As a kid I used to listen to this CD called Adventures in Odyssey to help me fall asleep at night, but I mostly just lied awake in bed and listened to the stories that outrun any bedtime story. But fast-forward to the young adult years, and the odyssey is a bit different through the eyes of Producer and Director, El Reynolds. Director Reynolds makes what seems to only be memories through our dreams, come to life.
With his creative touch, I was able to be the star in a music video. Oh you know, the music videos that you used to watch as kid and dreamed of being the pretty girl getting rescued by the hot guy? So…wait this producer was able to make me a star of a video like that without having to get me into Hollywood? Yeah he did, and he can do it for anyone with the creative eye that he has. He was able to portray me as the hot, sexy, fun girl dancing in front of what appears to be the sun. The meaning behind all of this? Simple, Oddessy, by Reynolds. Reynolds’ vision of an Oddessy is something the new world has yet to see, it’s something that cultures in the past might have predicted, it’s something fun, exciting, and refreshing. He was able to incorporate the art of music with the art of dance, and video. He was able to take something so simple and direct, and make it into something unique and complex. The completed cut of Oddessy will be coming to you soon. Pay extra close attention to the rhythm and beat of the music as you get captivated by the image of a young lady dancing, the image that Director Reynolds wants to bring to the meaning of the word Odyssey. Thank you for the love…continue to like, comment, and share my blog with others around you.
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Happy Saturday!!! For many of us out here today we slept in, we ate a nice big brunch, and then we laid around in our pajamas and watched television all day. But others of us were up at the crack of dawn, were doing our morning routines, and then out being productive and living life to the fullest. So let me ask you, which person are you? Are you the lazy person who lays in bed all day, or are you the person who gets up every day to go earn your success?
I recently had a huge wake-up call in my life. The problem was that I wasn’t listening to the Most High, I was being lazy, I wasn’t achieving, and I wasn’t living. So the other day I was lying in bed doing the same thing I find myself doing all day and night, scrolling through my various social media platforms and not being on top of the things I needed to be doing. Then all of a sudden I came across a video of two young ladies who were preforming a very complex gymnast move, and under this video was the caption “Sleep is for the Weak.” Now, after watching this video and reading the caption, I was able to see that the caption wasn’t speaking literally. To me this caption said, “Wake-up every morning with ambition and drive to live your life to the fullest potential.” After watching that video, reading that caption, and processing that caption I was suddenly awakened to the fact that I haven’t been living, but I have been sleeping. So, becoming aware of this fact has made me realize that I have to just do the things that I can do for right now, and later I will be rewarded for them. I am now promising myself that I will live up to my greatest potential each, and every day so that I might one day gain the privilege of being with the Most High for eternity. Don’t stay stuck in the fishbowl of life, and be the one looking from the inside to the out. Be the one who is on the outside of the fishbowl living, and loving life to the fullest. Feel free to leave a comment on, like, or share my blog with others. Yay!!! It’s National Adoption Awareness Month! So, what does that mean? That means that if you or a friend have been thinking about adopting then you’re in luck because November is National Adoption Awareness Month, which means it’ll be that much easier for you to take the proper steps towards adopting.
National Adoption Awareness Month’s main focus is the adopting of children in foster care, but it also focuses on all aspects of adoption from both the inside and outside of the foster care system. So whether you’re actually in the process of adopting a child from foster care, or you are just thinking about becoming a foster parent you can do either with a breeze this month. “How?” you may ask. Well it’s simple, all you have to do is participate in National Adoption Awareness Month. You may choose to go to a local or community event to raise awareness about adoption, you may just want to go to a friend’s event that will raise awareness, or you may even choose to start your own event in order to raise awareness. Whatever it is that you decide to do, it will make a difference by helping these children in foster care. What makes National Adoption Awareness Month so special to me is the fact that I myself was adopted. Even though I wasn’t a child that was taken from my family and moved from home to home, I was still adopted. My situation was different than most and I’m thankful for that, I was picked up by my foster family (who is now my family that I love more than anything) who has raised, loved, and taken care of me like one of their own since I was only 2 days old. Now don’t tell me that this story doesn’t make you want to just hold a new baby like it’s the first time all over again? So, be sure to go out this month and participate in raising awareness for this National Adoption Awareness Month. Also be sure to share those pictures or those ideas with me, so that I can know how you played a special part in this special month. Look for updates on social media to see how I’ve been participating in raising adoption awareness. And as always feel free to comment on, like, or share my blog with anyone you know. Yesterday as I was at the gym working out, I had a lot of time to just refocus myself and think. After a few minutes of thinking about nonsense I got serious with my thoughts, I started thinking about my future. I started to think about things such as what my future career life would look like, where I’m striving to be in the next few months, finishing my college education, and just building my life all together.
Upon thinking about such things I was able to discover a lot about myself that I was only subconsciously aware of. I discovered that I tend to worry too much about the future that I forget about the moment I’m living in right now. While I’ll admit that it is necessary and important to think about the future in some regards, I will say that it is unhealthy to spend every living moment worrying about all the “what ifs” that lie ahead. I’m only sharing this with you guys because I’ve been worrying and stressing over my future far too much lately. I’ve spent weeks dwelling on so many questions about my future that I have really laid a burden on my shoulders, and have only caused myself unnecessary high levels of stress. But, at the end of the day I have had to sit down and really ask myself, “are these really legit worries, or are these things that I have conjured up in my head just so I would have something to worry about?” Well, when I put it that way, no they aren’t legit worries that I’ve been stressing over, they are silly little things that have no significant meaning to my present life. I’ve decided that starting today, I’m going to let go of all of these worries, and let this foolish weight fall off of my shoulders. I’m going to set myself free so that I can focus on the now, and enjoy the life I’m living right now. I’m sure thousands of people out there are stressing over worries that aren’t relevant to their lives at this moment. If you are one of those people I’m going to leave you with this food for thought: “It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It’s when tomorrow’s burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourselves so, my friends. If you find yourselves so loaded at least remember this, it is your own doing. The Most High wants you to leave the future to him, and for us to mind the present with him.” ~George MacDonald With that being my final thoughts for you today, I encourage you all to come back tomorrow to learn how I’ve been participating in Child Safety Protection Month. You can also look forward to learning about National Adoption Awareness Month tomorrow, and how I can personally relate to the matter of adoption. Be sure to keep up with me via social media, and as always feel free to comment on, like, and share my blog with others. Starting at the beginning of every month I’m going to be bringing to you a specific blog series for that month. So, how will this work? Well every month has a set of themes from raising awareness to just fooling around, so I’m going to be taking those themes and making posts, contests, and more exciting things out of them. My first theme for the month of November is Child Safety Protection Month. The purpose of Child Safety Protection Month (CSPM) is to raise awareness about potential hazards that children may face in everyday situations, and then to put actions behind the awareness to prevent such hazards. We often try to protect children from the dangers of the world around us, but we may forget the dangers that lie in our own homes such as cleaning supplies, electrical outlets, and choking hazards. And this is how you come into the big picture of CSPM, all you have to do is participate in a few activates this month to help protect the children in your life. To get you started here are a few things you can do to help make sure your children are safe:
Be sure to participate in Child Safety Protection Month, and please share your creations/participation via email or social media using the #childsafetyprotectionmonth or #growingpainsblog18. Share your creations with me this month, and if it’s creative enough you might just get a repost or share. Stay tuned for pictures and posts of how I’m participating in Child Safety Protection Month.
I woke up today and thought to myself “Hey you should just be open, free, funny, and cool with your blog followers!” At the beginning of this thought process I was really convinced that I was going crazy because there’s no possible way for me to personally interact and entertain my blog followers, but as time has gone on I have started to see the value in this because look at how millions of people gravitated towards the actor that played not only a great writer but also the owner of none other than a disobedient pup named Marley. Yeah sure you know the movie Marley and Me where the two young kids fall in love, get married, move to a new area, and both start great jobs. However, at first the husband is happy with where he is in his career and then he gets tossed around to another unknown area to work in, so let’s see how good his writing skills really are. Well long story short he goes in there and does it, and makes even the movie watchers fall in love with him because of the articles he writes on his out of control canine, and the adventures that he has with the rambunctious pup.
So you get the point because you too were probably one of the movie watchers that fell in love with this actor’s character as a young writer who takes you through his day-to-day life, whether good or bad. So if you get where I’m going with this, I’m saying I was being kind of boring before. I found that I was always trying to put a lesson in my blog posts, I was always trying to sound proper and correct, I was always so serious and couldn’t just relax, and that’s what was making me boring. So I thought, well if I would lighten the mood a little, and just be my friendly self then I will get more people to open to me. I need to be sure I’m switching up my posts, I’ll let you follow me real personal for a few days and then I’ll lay back and just let it ride. I am including my Snapchat user in this blog post so that you can follow me, and have more of a personal interaction with me as I just go through life and deal with the growing pains that are shaping me into the woman that I am becoming. P.S. Be sure to follow Snapchat tonight because tomorrow we’re gonna be working on some real HOT stuff from making a killer breakfast in the morning to following me through the doorway of my job as I head off to work for a shift or two. SNAPCHAT USER: ce_e18 If you aren’t up to date with the newest technology, if you don’t have the coolest car, if you don’t have the designer clothes, if your make-up isn’t the best looking, if you would rather read a book than play sports, or if you don’t sit with the “cool kids” at lunch then you don’t meet the standards set by today’s society. Young girls are told that if they aren’t skinny enough, and if they don’t look like plastic made-up Barbie dolls then they aren’t good enough. Young boys are told that if they aren’t the star player in every sport, then they aren’t going anywhere in life. Is this what you want your children growing up thinking about themselves, that they are worthless unless they do and say what society says they have to do in order to be accepted? I don’t believe any of us want our children thinking this about themselves, but society is putting this in their heads and turning them into robots so to speak.
If we would all speak up about the things that we see that society is doing wrong to the young and old alike then things would start to change. However that’s the problem, society knows this so they put fear into our heads so that we keep quiet and just accept wrong for right. When did it get to the point that we forgot about our own beliefs, and accepted wrong doings instead of speaking up for what is really truth and rightful? Well I am not going to be a conformity to today’s society, I’d rather dare to be different and use my voice against the evil in order to make a difference in this world. I hope that some of you will open up your eyes and see the truth for what it is, and help to put a stop to this war between people and society. This picture below expresses how I am willing to be different from society, and how the light within me burns to make a difference by speaking up for what is truth. Growing up in a family that believed in the Heavenly Father you would think that I would be close to the creator of this universe, but that it has been quite the opposite. I have struggled for years with questions about The Most High, including if He was real, why He allowed bad things to happen in life, along with many other deep questions about Him. It was always a battle between the times when I felt really close to Him and thought I knew Him personally, and times when I felt so distant from Him that I just "knew" there was no way He could ever love me. However, with my big move I am finding out differently, and I'm not going back and forth with those times.
When I first moved to N.Y. I definitely felt distant from The Most High and felt so lost in that aspect of life, but that's because I was only seeing myself and the world around me through my eyes. I was looking at people and the world from my perspective only, and every time I was left feeling disappointed. I have since come a long ways to where I am no longer looking at everyone and everything through my own eyes, but rather my Father's eyes. I have learned, and I'm still learning, to see things the way that He would see things, with nothing but Love. Love even for those things and people that seem unlovable. While I am definitely not comparing myself to Him, I am saying that I am learning to have a different perspective, I'm learning to be grateful for the little things, I'm learning to have a relationship with Him, I'm learning to read and understand His writings, and I'm learning to love again. It takes more than a few days, and it takes more than a few months to learn to see things differently. However, it only takes a moment to decide if you want to build a relationship with Him and change your life. If you choose to do that, then you've already won the war, though you may lose a few battles in between. The Father of all will be with you no matter where you are in your journey, all you must do is learn to see things through His eyes, and take the first steps towards getting to know Him in order to do so. So I want to leave you with this, no matter where you are in life and no matter how hopeless you feel, and no matter if you feel that you could never be loved again....well you are never so far down that you can't recover again. The Father will always welcome you into his forever open arms, and will help you to see the world through His eyes too. He will show you His love, and will project love through you. As a kid growing up in a mid-class family I never knew the struggles of living a "poor" life. To me everything was fun and life was always good because my family was always able to provide for me, but my whole prospective needed to be changed because I was becoming selfish and was beginning to think that everything in life should be handed to me; I needed a wake up call to say the least.
The first of many humblings lessons that I needed to learn was to be grateful for the things in life that I have, such as the luxury of having transportation from place-to-place. When I got my license a couple of years ago I thought that since I had a nice car to drive, I should have the privilege to always have a nice car to drive, and that I should never have to walk somewhere or even take public transportation anywhere. However, when I got to New York things were a little different where I didn't have a nice car to drive and so I had to learn to not be so lazy and walk a few miles to run errands, and when the car broke down I had to take a bus to work for a few weeks. Now let me tell you, walking a few miles pretty much every single day in the heat of the summer will make you miserable and even cranky on some days, but it taught me to be grateful that I have the health to be able to walk that far, it made me grateful that I actually have two legs to walk on to go run errands, and it made me grateful that I was able to actually go outside and enjoy the fresh air. As I mentioned above the car eventually broke down and I had to take the bus to work for a few weeks, and that definitely made me grateful. Taking the bus made me grateful that I had the money to actually have a car that could be fixed up and driven, it made me grateful that I wasn't a young mother who had to take the bus just to take my child to a doctor's appointment, it made me grateful that I wasn't taking the bus to a $6.00 job just to keep my electric on, and it made me grateful that I'm not a handicap person that has to take the bus from place to place because my own family doesn't want to take me anywhere because they see me as a burden. Those are the first 2 humbling lessons I've learned since being on my own. My next humbling lesson came from going through the struggle of not having a lot of money, and struggling to even buy groceries so that I could eat that week. When I first got up to New York this summer I didn't get a job for well over a month and a half so I wasn't bringing in any money at the time, which made it hard to do the simple day-to-day things that we all take for granted. I wasn't able to just stop at the store and buy $100.00 worth of food, I wasn't able to go out to eat, I couldn't just take a night out for a relaxing evening, and I couldn't spend money on just anything, I had to be careful where my little bit of money was going and even when I had to spend it I didn't want to. Through this struggle I had a hard time sleeping at night wondering what I was doing and if things were ever going to get better, I wondered how I was going to pay certain bills that week, and I had a lot of other worries as well, but I was humbled by this experience. I became grateful for all of the times my family bought me what I needed over what I wanted as I was growing up, I am grateful that I at least had a roof over my head for 18 years and wasn't broke and living on the streets, I am grateful that I never had to worry about if I was going to be able to eat a meal the following day or not, I am grateful that I was able to work an after school job in high school and could save some money and spend a little bit as well, and I'm grateful that I never had to worry about if I would get kicked out for not paying rent. And that is the humbling lesson I learned from having little to no income. I could go on and on about many other humbling lessons I have learned since I have moved to N.Y. but there is no need to because I think my message has been spoken loud and clear. It could always be worse than what you have it right now in this moment. If you are struggling to make ends meet, or you have to do something you don't want to, or you feel like everything is lost and hopeless at this point in your life, I encourage you not to give up because right now at this moment you are only going through growing pains that will help you to come out a better human being for going through them. When you find yourself doubting that things will get better, when you find yourself complaining about the things that are happening in your life, or when you find yourself wallowing in self-pity just take a moment to think of all of the things you have in life that thousands of others are going without and be grateful for what you have. I have gone through many growing pains since being on my own and I'm still going through some, but through all of them I have been humbled and blessed by being able to stop being selfish and being grateful for what I do have; even if I was at the point of only being able to be grateful for being alive. A wise man once said "It's better to be grateful for what you do have than to worry about what you don't have." Throughout high school I often found myself slacking off on my homework, and sometimes in school work just so I could spend more time with my friends or on my phone. However, this lack of taking care of my responsibilities not only caused a drop in my grades, but it also caused me to lose my place from the top ten of my class upon graduation. Not only was I neglecting my school responsibilities, I was also neglecting my home responsibilities such as chores. Along with neglecting my responsibilities, I was also neglecting the things that I really wanted to be doing. I had a passion inside of me for reading, writing, and adventuring but I wasn't doing those things because I was so caught up in today's "fun" (a.k.a social media). So you could say I was just going through the motions.
If you don't know what I mean when I say "going through the motions," I'm trying to say that I wasn't living my life I was just doing what everyone else around me was doing. I was becoming a conformity of today's society. I was losing myself, and I was alive but I wasn't living. The good news though is that I've finally been awakened, and I'm not just going through the motions anymore. I don't want to be one of those people who sits there at the end of my journey, and asks what IF I had given everything. Another aspect that I was just going through the motions with was spirituality, and my walk with the Most High. I was struggling with getting to know Him, and was abusing the blessings He had given to me throughout my life. So due to my actions and not being appreciative of what I had, I had to learn a lesson in being humble and that's exactly what I have gotten since being on my own and moving to New York. Needless to say I have definitely grown humble and have been learning to get to know the Most High, and have been learning how to get my life together. Be sure to check back in tomorrow to hear the lesson I learned about being humble, especially on so many different levels. |
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