Weekly Review: Week 15

This week overall has been quite swell and uneventful for the most part. Work this week has been lovely; it's incredible how fulfilling a simple part-time job can be when you love it so much. I actually look forward to going to work and helping customers and seeing my manager and maintaining the booth appearance and every day I strive to do a better job than I did before. I've never felt this way about something before! It may only be a part-time job that barely pays above minimum wage, but I could do it forever. There were a couple of days when I even wanted to stay longer than I was scheduled! I'm just really loving my job so much.

On Monday after work, Ryan and I went to Lazy Moon for some massive pizza slices and studying for clinical psychology.

Saturday, I somehow found myself at a family reunion with Ryan's family. As someone who's never really been a part of a close, big family, I always feel really strange at things like this. They almost make me sad, even! But luckily Ryan's family is wonderful and I had a good time!

This week I really focused on setting up the business of this blog and getting my personal finances organized. After changing the name and securing my own custom domain name, I became really motivated to really get this blog rolling. I've always loved writing and social media; I've been blogging on various platforms for as long as I've been on the internet. I've also always enjoyed sharing my everyday thoughts and adventures with with the world. I don't know if what I have to say helps anyone or is anything of value, but I enjoy it, so why not?!

My main goal for this blog is to keep it personal and maintain regularity with regards to content. I don't think my experiences are anything special or unusual, but that's why I want to share them - my triumphs, my struggles, the lessons I've learned and the advice I have to give. I'm crossing tiny bridges towards being a real life functioning adult and it's terrifying and miserable and strange and scary and satisfying and amazing and beautiful and I know I'm not the only person who is feeling this way, or has felt this way, or will feel this way. I want to share my personal experiences - at least just to document this chapter in my life; at most, to entertain and help anyone out there who may relate!

I think my desk/craft space has finally come together, with the help of a cheap wire shelf that's been under my nose the whole time.

To save some money, I decided I'd try my hand at refilling my printer ink cartridges on my own. In short, I love it. Probably going to write an entire post about it one day. 

One adult thing I've been working on a lot this year is managing money. Last year I bought a new computer and have been making steady payments on it since and that's been going well, but the rest of my financial life can typically be summed up by the zero balances I find in my account days before my next pay day. I've been trying different methods of budgeting and organizing my finances since the New Year - the busy season at work was over and they had decided to keep me permanently, I had a good deal of money (for me) to manage after working long hours over the holidays, and since I'm turning 21 this year, I wanted to really get a handle on it all. I think I'm getting close to a solution, and I can't wait until I can share it with you all! It won't be long...hopefully.

This week I'm working and that's about it. Really focusing on setting this blog up for success, as well! Thanks for sticking around and dealing with my flippity floppity mind changing. :)

Have a lovely week!

A Bit of a Re-Branding

HealthyFunFrugal is now GrowingUpGoddess - custom domain and all!

Keep on the lookout for more. Content will be the same, but I'm newly motivated to love up on this blog :)

Limbo With A Deadline

College is dumb and I am stressed out.

I recently found out that I have fewer prepaid credits available to me than needed to graduate with a bachelor’s in psychology as I had planned. Now, this isn’t too big of a strain - I’m lucky enough that my parents are willing to pay for those couple of extra classes out-of-pocket - but that really brought the reality of how I felt about what I’m doing to the surface.

I started thinking about where I was in life and where I saw myself in the future. The truth is, I don’t really see myself anywhere in the future, with the path I’m on now. As I told Ryan when we had a wildly stressful conversation about this on Monday, I feel like I don’t really have a path; I’ve felt like I’m in complete limbo basically since I’ve started college. But now, as I’m nearing the end of my college career and only have so many credits left, I’m on a strict deadline. I’m on a deadline to figure out what I want to do with my life.

Is that at all realistic? Who has their lives figured out at 20 years old?

I mean, I’m a smart girl. I’ve always prided myself on the fact that I would often find myself streets ahead of my peers in terms of “real world” stuff - I know how to pay bills, I taught at least 10 people how to do laundry in my first weekend of college, etc. But seriously, I’m clueless. I still don’t know how taxes work (though I’d really like to understand that more, like, ASAP). I have no idea how to get an apartment or house if it’s not student housing. I’m still learning how to be an adult, and I think that should be okay.

I just feel very, very rushed. I feel that these adult careers that we prepare ourselves for in college are completely out of our understanding. We’re in college. Our parents still pay our rent. We’re not ready for adult careers.

And who’s to say we’d enjoy the work anyway? Sure, I’ve enjoyed the subject material of the majority of my psychology classes; that’s why I finally settled on a psychology degree, after all. But that doesn’t mean I’d enjoy being a counselor. I certainly wouldn’t enjoy having a more research-oriented job, either; none of the careers I’ve learned about in my Careers in Psychology class this semester appeal to me. And there is no way I would pay for grad school for any of this. I came to the realization that, if it came down to it, I doubt I’d pay for my last two classes for undergrad.

Upon finding out that I had fewer credits than I needed for my psychology degree, I didn’t call an advisor or try to figure out how much we’d have to pay for on our own. Instead, I started searching for any major I could possibly switch to that would put me on the fastest track to a degree. I didn’t care which one. In fact, I still don’t. I just know that my outlook is a lot less desirable without a bachelor’s degree. I’ve been searching for whatever major will take the least time for me to suffer through just so that I can put “University of Central Florida, B.S./B.A.” on my resume.

How depressing is that?

At the moment, I’m just trying not to stress about college too much. I know the things that I enjoy: music, writing, paper crafting, organization, laundry, customer service. Luckily I’m still able to enjoy these things.

I have absolutely no idea where I’m going in my life and college makes me miserable. However, I’m happy, my part-time job is enjoyable, and I can find peace in the fact that maybe someday I’ll have it figured out. And if I don’t, I’ll at least (hopefully) have a random degree to boost my job applications above some others.

Limbo is a weird place to be.