i n • p u r s u i t

  Every part of me feels tired. My muscles feel physically tired. My heart is emotionally weary. I feel unable to be fully present. I just want to take a nap or snuggle into my quilt and zone out. But I also feel like I should be productive. Unload the dishwasher. Make my bed. Do a load of laundry...or three. I promised the kids we would make fossils later (modeling clay and an object for the mold. Plaster for the fossil. It is pretty fun.) We took the kids to get haircuts today and it felt like a waste of money. I'm going to have to take my son in somewhere else soon. He likes his hair long, but its needs style. They don't do style at Great Clips. They just cut. My daughter really wanted her first cut. She basically got a tiny bit trimmed off the bottom. I could have done that for free. She loved it and felt like a big girl, though. I've got this painful monster of a cystic zit coming in under my eyebrow. Let me repeat. Under. My. Eyebrow. What the heck. I can't do any...

The other day, I came across this old post: What's Your Story? As I was read it, I couldn't help but think, Man! I used to really be able to write. And now, here I am, struggling to string two words together. I don't have to, however, go back to the 2004 archives to remind myself of how bad those posts are. I remember them well enough! If I was able to write about an evening so eloquently, it is the product of practice. Like I tell my six year old all the time, no one is good at something the first time they try. (Which is false, of course, some people are good beginners. But they are outliers.) I really would like to be a better writer again. I have a hankering to pick blogging back up. Not for the sake of blogs today. I have no desire to be monetized. No, I just want to write like I used to. I feel like my blogging started to go to crap when I compared my blog to others. I wanted consistent features. I wanted to be a beauty or fashion blogger. I definitely wanted to be ...

I snapped at my kids this morning. I was trying to video chat and my kids kept interrupting me. And y'all. Is it too much to ask to just get a couple of sentences in? And after snapping at my kids. I was both frustrated with myself and with them. I should speak to them kindly. But also, they should not be interrupting me. I feel guilty for snapping at them. Especially when I see those puppy dog eyes. I feel guilty that I haven't done more to teach them respect. I feel annoyed because, oh my gosh, just go clean your room like I have asked you one million times in the past ten minutes. I'm reminded of why I usually video chat in a different room. I'm torn between feeling like I should be the ever present mom and knowing that it is perfectly okay for my kids to entertain themselves. (Drink of choice this morning: Tazo Perfect Energy Vanilla Spice tea + Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice tea + Coffee mate Funfetti creamer.)

"I will tell everyone about your righteousness. All day long I will proclaim your saving power, though I am not skilled with words." Psalm 71:15 NLT I used to love to write and blog. I've lost that and I miss it. I'm realizing it isn't a talent, so to speak, that I was born with, but more a skill that I honed over the years. I started blogging probably in 2001-ish in an Open Diary and moved on to LiveJournal before starting this blog in the summer of 2004. I had a few other Blogger blogs: a secret one and a poetry/photography one. I wish I could still find those and read them. Probably not share them though. ;) Anyway. The whole point is that I just wrote my thoughts for a long time. Wrote them to an audience. And even though I didn't know it, I was honing my skills. In recent years, I've been honing my skills differently: how to write the best 140 word caption. I've become a better photographer, thats for sure! And while I don't se...

Morning pages is where you just write three pages in the morning. Or at least thats my understanding. Three pages of brain dumping, list making, stream of conscious, I don't know. It's 6:38AM. I went to bed at 11pm and turned off my alarm and put my phone on "do not disturb" (because I knew my sister was going to try to call me at 6am). But I did all that because I wanted to sleep in! And then Mike's alarm went off at 5:30am, shortly after I had woken up at the end of a dream. So, I decided, eh, might as well wake up. And then I wasted like AN HOUR on Facebook. Ugh. Well, I did have to make a graphic and post about the MOPS moms night out tonight. After that, I wasted time on Facebook reading awful sad things (like the Turpin family) and wishing I hadn't. Oh, and my sister called. So, I talked to her for a bit too. Let's fight the good fight Train our eyes to find the light And make this year the best one yet! -JJ Heller I'm currently o...

I'm really excited that Christmas is right around the corner. :) This Tuesday marks my last day in the classroom until next semester. I am very excited about this. I still have two final exams (for my two hardest classes) to turn in and five papers to put the final touches on. Wish me luck! Next year, I'm taking TWO classes instead of the FIVE I took this year. This has been a ridiculous few months for me. But more on that later. While working on all that, I procrastinated a bit by starting a tumblr. I did it because I wanted to be cool like girlchic (who is one of the coolest girls I know). You can it here . I'm not sure why I have it. I love the concept and most tumblogs are really pretty. But, heck, I've got a really pretty blog right here. So, we'll see. I've recently become obsessed with the photos found on the weheartit website. And a lot of the cool photos I've posted lately have been from there. I'm feeling particularly pic...

We were all supposed to go to the Bible Conference together, but Mike and I ended up not being able to. Despite my get-off-work-early-ness. I was looking forward to bible conference because, really, I look forward to every Bob Jones experience. It's a completely different culture that fascinates me sometimes. I discuss Artist Series here . I think it's great that girls at BJU have to wear skirts. It adds a femininity to our culture that is so lost . I used to think that it would be so cool to be "one of the guys" but now I'm happy to be a very girly-girl. What's more, Mike likes that I'm feminine. Mike knows the Bob Jones part, I know the Catholic part and this is the conclusion that we have come to: they're not all that different. Sure, there are major dogmatic differences and all, but as far as practice goes, v. v. similar. Yes, it's true. Anyway, Mike and I headed to BJU. The place was packed with cars, but not a soul in sight. The Bible Con...