.

A cute little saying I found was "A great time to relax is when you don't have time for it" but that was less than inspiring.

I saw Ashton Kutcher's speech from the Teen Choice Awards that shared three life lessons:
     1) That opportunity looks a lot like hard work
     2) That the way to be really sexy is to be really smart, thoughtful and generous
     3) Build a life, don't just live one

I like those. Good things to live by but nothing quite spoke to me like a true mantra should.

And then our CEO posted a blog about the best career advice he's gotten over the years. It was a list of 12 different lessons including, "Be someone your colleagues want to work with," "Don't learn the tricks of the trade, learn the trade," and "Do what's required to get the job done - from the menial to the extraordinary."

I really liked to read through and see what this successful man found meaningful over the years. After seeking out so much career advice online it was fun to see what my own CEO thought was valuable. And there, in the middle of the list, was the mantra meant for me:

 

The harder you work, the luckier you get.

And suddently I look around - I'm in a job I want, at a company I sought out, with opportunities abound. Certainly seems like I'm pretty lucky again these days. And even in the times when it wasn't quite clear, I've seen now that continuing to work hard brings a lot of luck.

A Wedding in Wilmington

Lisa and Matt's wedding was last weekend and it was a whirlwind weekend! It was extremely fun but felt like it went by in a blink. Luckily I took a lots of pictures and stole some from Anna so here's the wedding day in pictures, from start to finish!

The Austin cousins the morning of the wedding

Sisters old and new!

Congrats Mr. & Mrs. (soon to be Dr.) Hinson! Love you both.