Just a small town girl, living in a crazy world!

My Inaugural Blog! I hope I'm doing this right, but my goal is to inspire and empower others, so it'll be okay if I make rookie mistakes. It will be okay if I make veteran mistakes later on. 

As long as I can remember, I have wanted to help people and animals. I think I inherited some of it, and what I didn't inherit was conditioned into me by my wonderful Christian parents. I remember my mom giving Christmas gifts and my dad's hand-me-downs to a needy man in town who had no family. This is a tradition that my brother and I would carry on until he and the man passed away within just a few years of each other. Now that I say that, I hate when people toot their own horns and post pictures of themselves helping the needy. That's not what I meant. My point was that I enjoy helping people, and I credit that to my parents. The purpose of this blog is to help people by sharing my experiences. 

I am an odd bird. I am 38 now, and it has just been in the last 6 years that I have realized that. Apparently,  my parents and others have always known it. I am incredibly blessed, and I have faced my biggest fear and survived. I have made an unorthodox career change, and been shunned for doing yoga and bodybuilding competitions. It is through these experiences that I realized that I am different, and I want to use my experiences of being different to help people and empower them to embrace their unique qualities as well. 

Here's a brief summary of who I am and what makes me different. I was born, raised, and happily returned to a small, rural slice of paradise called Fulton in southwest Alabama. Fulton is a quaint sawmill town at the end of the shortest state highway, highway 178. 

I love my immediate family very much, but I have always been a Daddy's girl. We seem to share the same interests and many of the same trains of thought. We are different, though, in that I lack his wisdom, patience, and math skills. He is skilled at letting things go, where I tend to dwell on them and seek punishment for the perpetrator and justice for the victim. I also think he molded his first child into the kind of child he wanted, for the most part. He did my brother the same way, teaching him all the things men need to know like carpentry, electrical, plumbing, & mechanical skills, just to name a few. He also spent countless hours with us outdoors playing sports and teaching us how to hunt, fish, drive a stick, and use guns safely.

My mom has taught us a lot as well, but the skills she has taught me don't come as easily to me as those my dad has taught me. I usually don't say "never," but I will never be a great cook or seamstress. For one, I'm not as interested, and two, I lack the patience it takes to thread a sewing machine and ice a cake. My mother is a woman of many talents and strengths.

My brother, Jared, and I, especially in his last year, would often discuss how we had certain traits from each parent, but also traits that only the two of us shared. I never knew how special that time with him would be, and how thankful I am that we had such talks. 

My biggest fear has always been losing my parents and/or brother, and as an adult, I added  my husband to the list. I especially worried about Jared because he was most reckless of the group. I always feared that he would die in a car accident. And he did. I will talk more about that in a later article, but I have now faced my biggest fear and lived to tell, even though I still lose my breath from time to time. 

I was introduced to my husband because our mutual friend had never met anyone as weird as the two of us, she said. Jason is 11 years and 364 days older than I am. Neither of us are fond of kids. That also makes me different. We are both OCD perfectionists. We can throw down at each other, but we love each other very much. We also make each other better. Jason is a US Marine with a finance degree and long career in logistics management. I am very proud of him. I don't know that anyone else would or could have supported me through the last six years of my life. They've been hard on me, so I had to have been hard to live with. Although I've always been an athlete and fitness lover, he is the one who got me back into it after high school. He had competitively body built years earlier and run, but a knee injury and bad surgery really slowed him down. He's gotten back at it though, and we are registered for 2 half marathons in the next ten months. I am really looking forward to our destination races together. 

I also had a teaching career for 12 full school years and a few months of a nightmare. I thought I would retire from teaching, but things change. Society has changed. I have changed. I never thought of my decision to leave teaching and go into sales as a brave one, but many people have told me it was. I just did what I had to do. Because of my good and bad experiences as a teacher, teachers are a group of people really close to my heart. I have lots of things to share with them via blog.

I am beyond thankful to my parents for having raised me in church, but a structured church is no longer the place for me. I prefer my small group, quarterly Bible study now. I have learned more about the Bible in this Bible study in the last few years than I have learned my entire adult life in church. Choosing to leave was a decision with which I struggled, but I now wish I had had the knowledge and courage to do so long ago. I lost friends along the way, but I know that people are in your life for a season. We come and go from each other's lives for a reason and a season. I will say that I am much happier now, although I know that is not a popular statement to make. It is, however, honest. 

My life now is what many would consider too boring and regimented, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I have always loved a hot rod (another dad trait), so my job as an internet sales manager at a local car dealership is something I really enjoy. I don't have the facilities to house animals other than my own, but I enjoy raising money and awareness for those (animals) that are needy. Three of my grandparents died young of massive heart attacks, so I have loved fitness since I was a teenager.  Before work, I'm lifting weights, and after work, I'm running. On the weekends, I try to squeeze naps into my schedule after the house and yard are tidied up.I love social media and sending funny memes to my friends. My family time is priceless. That's pretty much what I do. 

If I haven't put you to sleep or bored you to tears, I hope you will hang in there with me and hopefully get some benefit from my experiences. Thank you for reading.