Acorn

You know when you're truly blessed when you can appreciate the small things of life. Fall always makes me thankful that I can hear the leaves blow around, see the vibrant color of the leaves, and feel the chill of the first real cold blast from the North.

I was packing up my personal things from my office when I found an old small acorn (about an inch and a half tall) that I've had for about 6 years now. That acorn is important to me because it reminded me that no matter how bad my day is, or how much I've been through, I can always get through it and see that tomorrow still has promise. I've almost always been an optimistic person, and during the one time in my life when I wasn't, this acorn was a small thing I noticed one day after realizing that today was better than that yesterday. Which at that time was a huge deal. I felt like I had broken the cycle, or at least interrupted it and that I knew I was returning to myself again. I was able to appreciate life's little treasures again, and that's why I would have found the acorn on that day but may not have found it the week before.

I've kept that acorn because it reminds me of where I've been and how I made it through it.

Challenges

Everyone faces challenges in life. To me, to be challenged in my life is to remind me that life isn't easy and also that I'm going through this to prepare me for something else in my life. That isn't always easy to swallow, depending on the situation. There have been times when I couldn't see anything but down where the phrase "What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger" or "God doesn't put you through anything you can't handle" would actually put me in a fit of rage. I know that's hard for some people to understand but when you are way above your personal limit for what you can deal with at a particular time that's what it feels like. And for that reason I try not to say those things to people because you never really truly know what someone is going through. Fortunately I'm way past that point in my life, that was a long time ago, and I hope I won't ever be at that point again.

Right now I know the most important thing for me to do is to keep believing in myself. Sometimes when your goal is so close to you it feels like you're looking at it from very very far away. What's interesting about seeing what's going on with my project right now, I feel like I can take it. Regardless of the result, no matter how I have to write it up to get published (as in altering my hypothesis to fit the model, not alter the data), I can do it. I will be successful. And then I'll have earned it. And even in if the whole project goes down the toilet, I'll still have done something worth doing by working on this project.

So with that said, can I just fast forward 6 months? :-)