Friday, June 28, 2013

New adventures!

I've started a new adventure in blogging and I'm so excited to tell you all about it! It's something I've been marinating on for quite a while and I believe will be a fun and beneficial blog!


It's blog very similar to my Dancing in Dallas experiment. If you liked how I went, took classes, and wrote about them, then you're going to love Traveling Tights! Same theory, different site. I'll be traveling around OKC and DFW taking adult classes and posting their info here. It's not about reviewing a class, it's about getting information out there for adult dancers who want to dance. 

I've got big plans for the site including guest bloggers, recipes for dancers, product posts, inspirational words, and more. I'm excited to begin this endeavor and I can't wait to start posting. 

What does that mean for Dancer Diaries here, though? Well, I'm not sure just yet. This site has been my personal place to share stories and tales of my little life adventures. Having had this blog since 2009, I'll have a hard time phasing it out. For now I'm going to take it one step at a time until I can make a final decision I feel absolutely and 100% sure about. 

Visit the new blog and check in often! I can't tell you how exciting it is to start this new project and I hope you'll take time to look around, stay a while, and visit frequently! 


Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Dreams

I've always felt like wonderful changes happen during that seasonal twilight time between spring and summer. People get new jobs, move to new homes, buy new cars, start new school adventures, new babies arrive, new wedding bells ring, and so forth. It's all very exciting and exhilarating to say the least.

Thanks to social media it's that much easier to share these exciting moments with friends and family--Also makes it that much easier to send your heartfelt congratulations! And that much easier to think about your own life changes. 

Over the past week I've seen people reach some exciting milestones and it's made me that much more thoughtful about my own future. Something about seeing another person's success makes you pause to think about your own and that train of thought can go one of two ways; either you take a negative turn wondering why your ship hasn't come in or you find the inspiration in someone's excitement to swim out there to your floating future. 

I've chosen to take the latter which, honestly, isn't always the easiest choice. Sometimes it's easier to be consumed by the gloom. The negativity that follows that can be draining and tiresome. At some point it's time to get out of that irritating gray bubble and say, "Hey Life! I'm ready for something different!" To make a change, you have to put forth the effort.

Somehow seeing everyone's hard work turn into dreams realized has inspired me to put a little more effort into making my own dreams a reality. The catch is that you have to know what is your dream. What is your ultimate goal? Once you define that, make a plan, sketch it out. Figure out what is it you have to do to make it happen and then do it.

But it gets hard. You get derailed. Life gets in the way and then you start to find any and all excuses that keep you from working towards what you want. Is that really Life that's getting in your way or your own self? Are you scared to take that leap of faith, jump off your starting point, and start flying?

So many times I wonder "how did a person get there?" and "how did they do that?". Questions like"why isn't/hasn't that happened for me" and the inevitable "what am I doing wrong" seem to plague me as I see others hit goals and achieve their personal "impossible" moment. If I'm honest with myself, truly and brutally honest about why I haven't met a goal or done something yet, it's more than likely that I haven't worked hard enough for it yet.

The other side of that coin is that dreams can change--that's the lovely thing about dreams, you can have so many different ones and you can change them any time you want because they're yours. If you've had a lifelong dream and over the course of time it changes and shifts, well, that's perfectly normal. Except that most of the driven and focused people in the world find this incredible difficult to start.

I can't describe the sheer terror of admitting out loud that your personal goal has changed. Especially if it's a long term goal you've worked your whole life to achieve, told everyone about, and circled your whole life around. It's a familiarity that can be difficult to let go of for a new dream not yet explored. Hopefully if you're going through that, you have someone who can support you and reassure you that dreams change and if this new dream is what makes you happy, then so be it!

It sounds eerily cryptic and I'm sure you're thinking perhaps I'm in the midst of discovering new goals or a new career path, but I'm not.  I'm just thinking through all the changes I've seen happen for friends, all the changes that are going to happen for them, and it's made me reflect upon my own goals and dreams. Do I really have set goals or am I floating through my days? Am I working as hard as I can towards the things I want or only day dreaming about the future success I hope to have? Do I really know what I want and if I do, how can I stay focused?

I get so off track sometimes and other moments I feel like I've worked so hard to hardly move at all. Instead of getting down and feeling beaten before I've even gotten up, I'm choosing to start again. I'm choosing to refocus, redefine, and restart on a good foot. I'm going to let the success of others inspire me to do better and fuel my fire to make my goals. I'm not going to wet-blanket ideas and I'm not going to complain and I'm not going to stop simple because my fleeting efforts haven't panned out. No more complaining and no more comparing.

I'm going to make something happen for myself and it starts today! But first, a big cup of coffee to get me rolling!


If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up.  -J.M. Power




Friday, June 14, 2013

Oh boy! A Full Friday!

Oh boy! Oh boy! Pyro Man and I finally found a house a couple weeks ago and we couldn't be more excited!

The house is precious! It's got everything we wanted; a two car garage, lots of a light, enough space, the right rent price, and an abundance of character! When you have a house you really, really  like, it makes it so much harder to wait to move in. Our landlady was nice enough to let us get started on moving in sooner than we expected, but Pryo Man and I decided that it would give us to get the house prepped.

We're getting the chance to touch up paint on a few places and changing a red bathroom to a neutral color. But today we started with cleaning up the outside of the house. The front and backyard are the perfect size for our first home together. We have large trees that graciously gives up cool shade from the hot sun and the grass is lush and green...and a little overgrown...and bear in some spots.

We cut grass and trimmed bushes. We raked up piles upon piles of leaves, scooped mountains of acorns, and threw tons of sticks. We spread grass seeds, sprayed for bugs, and bagged up eleven bags of yard trash. It. Was. Hard. Work.

I came home grimy, dirty, gross, and sweaty, but it was totally worth it! We put in some definite time and sweat to clean up the front yard and make it ready for flowers! Next we'll have to clean up the back yard and I'm sure it will be another day of hard work for us, but I've no doubt it will be totally worth it!

This should give you a small idea of what we did today. 


Dad got us a leaf blower for the house. Pryo Man looks ready to rock and blow all those leaves away! It sucks, too!
 (Hee hee! Little yard work humor!) 

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