Pikeville, KY

I haven’t quite been here a week yet and maybe living here last summer has made things familiar so it hasn’t set in but it is official. It has even changed on Facebook so you know it’s official! I have moved from JMU, the happiest place on earth, and my wonderful apartment in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia to…. you guessed it… Pikeville, Kentucky. I’ve jumped into a picture perfect new position at the University of Pikeville and am so excited to throw myself into work I believe is meaningful and life changing – for students and for myself. I would do what I do for free because I really love it that much – but money is nice to have and I feel so lucky that someone wants to pay me to live out my passion!

With that being said, there are some growing pains that come with changes. At first I thought it was just me but after thinking about it, every new phase in life is going to challenge you. Even if I am living out my dream job I am prepared for some of the difficulties that might come along with it. For example, right now I am living on campus in a renovated motel turned residence hall. I know how fortunate I am to have the amenities I do but I sure am looking forward to having my own apartment once again. And I really miss my neighbors and friends and roommate from where I lived before. It’s a bittersweet mixture of emotions. I’m embracing the different-ness that I’ve found here so far but Pikeville isn’t home in my heart yet. I know it will be one day. Harrisonburg didn’t become home until the friends I had there turned into family. Right now I don’t have friends or family here! They are 3 or 4.5 hours away though which is a very easy drive if I get too lonely. After I truly get settled I will be anxiously awaiting visitors!

I’m prepared to take risks to build relationships though because I know how worth it they can be.  If any of you remember the 30 seconds of courage I used last fall to introduce myself to two attractive graduate students you’ll be happy to know that both of them are now very dear and special friends. In fact, one of them recently wrote in a graduation card that by being brave and meeting new people “you never know who might just end up at your door.” It has been a huge comfort during the times I’ve put myself out there or at least while mentally preparing to put myself out there when a situation presents itself. I have never been as open to life without a plan as I am in this moment right now. I feel confident that as soon as I stop worrying about it life is going to happen.

As many times as I try to explain what I do, it’s still hard for people to understand sometimes. Especially when I get to go to work dressed in themed attire and hang out with the coolest people. The pictures below are from my first three days – Superhero, 1980s, and UPIKE Pride! I am looking forward to updating you on more of my unplanned and uncharted adventures! Stay tuned – I have a feeling my life is about to get real good.

And here are just a few rays of sunshine that I took when I stopped by NKY the weekend before I moved.

PS - I wanted to share this small victory with you all. My left brake light and my left front turn signal light in my car have both burnt out. 1) I hate driving with something wrong with my car and don't want to give the police a reason to pull me over. 2) When your blinker is out it goes extra fast on the inside of the car and it's annoying! So today I set out to change both those lights. I told the guy at AutoZone what I needed and went on my way. I set up my iPad with Ke$ha Pandora playing and popped the trunk and the hood and went to work. After a little fidgeting and pulling and twisting my hand into too small spaces (I have no idea how men with bigger hands do it!) I successfully changed both of the broken lights! Right as I slammed the hood shut "Die Young" began to play and I broke out into a dance right in the parking lot of the residence hall. I was so happy! A student caught me and shouted "Wow, I wish I was in a good mood too!" and I replied, "Heck yea, I'm in a good mood. I just replaced two lights on my own!" He ran over right away, high fived me, and said, "That and your dance is reason enough for me to be in a good mood too!" It's the little things :)

Love Potion #9

I used to have a theory on love that I spread around to some sorority sisters in college. It was actually a theory I came up with in high school, I just didn’t have a title for it until college. I expertly called it the “One Day Theory.” I believed that it was possible to have that one person that you were meant to spend the rest of your life with but that you and that one person just couldn’t be together for whatever reason right now – you needed one day to make it happen. In between now and one day you would date other people and learn about yourself, experience life along the way but the whole time you’d know it was all for one day. That one day when you could be together and everything would finally be perfect. It was like a movie – you know the film I’m talking about - a couple separates for 5 or more years but when they get back together their time is right and one day happens. I had a one day person once. I know friends who had one days too. I didn’t realize until now how cliché we were sitting around our dorm rooms, drawing hearts in notebooks (okay, that didn’t really happen but just to illustrate a point), crying and laughing about stories from the past and how that one day person might fit into our futures.

As time went on our one days weren’t getting any closer, in fact, for some of us, our one days weren’t even a possibility anymore. We held on to the theory for each other thinking if we believed hard enough our romantic fairy tales would come true. In the meantime we fell in and out of love with other sweethearts, experienced happiness and held each other through heartbreak. As we worked through other relationships I began to take note of common themes, remarks we kept going back to – you have all heard them before – “The timing was off. I was ready but he/she wasn’t. In another time or place it might have worked out. He/she seemed perfect but it just wasn’t meant to be… right now.”

This led to the creation of a new theory; I call it the “Some Day Theory.” (It is completely based on no scientific evidence or practices but feel free to quote me on it – or question it, I’d love to talk about it.) Having a some day person leaves the possibilities open to anyone! You aren’t waiting and set for that one person to fit into the one special place you have set aside. The Some Day Theory is all about there being thousands of “right” people for you out in the world. You never know who is right for you, in fact, there are endless possibilities of who is right for you. Woah, takes some pressure off of having to find “the one,” doesn’t it? So there is no right person, there are lots of right people. The thing that sets it all up to last a lifetime is the right place and the right time mixed with this right person. To make it work it all has to be there. It gets even more complicated when you realize that it just can’t be my right time and my right place but the other person’s as well. In my last relationship I truly believed he was the right person and we were in the right time and as soon as I moved back home we would be in the right place. For whatever his reasons were – I wasn’t the right person (or he didn’t feel that he was the right person) and even if I felt like it was my time, it wasn’t his. And let's not even get started on place!

Looking at some of my attempts at dating since then, fitting pieces of relationships into the pattern of “right person, right time, right place” has helped me understand why my Prince Charming hasn’t swept me off my feet just yet. Leave it to me to turn something completely based on feeling and emotion into something logical and practical. This takes away all of the questioning “What could I have done differently? What could have I done better? What is wrong with me?” Nothing, absolutely nothing, it just wasn’t the right some day material for both parties involved.

On the end of this note, I also feel I need to add a teeny tiny shout out to myself and many wonderful friends for graduating JMU with Master’s degrees! Yay! I treated my graduation day slightly like a wedding day for the single smart independent woman that I am! I got my nails done, practiced hairstyles in my cap, picked out the perfect dress, and had many loved ones surrounding me. I am so proud of this degree and can’t wait to put it to use. I’m so amazingly happy doing exactly what I was designed to be doing and my some day will come… one day. J