As some of you may have noticed from my inactivity in the past couple months, my life has been a little busy to say the least. My sophomore year of college is now complete, and I have continued to learn a lot about life, about myself and maybe even a little about the real world to which I am headed.
This semester was different than any other for me thus far. After traveling over Christmas break to New York and Washington DC, I returned to a semester that consisted of completing a beautiful yearbook, taking 21 hours of course credit including honors work, adjusting to a change in social life due to friends traveling overseas {one close friend in particular}, and making decisions about the upcoming summer and school year.
Although this semester was busy and different, it taught me a lot and pushed me to the halfway point. That's right; I am halfway done with college {I can't believe it either}. In the midst of deciding where my path is headed next I decided that my blog and my passion for photography needed to take a front-row seat. This semester my blog and photography have not been at the top of my to do list, and I have decided in hindsight that it was because no one was directly depending on me to do this. It, therefore, took a backseat to other responsibilities in which others were directly depending on me. I have decided to try to change this and make it a priority to myself, and, in order to take a step in the right direction, I have been building and preparing to launch a new website tailored to present my work as an up-and-coming professional photographer to potential new and returning clients.
I always knew one day I would build a website like this as a step in pursuing photography, but when I sat down recently to look at beginning, I realized that now was the right time for this step. I am excited to continue sharing my stories and experiences with you through my blog, but now that will be just a portion of a website that will also be home to galleries and information about me and my work as a photographer.
As the first blog post on my new website, I felt that an explanation was unavoidable, but I also want to share with you a little bit about what has happened in my life recently. As I said before, this semester was very different for me. As I began planning for my second summer home from college and my junior year, I had several decisions and options to consider.
After I thought I knew what I wanted to do, I began pursuing a couple of opportunities, but my path had to change when things didn't work out. After a couple of "rejections" came in a small period of time, I became really discouraged and forced myself to re-think about where I was headed. I say "rejections" because they felt like rejections, but I have already realized that the things I was chasing were not where I was supposed to be yet (even though it may be too soon to really make that claim).
As time passed I settled into some new plans that seemed less ambitious, but I soon realized for several different reasons, I was exactly where I needed to be. Right about that time the end of the semester was quickly approaching. I had registered for fall and summer classes, secured an internship and was ready to get home for the summer. I helped with yearbook distribution day, which I, not surprisingly, had several people tell me was the happiest they had ever seen me before.
As things tend to go, once I got comfortable, things changed again. As most of you are probably unaware, after four years of driving on my own, I had my first accident. It really wasn't major, but the experience surrounding the small amount of actual damage was worse than it had to be. Insert long story I'd rather not talk about. While I was still pretty shaken, I began intercession (a 2-week crash course in macroeconomics) and had a few other small hiccups that of course, just added to the heap.
While these hiccups were still fresh, I received an email from one of those "rejections" asking me to accept the position after all. As you can imagine this changed the course of my thoughts and mood and helped me change pace (thankfully). After vastly considering the other previous commitments I had and working things out with them, I accepted an internship position at Arkansas Business Publishing Group (ABPG) as the consumer publications intern.
If you have gotten lost in the vague details forgive me, but, in short, I have learned this year that even when I think I know what path God is steering me towards, it may actually be me rationalizing my own wishes. I have encountered that more times than I care to admit in the past year. Even when I think I can, I can't always see where I am headed. I have a plan, but it might not be God's plan for my future.
After all the changes and bumps in the road, I am excited to be starting a fantastic summer. I have the internship I wanted, I’m living at home, I’m going on vacation with my family, and I’m serving as a counselor at a church camp in south Arkansas for a week in July. I couldn't have asked for anything more.
I am excited to see what this summer will hold, and I am continuing to plan for my junior year of college to begin in just a few months. I will wait to share those details due to the length of this post and the high possibility of things changing between then and now.
For those who have read all the way to the bottom of this post, you are a rockstar and probably one of the main reasons I do what I do. I do write for myself, but I also write to share with others. Thank you for letting me share with you.