frustration.

Baaaaaaaad day.
....
More like night.
....
Baaaaaaaad night.
I'm gonna go eat a lot of food or something.

reality

I have been avoiding the inevitable (confronting reality) and it just hit me.
I'm now feeling incredibly overwhelmed. Anti-anxiety exercises will be put to the test today.

thank you friends

I've been blessed with so much love in my life. It's moments when I realize this that help me get through the hard days.
There's opposition in all things. I've started to see this as a pattern in my life: good days always follow the bad ones. This was a bad week, but tonight was a wonderful night.
I'm grateful for the love, the support and the gift of starting over.

mmmmm :)

I just found this song and I just love it! I also feel like the lyrics are very appropriate to how I'm feeling today..

"forgiveness is not always instantaneous"

I had a really, really good therapy session yesterday. We talked about how feelings of depression and frustration tend to come from "living in the past". And feelings of anxiety tend to come from "living in the future". It's when we're living in the present that peace can be found. So we talked about ways to bring myself to the present to calm myself down. She brought up how using my five senses can bring me back to the present along with any other technique that might calm me down. I tried it today and it actually worked very well. I was starting to feel a lot of anxiety and I stopped, closed my eyes, focused on my breathing and listening to any audible sound I could hear, and ran my hands along the fabric of my seat to really feel the texture. It was amazing. When I'm feeling anxiety or depression, I'm so caught up in my head that I almost shut off all my senses. I'm not present, I'm not existing in my body at that moment. So I used that technique to bring myself back... it was so wonderful. It helped me control my anxiety better than I've ever been able to. I'm very excited to use that trick in the future.

Right now I'm working on a "personal project". I was sitting in church a couple weeks ago thinking about why I was feeling so unlike myself. I started thinking about all the people that have hurt or offended me that I've held grudges against. And it hit me that even though some of these things were so insignificant, I was holding onto them and it was placing such a heavy burden on my heart. I could almost feel the bitterness weighing down on me and keeping me from being truly happy. I never thought I was one to hold a grudge but when I took a real, honest look at myself and at the people that bothered me and why they bothered me... I saw that I was holding onto things that I didn't even consciously think about. Stupid things, like the girl in relief society that wasn't nice to me when I first met her and bigger things, like Jordan and all of his issues with me. It definitely was an enlightening experience. So my "personal project" is to let go (really let go) and forgive all the things that I've held onto.

"Sometimes we carry unhappy feelings about past hurts too long. We spend too much energy dwelling on things that have passed and cannot be changed. We struggle to close the door and let go of the hurt. If, after time, we can forgive whatever may have caused the hurt, we will tap 'into a life-giving source of comfort' through the Atonement, and the 'sweet peace' of forgiveness will be ours ("My Journey to Forgiving," Ensign, Feb. 1997. 43). Some injuries are so hurtful and deep that healing comes only with help from a higher power and hope for perfect justice and restitution in the next life. . . . You can tap into that higher power and receive precious comfort and sweet peace."

James E. Faust, "Instruments in the Hands of God," Ensign, Nov. 2005, 115

something new

I no longer have virgin hair.
It is now a "chocolatey cherry" color and I quite like it :)
I'll put up pictures when I get them.

acceptance

I had a conversation with Mr. Casay the other night. We talked about us. It was a good talk, I finally understood why he's not in a place to date right now. It also gave some perspective that I wasn't wanting to accept.
I'm a very emotional person. I always joke that I'm not a high maintenance girl with the exception that I'm very emotionally high maintenance. I guess you could just say needy :P And I haven't given myself time to be me or time to learn to be alone. And most importantly, no time to learn to be okay with being alone. So after my chat with Mr. Casay, I've decided that I'm going to accept that I'm single now and I'm going to be okay with it.
Huzzah.

war

I want to have an epic water gun fight like this one. Who's with me? :)


Hecq Vs Exillion - Spheres Of Fury from Tim.Chris.Film on Vimeo.

oh the woes of being single... again.

I got a calling. I'm the ward prayer girl. I'm actually really excited about it, it gives me a chance to meet a lot of rad new people :)

I've been really frustrated with the idea of dating lately (I say idea because the actual dating part doesn't really happen much). I feel like there's no way that I'm going to find a man who's single, interested in me and meets the standards and qualities that I want in a guy. Because if this man who meets the standards I want in a husband or boyfriend or whatever does exist, he's surely taken by someone fabulous or (like a recent past experience) isn't interested in dating me...
And I miss it. I miss being someone's other half. I miss companionship and having someone love me so much that I'm their world and they are mine. I miss being adored and being able to adore in return. I miss having someone that I can turn to no matter what, someone that I can depend on and lean against. I miss falling asleep next to the man that I've promised to spend my life with and waking up to his face in the morning.
Sometimes I wonder which would be worse, never having the opportunity to taste the joy of marriage in this life or having had it for a brief moment and then having it ripped away.

This isn't me throwing a pity party for myself, this is me just being temporarily frustrated. I'll get over it.
Bleh.
Anyways..
Dating sucks. That's basically the point of that paragraph.

On a happier note... I got accepted to the Europe program! Woo! I'll be in France, Spain and England for a little over a month or so this May. It's going to be amazing and I'm beyond excited to be studying photography with awesome people in awesome countries. Now I just need to make money. So, if anyone has photography needs or knows someone who has photography needs, you should pass my name along because I'm kinda swell and I'd really appreciate it :)

wedding bells

I had an awesome wedding dress.
I was reminded of this fact today at my dear friends wedding because well, she wore it and I was her photographer. Oh, and she got married in the Draper temple ;)
I thought I was going to have a hard time with it as I sat down in the sealing room. Ya know, the whole deja vu thing going on. And then Elder L. Tom Perry walked in and I was totally good :)
The advice he gave them at the beginning was so sweet, you could tell that he and his wife must have a very special and tender relationship. It was amazing having him do the sealing. Every word he said in the ceremony was so powerful and said so sincerely. It made me incredibly grateful that I've chosen to live my life in such a way that I was worthy to attend that beautiful ceremony. It would have been so easy for me to be bitter with the church and bitter with the Lord because of my divorce. I had done everything "right". My decision to get married was inspired, we were married in the temple, I lived according to the principles of the gospel and still my husband left me. I'm grateful I'm not bitter, that would be a heavy burden to bear and I wouldn't have had the opportunity to see how sweet and lovely marriage can really be today.

lame

This blog is lame.
All I write about is shallow mumbo jumbo that no one really cares about, let alone me. I've been noticing this a lot in my life, I haven't been thoughtful or authentic in the things that I'm doing or saying. Life has been hard. I haven't wanted to sound negative and I don't want the pity that is so common when someone finds out I've been recently divorced. So it's been much easier to be shallow, to just smile and be happy and not go into any depth of what I'm truly thinking and feeling.
And it bothers me.
I don't want to be that person anymore. It's been affecting my art and my relationships in a negative way.
So here I am with a goal to be vulnerable, open and authentic in all aspects of my life. All aspects including this blog :)

so great

School started today. I couldn't be more happy about it. I really loved last semester and I was worried that this semester wasn't going to be that great but golly, was I wrong! I'm already thrilled about my classes. It's going to be such a great semester. I really get a chance to push myself in these classes. It's exciting to have this opportunity to grow and become a better photographer. I'm also excited to get to know so many wonderful people better. My program really is the best, I'm so happy about it.
That is all :)

tilt shift

I want a tilt shift lens
soooooo
bad.
The 45mm to be exact.
Shame it's over a grand.
Hmph.

awesome

You tell me, what one makes you feel more awesome? The goblet or the cup?
I would most definitely say the goblet.
Hence why I've been using it... all the time :)



School starts tomorrow and I couldn't be more excited. I'm bursting from the seams to have something to do. 3 weeks is much too long of a break for me. I have a job interview on Tuesday though! I'm not going to say where because I don't want to jinx it, but I'm crossing my fingers for it. I think it would be a fun job and it wouldn't be graveyard which is already bomb. So yes. Crossing my fingers.

Basically I have nothing to write about because I have nothing going on right now.
Yup.

Wanna know one of my goals? To have my student loans and car paid off before I graduate. I think that's a worthy goal to work for :) Hoo-raw!

hmmm

I have been told recently by three separate people that I'm intimidating.
Yup, I don't get it. But apparently this is why I don't date much in case you were wondering.
Rarrr!!

insanity

Oh my goodness.
I am going crazy.
As in c-ra-zy.
I need school to start now or I'm going to go out of my mind! I also need a job. Good golly!
This break was bearable because I started dating Mr. Casay but now it's not happening anymore and soo.... yeeess.
I'm not handling having nothing to do very well.

2012

I'm not gonna lie, I'm really glad that 2011 is over, it's been quite the year. I'm hoping that I'll be able to make this next one about a million times better or so which really isn't going to be that hard to do ;)

I started dating someone awesome and it ended just about as soon as it started. We will call him Mr. Casay. Anyways, our schedules this next school semester clashed so bad (not to mention how busy he would be) that we would never see each other. And when you're dating someone and never see them, that sucks (sorry Ayisha). So we decided to hopefully try it again sometime in the future. (Or I'm just an idiot and it was a soft break up... but I'm thinking that it's not the case... I hope... ) Kinda sucks nonetheless, Mr. Casay is pretty great.
So I'm going back to the dating world! (yyyyaaaayyyy - said with zero enthusiasm haha)

I absolutely adore Ayisha my new roommate. She is a doll and we've been having a ton of fun :) I like having friends, they're a pretty swell thing to have.

I've decided to do wedding photography again. I'm enough "okay" with the divorce that I think I'll be fine with it. I really do love weddings, so hopefully I can get some bookings, we'll see.

And to end my post, here's a picture of my sis (she was kind of sick of me taking pictures) with the new cord sync for my flash and new 80mm lens that I got for Christmas. I sure love these awesome new toys :)