Bridget Jones got Nothing on Me: A new Diary series in growing up

Age: 27
Occupation: Teacher, Graphic Designer, Curator, Photographer
Weight: 127 pounds
Goals for Today:
Laundry!!

When I was a child, I loved playing a game where I would clean out all my clothes and toys, grab two large hefty bags from the kitchen, and shove all my stuff into them. I would carry the bags around through out the house and look for a new place to "settle" down in. I loved building little forts with chairs and sheets, and making it my new room. It was a fun game for me, I loved the idea of picking up my stuff and finding a new place to settle. My mom never saw it that way. She used to call me "bag lady", which is a name that has stuck with me even until now...

She often reminds me that I live like a homeless person, and she's right! Quite frankly, my life is a mess....not just my room. I figured there's no time like the present to re-vamp my life. I woke up this morning and had a hard time dragging myself to the bathroom to even brush my teeth. For some reason, the rank taste of last night's pasta lingering on my breath didn't seem to bother me all that much. The thought quickly came to my mind, "have I really become like a homeless person like my mom so often tells me?" I mean, if someone has a hard time even brushing their teeth, what does this say about their life? After five minutes of reflecting (before wasting 3 hours of my life watching bad TV), I realized that there are a lot of changes that need to be done in my life.

I've always been quite a straight-forward, balls to the wall kind of person, so I figured there is no detail too embarrassing that I would withhold in this process of change. There are a lot of long-term goals I would love to achieve in this process. I would love to really build my career, finish writing one of the five songs I've started, publish a story, become a musician...but for now, the focus is on LAUNDRY.

I have a terrible habit...sometimes I put off laundry for months, my only catalyste to push me is my most limited underwear supply. There is a heirarchy to how this all works...when the supplies are low, I tap into the thong supply. Thongs are the worse for me, they make my butt cheeks sweat and the feeling of a constant wedgie isn't exactly appealing to me. After thongs are gone, I start using bikini bottoms....after bikini bottoms, I'll scrounge around for other people's underwear!! Ha...yes, we've all done it before! Desperate times call for desperate measures. At least, this is what I used to tell myself. For some reason, it never occured to me that this is not how life should be lived...scrounging around for a clean pair of underwear?

Today, I hope to take some control over my life...no more scrounging, or just skating through live on passable standards, its really time to up the anty. In college, I was ambitious, I made goals for myself and reached all of them successfully. After that, I'm not sure what happened...the underwear supply dwindled, years of failure buried that fire I once had, I settled for thongs and bikini bottoms when I could have so much more. In all this, I don't believe that failure is a bad thing, but I've definately allowed it to stunt all the great things that God might have in store for my life...I hope that this year in my life will definately be one where I allow myself to change and be changed, to raise my standards again for what I want in life, and hope that my relationship with God can be restored, and the dreams he once gave me will really begin to take shape....but for today: LAUNDRY!!