Feeling extra ORDINARY and not EXTRAordinary…

I recently wrote a post about how I felt lacking in my talents when it came to photography and how I am constantly comparing myself to other people and their talents and my talents and how I need to just sit back, relax, and chill. Life is as it is, and will continue to be that way.

I’ve realized over the last couple of days, that I am not only judgmental and jealous when it comes to photography (albeit both of those feelings inside), I am in all other areas of my life as well. I am judgmental and jealous of my friends, family, classmates, people I don’t even know, and blogs I read. I am striving to grow in these areas of my personal life.

I’m jealous of friends who lose jobs and then come upon something else so quickly without having to struggle to find them. And then I feel guilty because I’m jealous.

I’m jealous of classmates who get their tuition paid for by their parents or classmates who can afford it when I’m in mountains of student debt. I’m jealous of classmates who’s parent’s fork over $2000 just for a wedding dress when my parent’s will probably only be able to afford that as a total.

I’m jealous of blogs that I read that seem to contain posts that seem so much more deep and meaningful than my every day ramblings of how much stress school is causing me day after day. I feel like I should be more like those blogs and write about something important. That my blog isn’t important enough. But, then I try and tell myself that I write for me and not for others so why should it matter what I write.

I judge the actions of my friends and family when I know I shouldn’t. I judge them because some part of me doesn’t feel adequate or important enough in my every day life right now. I care WAY more than I should about what other people are doing in their own lives, especially when it doesn’t affect me in the slightest, and I care WAY too much what same said people think about what I am doing in my life when it doesn’t affect them in the slightest.

I always prided myself on not caring, of just going with the flow. Not necessarily following others or forging my own distinct path on all things, but being somewhere in the middle. And its not that I’ve become a follower per say, but I care more than I would like to admit. I don’t outwardly express the fact that I care, at least up until this point. I don’t want other people to know about my own insecurities, who does?! But it’s true and I have to take a step back. I need to look at the things that I get jealous about and ask myself if it personally affects me or not. Should it be something that I am jealous about? Probably not.

I need to not care if someone gets a huge tax return and spends it on a bunch of material items that they don’t need, when they should be saving it because they don’t have a job and getting jealous because I know that my tax return won’t be spent like that, even if I crave some of the same items.

I need to not care if someone else’s child is smarter than Ayden because every child is different. I need to be happy that Ayden is alive and healthy and thriving at school, even if he isn’t the smartest in his grade. (Although, that’s not to say that I don’t care about his educational needs at all.)

I need to learn to just not care…

My life is important, as much as some days I think that it isn’t. I am important… to myself, to Jay, to Ayden, to my family and my friends. I need to remember that its not always the big things in life that matter the most. I may be going through the everyday motions at times, feeling like I’m not getting anywhere when everyone around me is moving forward in life, but remember that my time will come. My time is coming and my time is here right now. My days are important and it doesn’t matter if I go out and make a big impact everyday or if the only thing that makes me feel good on any given day is a hug and kiss from Ayden, each day matters.

Okay, enough of the heavy… one of the first year audiology students asked me this last week if I might consider taking some pictures of her niece for her and of course I said I would love to. Despite my better thoughts to tell her that I wouldn’t charge her because she was a friend, I decided that my time is worth a little bit of money and I did set a fee. Nothing too high, but I do put a couple of hours into picture taking and editing so I thought I deserved a little something.

Her niece is nine months old (tiny for nine months, but super cute) and I got some super cute pictures. At first I didn’t think I would get anything that I really liked because I was having some over exposure problems. Still learning my camera on manual mode and not having very good indoor lighting or studio set up, I had to work with what I could.

Here are a few of my favorites!This is baby and her grandma. My friend and her mom are doing this as a surprise Mother’s Day gift for baby’s mom. Too cute! I really like how this one turned out!They cloth diaper the little girl and so we had to get one in just the diaper. Although, I have to admit, it would have been a little bit cuter with a girly colored cloth diaper. but I think that the headband and bow and necklace make it known that baby is a girl.I am IN LOVE with this last picture! Her eyes are so big and bright! It is just too cute! There is just something about it! Most of the pictures turned out a lot better than I had anticipated, so that is very good!I can’t remember if I posted about the grade I ended up getting on my horrible Pathologies test. The test was absolutely icky and I was sure that I failed it, unless for some reason the professor really curved the test. And guess what, he did. After adding back in 19.5 points to everyone’s grade, I ended up with an A- on the test. Super yeah! The teacher is famous for having horrible tests and then adding in a curve at the end. Unfortunately, my classmate didn’t fair as well as she would have liked and I feel bad for her because I know that she studied just as hard as I did. (Forgive me if I’ve written this all already.)

We’ve recently switched internet providers at our house… converted from Charter to AT&T and will now be saving about $50 per month for the next year. Heck yeah! Unfortunately, AT&T is not as fast as Charter is, but it is not super slow dial up either. I can deal with it being a little bit slower, just for the fact that we will be saving $600 in the next year. Next step is our dish package and then our phones. We are in our dish contract for another couple of months so we still have time to shop around. And our phones… well we won’t even go there right now, ha!

CIAO! LOVE ME!