TLC - Rule #4 Finish What You Start

*Note -- Because I find myself so dedicated to the idea of becoming a published author in the not-so-distant future, I try to surround myself with reminders of my goal. The past two months I have gotten lost in a swarm of confusion and anxiety as I have been preparing for the move out of my house, the issue of long-distance with my boyfriend of 2 years, and my parents divorce. I haven't been working on my future, i've been constantly stuck in the muddy, sticky, moment.
From January-May of 2012, I worked on a book centered aroud a girl named Allison who discovers a secret that has been kept from her after a life of lonliness. I am hoping that by posting the first page and a half here, I will force myself to remember to get back on track and continue using the gifts God gave me to make something of myself.

            Freedom is a word I have been repeating over and over in my head for the past eighteen years. I said it each time I crossed off a day on my calendar. I said it each time I was forced to share a bedroom with someone I had just met. I said it as I rode the public school bus every morning, and when I graduated high school just seven months ago. Freedom is a word I am very familiar with. I know how it sounds. I know how each letter fits together when I write it in cursive, and how much space it will take up on college ruled paper in between the lines. I just don’t know what freedom is actually like.
            I am hereby dubbed “a foster kid” and I live in a system rather than a home. I own few possessions and I have never known anyone I could call ‘family’. Luckily, the agency I was set up with did not drop me in the most of disastrous of homes, so I was never the victim of the foster mother who only fosters for the money and ignore the child. On the other hand, there are some cases where families do get paid more for more difficult children, to compensate for their hard-to-handle attitudes. For a while, as a younger child, I was one of those. I guess as I grew up I’ve always subconsciously been aware of the money and felt like some sort of transaction instead of an actual human being.
            Eventually, school became an outlet where I could concentrate on words and numbers rather than the chaos happening in whatever house I was staying in at the time. Having an outstanding GPA and a state-funded scholarship for 10,000 dollars does not mean I am going to imprison myself in college for four years though. Another system is out of the question; I haven’t even an inkling of desire to doubt my decision about that. Why waste my time for another four years when I am ready to live my life now? Instead of focusing on people, I’ll focus on myself and find a career that really suits me. I gripped onto the six pieces of printer paper in my hands that held my future and stood outside Monica’s bedroom. Monica is my latest foster mother. I admit, Monica has been the most down-to-earth and loving out of all of them, but I like to think of myself as an old dog, and you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Especially when that old dog is on a mission. When I graduated and began to beg for early release, I got a long lecture on waiting until I was eighteen and coming up with a plan before I moved. Well lady, my eighteenth birthday was last week and I’ve been working on this plan for a lot longer than that. Today is the first day of the New Year and I am determined to get this year right.
             Without her knowing, I have been doing a lot of contacting and researching and have managed to find an affordable apartment with a nearby job. Cindy Lancaster, the manager of The Ritz of Rink’s has approved my application and agreed to hire me after a brief interview. Personally, I’m proud of myself because I know what good reviews the venue gets and how many people actually go there. I knocked on Monica’s door and waited for her okay to enter. It’s a common courtesy rule in the house, even if we are the only two people living in it.
            “Come in Allie,” she piped. Monica is a tiny lady with a lot of will. I couldn’t even look like her daughter if I tried. My dark brown hair, fair skin and defined features contrast her [      ] culture and delicate frame. Monica was sitting on the floor of her bedroom with spools of yarn spread out around her and an open instruction book held open under the weight of her left foot.
            “You’re trying to teach yourself how to sew.” I commented.
            “It’s a motherly thing to do, don’t you think?” Monica winked at me and I tried my best to hold my wince back. It annoys me how desperate she is to cling to me, when she should know it isn’t supposed to last. She is almost as desperate to hold on, as I am to get away.
            “Here, I want you to take a look at this.” I handed her the papers and tried to act professional because I wanted to steer clear from the emotional sappy route this scene could take at any second. It took her almost ten minutes to read the whole thing, and I ended up sitting on the floor next to her in impatience. She didn’t say a word. I knew she was carefully debating in her head how to handle the situation, but I didn’t feel bad because she had already prolonged this as long as she could. I didn’t even need her permission for the love of God. I am not a normal child, I am a foster child. I wanted to yell that out and kill the elephant in the room. It’s time! You have a legal obligation to let me go now! It bothers me that Monica thinks that we are going to be mother and daughter for the rest of my life because the whole foster situation is not supposed to be permanent. In fact, if my birth mother were alive, or if I knew she was alive, I’m not really sure, Monica would have to have her permission to even keep in touch with me after our separation.   I think she could see in my eyes how much I was holding in so she just handed me back the papers and simply said,
            “We can start packing in the morning, but let’s give it a few days before we make any real changes.” And that was that.

TCL - Rule #3 - Serving Helps you Grow

As a freshman, I am not even sure I came to the majority of the Interact meetings; I had joined a club without even fully being aware of the implications. I do remember the sponsoring teacher’s genuine love for service and the look on his face that always said, “Come one guys, I promise you, this is fun!” I believe that is why I began to serve. Without really acknowledging what I was getting myself into, I kept signing up for events, and getting my mom to drive me. Of course she never objected, because I was doing a noble thing, right? It was not until a year or two after that I realized how community service was affecting my life. When I got my driver’s license, it became my job to drive myself to the venues and be on time (I am rarely on time to anything). Without my mother, I had to take full responsibility for each event, but it also gave me the chance to go to exactly which projects I wanted to. I have worked on Kennesaw Mountain to restore the trails (which meant learning how to use a pick-axe and using the muscles I’ve never had), I have watched over children, worked at registration tables for non-profit events, participated in six eagle scout projects and done sandwich drives in our own cafeteria.
As I became more involved, I started to become more genuinely helpful and willing to put others first. I have learned how to talk to adults professionally, how to write the perfect formal e-mail, and how to contact people efficiently. I am no longer intimidated by any conversation because service has increased my people skills, confidence, and ability to perform several various tasks. My organizational skills shot up, although I’d have a melt-down if I ever lost my planner, and I noticed that I have become generally more successful when planning events. 
 My all-time favorite experience has been serving at the Extension. Extension is a facility that strives to enable a transformation that empowers chemically dependent homeless men and women to become sober, accountable member of society and to serve as a recovery resource for the community. Every month I went with a group from my school to prepare and serve a meal for them. I love the feeling of providing a meal for someone who needs it, and seeing the smile on their faces as they receive and consume it. Meeting the men at the facility and serving the foods helped me to realize how much the problem I walked into the door with doesn’t matter. One of my girlfriends snapped at me today? Try being homeless and addicted to drugs with nowhere to turn. A highly trained staff including certified counselors works daily with the men to help them find jobs, beat addiction, and put the pieces of their lives back together. Brian McNair, Board Chair said, “Not all make it, but a lot of them do, and when they do their lives are changed forever, and the lives of their families are changed, and our community is changed.  We’re not just talking about the hope of 67 men and women; we’re talking about the hope of their families, the kids who just want their mommy or daddy back in their lives, the mothers and fathers who have been through so much who simply want the peace of knowing their son or daughter is going to be okay.  Giving to The Extension is about supporting families and the community as a whole.  It’s not about a problem—it’s about a solution.”

I guess service really gives me an opportunity to be genuinely proud of myself, and realize how happy I am with the life I was given because I am so blessed. Without the constant reminder of how much I have and how much I am able to give others, I would forget. Next year at Tampa, the honors program will require me to do a certain number of hours each semester, but it will be a piece of cake. Not many people fully understand that they get as much out of serving as the people who are receiving the service, but it is a great lesson that I have learned. 

TCL - Rule #2 - Responsibility of Adulthood

 When my parents left on Saturday for a week long scuba diving trip, I immediately became head of the house; a title I have been adjusting to all week. I have never been in charge of a household for more than a few days at a time, so seven days offered me enough time to really get a taste of what full Independence is like. Of course independence is not something that I have been deprived of completely, and is something I must grasp fully when I move to Tampa for college in the fall, but even then I won’t have a sibling and pets to care for. Besides doing the laundry, the dishes, getting the mail, feeding and walking the animals ect, I learned that taking care of another person is not a lot of fun. My brother is old enough to spend hours on his own, but not old enough to feed himself, drive, or plan for himself. If I’d let him fend for himself he would have spent the entire week on the couch watching TV, playing video games, and eating cereal. But then what kind of caretaker would I have been? I took him out to dinner to at least get him out of the house and while we were eating asked, “If you could do anything you wanted, what would it be?” He couldn’t think of much. All of his friends are at least a half an hour away and extremely busy, so play dates were hard to coordinate, especially with my 6-9pm work hours each day. I thought about what kind of daytime activity I could suggest, and with the inspiration of the wildlife art hanging on the wall to our right, I asked him if he would like to go to the Atlanta zoo. This suggestion was a big hit and we planned the trip. He was going to bring a friend and so was I. The Atlanta Zoo by the way, was a lot smaller than I had imagined, but this may have been because the only other zoo I have been to is the one in San Diego. It took my father and I three and a half hours to tour the whole thing as opposed to the hour and a half it took for my boyfriend and I to walk through the Atlanta Zoo. To my disappointment this elephants had been put in for the day as well- my favorite animal and half the reason I wanted to go to the zoo.

                In addition to the household duties, I also started my first job while they were out of town. I am a hostess/extra hand (and an extra hand means I refill drinks, clear tables, wipe them down ect.) for a bar and grill, and will soon upgrade to waitressing after I get my pouring permit. Firstly, I decided I would save 75% of all the money I make for my “life funds”. I’ve been starting to realize how much paying for living space is really going to cost once I am out of college, how I will need a car, and how many hours I have to work just to afford a dinner for two (which is more of a downfall for my boyfriend than me hehe). I definitely need some life funds. Secondly, working definitely does not challenge my brain like school does, but it still a challenge. Being a employee in a restaurant means I have to be extremely friendly and not let anything anybody says bother me for four hours at a time. It means I have to touch the remains of other people picked at and pulled apart meals, wipe up gloopy droppings from the floor, and wipe ketchup off crayons once toddlers are done fiddling around with them. At the end of the day my legs and back hurt, which I didn’t think was supposed to happen at eighteen. Thirdly, working at the restaurant has changed my perspective about restaurants in general. Know I know what is going through the servers and hostesses heads when I walk into restaurants. How the server hopes to God he got the order right, and is constantly thinking about the tip he/she is going to get. How sometimes the hostess looks down at her papers when she/he has nothing to do and pretends to be very interested or concerned about something that is not there because staring at the door gets boring sometimes.

                The point is, adulthood is here, and there are so many things I am realizing. Some I like – staying out late, not being in high school, making my own choices. Some I don’t – bills, money problems, leaving your friends when it’s time to split, having to be responsible. Being responsible is a full-time job. It isn’t something we sign up for, it’s just a job that is thrusted upon us and we choose to either embrace it or ignore and seek out the consequences. I think I can do it? It is something I am still trying to figure out.

TCL - Rule # 1 -Foster an Adventurous Spirit

Now, these posts are in no specific order of importance, they merely come to me as I go.
The story I’m about to tell takes me back a year in the Bahamas one extremely hot June day. Let me go ahead and say that I consider myself to already have somewhat of an adventurous spirit; but not enough to risk anything. I am the first one across the tightrope at the ropes course with my harness on, but when the harness comes off, I back away. Maybe it is fear, maybe its practicality, or too much love for life in general to risk it; but on this particular day, I was feeling a bit antsy and no one was around. I was on a secluded island with my family and another family including another girl my. It seemed as if the beach was empty and my only companion was an old red and rather beat-up kayak that I had been ignoring all week. I stared at it and as the sun reflected on the sides of the metal, giving it a semi-unnatural glow. Fine, I will take you out for a ride. I’m not sure what propelled me to proceed to climb in and begin to paddle away, but the fact that I hadn’t even told anyone I was journeying on the deep blue unpredictable sea was pure stupidity on my part. The heat must have really been messing with my head.
About a mile out, a HUGE mossy rock stood tall like a lone tree in a barren field. The rock seemed to be the center of life, with a plentiful of bright coral, a variation of unknown fish and a slight whirlpool gravitationally pulling anything that came to close into the side of the rock. “It’s a lot of work to kayak around the big rock. You should probably go in a group,” the island tour guide had said the first day we arrived. I kept paddling.
On the land, humans feel big and important, walking around and being able to see everything around them. In the ocean, especially alone, any hint of self-righteousness deflates. Being out in a mass of unpredictable blue with no one to talk to forced me to really spend time thinking to myself. My arms began to hurt and I passed the halfway mark to the rock. I could see my family out on the shore now. I tried waving, but wasn’t sure if they noticed me, and again they retreated farther up the beach so I could barely see them. The closer I got to the rock, the bigger it seemed. I had been out in the kayak for at least a half an hour and this trip starting to seem endless. That’s when the sky began to change.
Thick dark clouds came from the horizon rapidly and lined the sky, shielding the beach from the sun. If I didn’t make it around the rock before this nasty storm hit, I would get sucked in the rock and then who knows if I would have the strength to make it back. I considered turning back because at this point I was scaredto death and my arms were already sore. I was already out so far with no one to save me, and no one to even see me get sucked away in the sea. There weren’t sharks under me weren’t there? Panick. I should go back. I stopped paddling and looked back. I only had about twenty or so feet until I started my turn around the back of the rock. I wanted to be able to say I had made it, or this whole trip out would be a huge embarrassment. I looked for any possible ounce of courage I could summon from within me. I didn’t look strong, and I really wasn’t, but I wanted to be. As I got closer to the rock, I felt like I was in a movie discovering some antique structure no one else had seen in a long time. It looked so different up close with a million different marks and ridges, although I was still scared to death. I had the uneasy butterfly feeling and the jitters. I didn’t have complete control over my movement anymore, the whirlpool was pulling me around the rock, but slightly inward, and I paddled as hard as I could to stay a reasonable distance from danger.
Once as a child, I had cried at the top of the Acrophobia ride at Six Flags because I had been terrified of the ride down. I remembered that I had put this on myself and that I had come so far anyway, and I began to feel braver. Faster around the rock, I reached the other side and saw that I was going to make it. The dark clouds were directly overhead, but the paddle back seemed so much less scary that the ride there. Now that I was more familiar with the path, and it wasn’t so foreign to me, I could handle it. People fear the unknown and take comfort in familiarity. The dark sky released a shower of fresh rain, just as I had released my fear. I reached the beach in another twenty minutes, climbed out of the kayak and laid sprawled out on the sand, ignorant of how long it would take to get it all out of my hair later on. Maybe this was a sign that I had the strength to conquer any journey, maybe I had more courage than I thought, and maybe I am up for any adventure presented to me.

The Rules of the Game

What do I mean when I say that I am going to CONQUER life? To conquer, by definition according to dictionary.com, means to successfully overcome. I, however, have a more detailed and personally informative version I'd like to share with you.

I am the kind of person who conceitedly thinks that I can make some sort of mark on the world during my short lifetime on this planet. Yes, I know you've heard that statement a million times, but I am still young, and I have plenty of time and energy left to fulfill my self-given prophecy. I don't need to be famous or make everyone know my name and face, but I want to make use of the life I was given. Being successful to me does not mean incredible wealth, but enjoying rich experiences and gathering heartwarming memories.

There are so many things I want to do. This summer I turn eighteen, I go off to college, and I begin living in a world where I really have to weigh the consequences of my actions. I want to be an author and write fiction novels, I want to go to India to volunteer, I want to learn how to sail. These are things that aren't going to just fall into my lap or come easily. As early as six years old I learned something important about myself. I began taking piano lessons so I could learn to play as fluently and beautifully as the tunes I heard. I loved to play. After learning the kids version of Fur Elise, I played it constantly for whoever wanted to listen. But every week after my instructor wrote down my weekly homework in my notebook, I hesitated. I never wanted to practice. I never wanted to put the time in to actually struggle and work through the piece to become good at it. I just wanted to play. I just wanted to be good! Isn't that what we all want? To just be good? To have talent without trying, just like the great people around us that seem so great at the things they do? I just didn't understand. The thing is that a lot of times we don't see how much people really fight to get what they want. I never saw the state champion soccer player in my senior class spend hours and weekends and give up parties to become better at soccer. I never watch the best dancer in the school practice, I only see her perform. In order to become great, we must learn early that being great isn't always glamorous. So I don't expect glamour. But I do expect effort from myself.

I made this blog for me, and for you. I am going to lay out all the lessons and rules I learn along the way on my journey to CONQUERING my life. I guess that means eventually I will be a conquer-ess, like a princess, except not as fluffy and helpless. I will write quirky stories and posts that involve the more interesting and intriguing thoughts and happenings from my life. After all, you can find meaning in almost everything.

Stephanie