grow up already

Eventually you're going to have to bump it up a notch and take your car out onto the freeway. But don't be too scared - once you can drive on the freeway, you can drive to church. Unless there are back roads you usually take, but I'm guessing the fastest and most well-known route to the church you now go to takes you to the freeway so that's where you're going to go. Just a guess, tho. So, before I get into the pep talk I seem to love doing in every post, I want to make sure you're not concerned about something: when I got on the freeway the first time, I was rlly stressed after I'd driven on the freeway bc I felt like it was the wrong way of learning how to drive - I didn't know how to pull in and out of the driveway and it was stressing me out bc I felt like I needed to learn the driveway thing first, fsr. If that's the case with you, just letting you know now, the driveway thing is super easy to master so if you get the rlly hard freeway thing ...

Getting your hours in is really really important, duh. And if you have a job (it's not necessary, but if you do), it's the best time to get your hours in. Drive to work, let the 21+ yo drive it home. They'll drive it back to pick you up and you can drive them home. Then also don't forget that you can drive to and from church. And if Dad and Mom don't change drastically from now till then, you'll be driving there and back twice every Sunday (so there and back x4) and then also driving there for Wednesday night prayer meeting (which is changing this coming June, so ig you'd be driving to the youth meetings instead of prayer meetings, but it's still driving there and back). Don't think you need to be precise with your hours. You can put them down in hour and half hour increments, no less. So if you run to the store 5 minutes away, you can put that down as half and hour and not feel guilty over it. You need 60 hrs total - 50 daytime, 10 nighttime....

So you need to find a job. I didn't have much trouble finding my first one - actually my first one wasn't quite a job and I wasn't looking. Dad needed the lawn mowed and was willing to pay $10/wk for it to get done - he came and asked me, I said yes. It wasn't a well-paying job by any stretch of the imagination and I knew that. But I didn't need much and I knew it would only be for the summer, or at least until I found another, better job. And I had been doing it 100% free of charge, so anything was better than nothing. Sometimes I could even get away with doing it just once a week and then it was $10/mow. My second job I didn't look for either, it came to me. A couple at our church (idk if you'd remember them by the time you read this, but they were at RBCL, our church in Louisville), Isaac and Sharon Id é (eeh-day), had a baby and needed a babysitter. They had told Mom but then a few months after that they sent out an email and asked for a babysi...

Now that you (hopefully) have a handle on the more emo side of things, it's time you get ready for the more practical side of things. The side of things where I give you links to websites and feedback on what you should be looking forward. No I'm not joking, I am literally going to take you step-by-step through what I had to get done, and what I had to take up. I will try to be as detailed as possible, though I will miss some stuff since I haven't done it in awhile. But I'm the one in the family who's done this most recently, and the only one who's started something for you, so you'll have to be satisfied with what you've gotten. I will also tell you what helped me and hopefully helps you, so it's not just going to be spoon-feeding. I hope it will help you learn to think on your own and research on your own, because that's what I wish I'd been able to do when this whole thing started. When I turned 16 and my whole life became that much...

If you're confused and you don't want to read all of my words, here are two links I find helpful to refer to: 1. a timeline of what you need to do, and other information on this page . 2. a more in-depth timeline, and links to get you to the places you need to go, on this page . It might be confusing, but everyone goes through this and everyone older than you has gone through the same confusion, the same work that you have and if you're confused you can always ask Mom, Dad, any of your older siblings, or just Google it if you're feeling prematurely independent!

You know why half the people don't last in the gym? Because they don't see immediate results. Or they don't see results in the time frame they thought they were going to see them - so they get discouraged and disappointed and feel bad that they just can't seem to get in shape when really they've been getting in shape slowly and quietly, that it just takes a long time to see results even though the results are there. Sometimes, when you thought you weren't getting anywhere, you were. Maybe you were growing in some way, in some area of your life, without knowing it. And instead of giving up, maybe you just need to see where you've been making positive, subtle changes. And I can't tell you where you've been making progress because I have no idea and I'm not even sure what I've been saying is right or helpful, but I do know that if you stop looking at what you're not doing and instead focus on what you can be doing, it will help s...

So you're stressed, maybe. Or maybe you're one of the lucky few who know exactly what to do and life gets handed to them on a silver platter, yay congratulations, if that's the case you wouldn't be here. One thing that really helped early on, before I sat down and talked to Mom about it, was a to-do list. It wasn't your regular, run-of-the-mill to-do list bc those are more day-to-day (sorry about all the n-dashes ik it's annoying but it's grammatically correct so I can't help it sorry-not-sorry). My to-do list was a list of things I wanted to do, to get done, but on a long-term basis. I also made daily to-do lists, and those were great, they sometimes helped, but the one that helped the most was the one I made where I wrote down all the big things I wanted to get done, and kept them on that piece of paper. Because sometimes you're so overwhelmed with stuff you have to get done that you can't keep track of which thing to do first and whet...

I'm super confused, overwhelmed, and it seems like everyone before me had their lives together and knew what they were doing and now they're on track and have already completed everything. And the people who are growing up with me are making tracks and doing everything I need to do. Why am I the only one who doesn't have any idea what to do next or how to do it? Sike. I actually do know. But I used to not know, so I made this blog for all my younger siblings coming after me who might want a little bit of help and don't know where to go (hint: Mom is a good place to go, that's how I figured most no wait all of this out) and if you don't necessarily want to hold someone's hand every step of the way, ig use this instead but go to mom first, that's a good idea that I didn't do until I was overwhelmed, swamped, discouraged, and close to a mental breakdown. jk I'm just being dramatic but I was pretty panicked, so don't let yourself get th...