Told you this posting-every-day thing wouldn't last.

I am pretty proud of the fact that I was able to do it as long as I did!
And don't you worry - I'm not leaving you for good.  But, really, the past couple of days' prompts for writing were just a little...immature(?)...for my taste (first love and first kiss/night of your 21st birthday/tattoos you have and their meanings [okay, so maybe that one wasn't immature - just not applicable here]).  I mean, I could tell you about my incredibly awkward first kiss, or about the recent realization I've come to that I've probably never been in love.  I could also tell you that I don't remember my 21st birthday - and not because I got drunk, just because I had no interest in celebrating it in a typical American-College-Student way, and probably went out for dinner with friends or something - but those just didn't feel like blog posts that anyone would get any enjoyment out of. Neither I from writing them, nor you from reading them.

So, we come to today's topic, which was definitely worthy:



I always hated the "Where do you see yourself in five years?" interview question, because my heart answer was always "In a happy little home with 2 or 3 kids," while my mouth answer had to be something more like "In [insert name of leadership position] with [insert name of company], hopefully having used my creative abilities to add [insert name of program that would advance company goals]."

Oh yeah, I knew how to do it the right way.  After all, I worked in career services, and coached everybody else on how to be successful in their job search.

But my answer to that question has changed significantly.  I'm not sure there will ever again be that significant of a difference in my heart answer and my mouth answer.  At this point in my life, I don't really have a desire to ever enter the 8-5 office job world again.  I enjoyed being in that type of environment, being able to serve and help make other people's lives a little bit easier, but the way I answer this question now has much more to do with my heart than logic.

If threre's anything the last four or so years of my life has taught me, it's that you never know how things will turn out.
No.  That's too mild a way of saying it: Things will turn out differently than you expect.

So, now, I'm learning that I lean very heavily toward creativity.  I've got enough life experience under my belt to know that I cannot possibly predict where my personal life will be in seven years - there's no way of knowing where I'll be living, and with whom, and why.

But I do know what I'm working toward in my "professional" life.  There are three specific areas I'm working towards, but they all need more work than I'm giving them right now, so maybe this is me writing it out to keep myself accountable.

1)  I've recently been given an opportunity to work with a writing curriculum as a training consultant, which basically means I'll go to schools after they've adopted the curriculum, and train their teachers to implement the curriculum in their classrooms.
Writing and literacy are my passions, so to be able to do this for a company that I believe in is beyond amazing, but y'all!  It's almost like I've been afraid to make it happen.  I'm in the middle of training, and the next part is completely in my hands, and I'm just petrified to complete it...
I don't know what it is, but it's almost like I feel like this is too good to be true, so I don't want to invest in it for fear of losing something I've been happy about - like I'd rather leave it in my future, because as soon as I put it in my present, it'll be headed into my past.
But that is the WRONG way to look at this, and the job itself is one that requires a lot of effort on my part if I'm going to go anywhere with it, so I'd better start making efforts now, at the beginning.

2)  In case you weren't aware, I have an etsy shop where I sell homemade earrings (and, hopefully, sometime in the future, more than just earrings).  You can find it here.  Or just type essiejean.etsy.com in your browser.
The thing about that is, just like so many other things I do, I started it, and it didn't magically bloom into a thriving business, so I just set it aside and didn't do anything actively to make it grow.  I've recently begun studying up on how I can be more intentional and strategic in building it up over the next year - learning from other creatives and using marketing strategies that work for me, so hopefully you will hear more about that in the coming months.  I had big dreams of doing a Holiday marketing blitz, but I feel like I need to focus on other things this holiday season, and just steadily build up my little etsy platform with the goal of maybe doing something huge next holiday season after I've learned more about what actually works for me and my little shop.

3)  Grad School is still on my horizon as far as I'm concerned, but it's probably going to have to wait at least another five years, if not seven, for too many reasons to list here.  But here I am, putting it on this list, because I really do want to make it happen one of these days.  The nice thing is that my goal isn't grad school for grad school's sake.  I want a Master's Degree because I would love to one day teach college writing.  I don't know what I mean by "one day" - Lord willing, maybe it won't be until after I've raised a passel of kids, and taught them how to write.

Nonetheless, someday I'm going to wake up and realize that one day is here, and when that happens, I want to have the skills to meet the day confidently.