Go Get Them!

Well! It has been a long, hard, fantastic, crazy year for me! I started a new business as an essential oil wellness advocate, a new blog, and my master’s program in Entertainment Arts and Engineering (aka video game development) at the University of Utah on the engineering track. I have had three different jobs, two of them internships (Internships make life crazy complicated sometimes!), in five months. Currently I am at EA Maxis as a gameplay engineer intern, and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT! I get to make and play games, and work with incredibly talented and intelligent people. I’m living with my older brother, his wife, and their five adorable children. They have date night on Fridays, and two Fridays ago I was their date idea: we played cards til really late! It was super fun! I’ve met lots, lots, LOTS of new, fantastic, kind, and intelligent people! And I’m busy making plans for the next two, three years of my life. It’s been hard, and I’ve cried plenty, but it’s been great too. I don’t know that I’ve been happier except maybe when I was a little girl before my depression.

Just after moving out to California this summer, then living with my bro’s family, at the end of my first week at EA, I wrote something I’ve never written before, something that astounded myself, in my journal. I wrote:

Saturday I woke up happy.

I’ve had more days like this, days I woke up happy. I’m getting to know myself, who I am, who I want to be. And I know I’m heading in the right direction. It’s taken more than a decade for me to figure it out. I had to wait til I was thirty to have a day where I woke up happy, but it’s been worth it. It’s all been worth. All the sweat, the tears, the embarrassing moments, the failures, the successes, the mistakes, the apologies, the intimate moments of reconciliation, and the discovery of myself, my Lord, and my purpose. I’m still figuring it out. I still have a lot to learn. But it is so peaceful knowing who I am and where my life is headed, for now. I’ve dug deep and worked hard. I heard once that it takes 5-10 years to truly create change in your life once you start sincerely trying to make it. It may have taken me a little longer, but that’s okay. I’ve figured out enough that I have peace now. My life isn’t, by any measurement, settled. I still have a lot of work left to do. But I’m up for it. I understand now how to work hard — you take plenty of breaks! I’m so much closer with my family and friends. I’m so incredibly grateful for their help, love, support, friendship, generosity, and righteous examples to me. It’s been a beautiful experience.