Thankfully Thankful

Every year as the weather begins to change I find myself in a nostalgic mood. Fall is the best time of year and I often catch myself feeling more grateful for the people in my life. I don't know if it's because Thanksgiving is nearing and you often have those conversations around the table or what but I continue catching myself taking moments to reflect on how grateful I am and decided this time to quickly write some of it down.

It is extremely easy for me to get wrapped up in the negative and I have to consistently remind myself around October to take a deep breath. October is a busy time at work and I catch myself feeling burnt out. Between commuting, working late, conferences, and life, I begin to feel emotionally and physically exhausted. However, regardless of how busy and crabby I get, I know when I walk through the door Andrew is there. There are weeks we go without seeing each other for longer than a millisecond as we run out the door but once the dust settles we are still in stride with one another and no matter what season it is- I am extremely grateful for that.

Someone's sleepy. 

An integral part of our family are our dogs-Alba and Bailey. If you follow me on any social medias you are fairly acquainted with them. They truly are our kids and when they're not around we are lost without them. Over the summer as we prepared for a vacation and had dropped them off to be dog sat at Andrew's brother's house. That evening we decided to go on a walk which we frequently do with the dogs and we both discussed how a piece of our life was missing without them there. On top of Andrew being behind that door every time I come home I know one of them will be there to greet me.

How could you not be grateful for these two?

Believe me- there is a ton more I am grateful for! Remember I said October was busy? Maybe I'll be able to carve more time in the future to continue to share things I'm thankful
for. Until then....

Coffee and failure

Every morning on my commute to work I remind myself how much I hate the radio. They play the same songs OVER and OVER and OVER again. Since this is the first time in a long time I've actually had to drive farther than 5 minutes to work or class I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the 1.5 hours I spend in the car each day.

Recently I stumbled upon the Real Simple series of podcasts. There are 4 different podcasts they produce and I have fallen in LOVE with the Adulthood Made Easy episodes. They talk about things every person in their twenties is thinking- midlife crisis', mistakes at work, transitioning into the professional world, etc.  I've found myself motivated and inspired by them.

My favorite episodes so far have been:

• Turning one cup of coffee into a yearlong adventure

If we're being honest, going into this episode I really thought it had to do with drawing out the effects of coffee for longer than the morning. This episode was actually about how a woman had coffee with someone different every week for a year. Resulting in 52 cups of coffee and 52 unique and inspiring stories. 

During the podcast the woman who had started this project talked specifically about how one of her cups of coffee was with someone she had known for her entire life yet when she actually sat down and had coffee with the 6-year-old girl she learned so much more about her and her life story. After she began to reflect on their conversation she talked about how 90% of the conversations we have in our day-to-day lives are stuck on a superficial level and we rarely get to learn and see how interesting people really are. 

After learning more about this woman's project it made me think how something as simple as getting coffee with someone can connect two people. In Nebraska, 99% of the time I meet someone new there was a cup of coffee, drinks, and/or lunch/dinner involved. These meet-ups were all across the spectrum: friends, mentors, and other professionals. Immediately after this episode I thought to myself, "I could have 52 cups of coffee." However, after my initial reaction, I felt more motivated to take advantage those opportunities one cup of coffee at a time! :)  

• Embracing failure

This episode I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. My first year of graduate school I was on the NASPA IV-West planning committee and we read a book titled, "Celebrating Failure." The book was all about embracing mistakes and discussing them. Both the book and podcast talk about how we are humans and not everything we do will be perfect. This can be a very difficult concept for me to grasp because I am a perfectionist. I am extremely competitive and believe that if there is something out there to achieve, by golly I will get it done and I will get it done perfect... unfortunately, I have failed at this on more than one occasion. 

Being a young professional this can be extremely daunting. However, in this podcast they discussed successful people's failures and mistakes at work. And boy did this come at the perfect time. Being in my position for less than 3 months there have already been plenty of times I have felt I messed up. The biggest one is one that I will have to live with for years to come at Washburn:

**For those who see nothing wrong with this picture: Tradition is spelled wrong

This logo is one that has been printed on over 400 t-shirts across campus. Again, being a perfectionist- I see this at least once every day and there is nothing I can do to fix the mistake. I must let go! This episode could not have come at a better time. I was able to hear how others had made mistakes, learned from them, and have continued to be successful.