Tomorrow's Friday. This week has gone by fast. I have a busy weekend. Tomorrow, I hope to hang out with Matty. At some point hook up with Jen and Adrienne... and maybe head over to Golden Gardens for the annual UCF BBQ bash. For those who don't know, UCF which stand for University Christian Fellowship, which is the fellowship I belong to when I went to UW.

Saturday, I'm going over to the peninsula with Adrienne (?) for a friends birthday.

Then Sunday, I'm going to church with Jen. Some well known (ha) person is teaching on apologetics. After that, I'll probably be hanging out with Jen. Depending on how long we hang out, I might be going to a young adult dinner thing for the church I started going to.

Well about that. I might be looking for a new church. I love the young adult group, but I hate the services... or I should say, I hate the prayer time. Is that okay to say? All they seem to pray about is the sick and death. Where is the joy that God brings to people? Seriously.

Yeah, I've been blogging a lot, but that's because it give me something to do. It's also an outlet. I don't think that anything I say here is all that important. It's just a way for me to get out frustrations, joys, inspirations, revelations, etc. I do thank the few who read and sometimes respond to this.

War! What is it good for...

(Ashley, that headline is for you. :) )

Goodness gracious... tutoring ending today. This was for a company called Knowledge Points and our location was at the African America Academy in South Seattle on Beacon Hill. I got involved because a good friend of mine dad owns this company... at least for this region of the state. I think he has a center opening up down in tacoma now. Anyway, I thought it was a really good experience... though one of the other tutors had a difference in opinion.

Her name was Tatyana (sp? she's russian). She could not handle the disrespect from the kids. She couldn't handle there rambunctiousness. They're 6th graders. After the kids left today, she gave Nancy (the other tutor) the speech of "It's our fault that the kids were behaving so badly." That, "We should have been more hard on them from the beginning." And a bunch of other things, that I believe was garbage. Nancy had explained to her, many times, that we did not have the support of the administration. For instance, two of the kids started to fighting one day, and the administrations had done nothing to help us out... they just left us to deal with it, but that is not our jobs. Nancy also pointed out that we have no idea where these kids are coming from. Broken homes? Stable homes? Who knows.

We had 3 consistent students. Taylor, Jazzmine (sp?), and Jamiko. I'll be honest, I didn't like Taylor. If there was something that she didn't know how to do, she refused to work for anybody. She was so stubborn and hard headed, she was not pleasant to work with. Jazzmine... is the one that I worked with most of the time. She was a very hard worker and was excited to learn. The problem with her was she's an instigator. The kids had a habit of bickering and sometimes fighting with each other, and most of the time she started it. Jamiko is all around a good kid. He's very smart and was also a very hard worker. He was a character and very funny... but he LOVES the attention. That made it hard for him to stay focus. Out of the three, I would have to say that Jamiko was my favorite. :P

Anyway, I enjoyed this experience despite all the chaos. I enjoyed working with both the tutors and all 3 of the children. Would I do it again? Yes... if I had the same help I did, but honestly, they wouldn't come back. I understand why. Things could have been a lot better. We could have had more support from the administration, which again, was the biggest problem.

So, I might have a chance of tutoring this summer... which I really hope I can. Not sure what the conditions are yet, but I'll let everyone know when I know more. :)

phone

I'm getting a new phone. The deal is my old phone broke... 3 times. The first time, I could call people, they could receive my call, but they couldn't hear me. I could hear them, but they couldn't hear me. Something was up with the mouth piece or something. This happened a second time. The third time, I get this irritating buzzing noise every time I talk to someone. Thus, I'm getting a new phone... new model, new everything. And I should mention the phone will be pink. :) I'm very excited about this. I never thought I'd get a pink phone but I decide to go with is since the choices were between pink... and black. To some, black may seem okay... but to me, it seems boring. So, pink it is. Below is the link to the phone I'll be getting. I'd just thought I'd share with the rest of the world. :)

http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/products/mobilephones/seethephone/z310a?cc=us&lc=en

So I think I figured out a way to help me relax in this whole job searching thing. My plan is to get up in the morning. Eventually make my way to the library. Spend a couple of hours there researching jobs and applying to 2 - 3 jobs per day. Then leave the library and be done with thinking about job stuff for the rest of the day. The idea behind this is to have my apartment be a place of rest, and not a place of stress and worry.

I'm going to try this out and hoping it works. I'm consumed with thinking about a job 24/7 (and I'm not joking)... I eat, sleep, breathe job stuff. And it's pretty much all I write about here. I'm not allowing myself to have fun in life. All my conversations revolve around the stress of finding a job. People (my parents, mainly) are figuring out to not ask about how it's going, because I might "snap" emotionally. It's terrible and I realize this... so yeah, I'm hoping this works.

Anyway, Denise and Andrew are wonderful people. They got me an early, early birthday present. A bowling ball and bowling shoes. :) I was SO happy when they gave it to me. See, we're on a bowling league for about another couple months, and they wanted me to have my own ball for this. I'm so excited. They did a good job picking out the ball... it's purple with sparkles. :) I'm also glad to have my own bowling shoes. I no longer have to wonder whose feet has been in the shoes that I'm wearing. I can't wait to test it out in league! I'm hope to continue with bowling after they leave.

Plans for tomorrow... library, interview with another temp agency (which probably won't come through because I bombed there skills test thing-y), and it's a friends birthday. I might be hanging out with them in the evening, but who knows.

Repeat after me...

I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.
I will not play fortuneteller.

Yeah, I should go on, but I think that may be enough for the blog.

AW emailed me. Must email him back. But I have to go swimming first. Oh what fun.

Anxiety

So, I've let anxiety get the best of me lately. Here's how it goes... I wake up in the morning with this big knot in my stomach. It takes every ounce of me to get out of bed and tackle the day. The reason of this is because I know that I have to do something in the way of job searching. As known, this is something I have great anxiety over. I have the tendency of "predicting" the future, which often isn't true. I get anxious over the interview, over accepting a job, over making it to work on time, over getting along with my co-workers, over succeeding at the job at hand... you get the picture. On thing that I'm being told and have to constantly remind myself is to "live in the moment". I'll cross those bridges when they come up. Being told this help... a lot, but it the telling myself over and over again that's the hard part. I fail at it, actually.

One thing that has come up is at interview for a staffing agency, Pace Staffing. They wanted me to do this skills survey, asking questions such as "Is lying acceptable? Agree or disagree?" (Erin had a good one, but I can't remember what it is...) Anyway, given your answers, they broke it up into different categories... trustworthy, assertive, etc. I don't remember what they were, but what I do know is I score low to below average on most of them. This can not be good. They're not going to want to sent me out to work with their clients. Ug, why do we have to take those stupid tests?

So, I'm here and alive. I've been applying to jobs... 10 today. I'm scared out of my mind, but I have to remind myself to take it one day at a time.

I had to do one of the hardest things in my life the other day. Stand up to my dad. See, I've been looking for a job and he wants to help me. By help, I mean do it for me. I had to tell him that I need to do this myself... that I appreciate his help, but I need to feel in control. This was SOOO hard. I think it hurt him as much as it hurt me. It was as if I was saying, "your little girl doesn't need you any more." I think I cried for awhile after that.

Anyway, I'm on a bowling league. I seem to do better in the first game, and tank in the last two games. I have an average of 99. I hope I can live up to it next week...

I have a busy day tomorrow. Two meetings, work, and swimming. It's going to go by fast.

Hmm...

So something that I'm trying to learn is... I'm an adult and I can do whatever I want. I don't know why but this is particularly a hard concept for me to grasp. I think it might have to do with my mother undermining me pretty much my whole life. She pretty much made all decisions for me and made me do things I didn't want to do... and more importantly, didn't allow me to chose things I wanted to do. I don't mean to make her sounds like a bad mother. She did the best she could with what she had... no one is perfect.

I've been told that "I'm stronger than I think I am" by many people. I didn't understand this until recently. I need to learn to have faith in myself... it's so hard. I need to realize that I'm capable of making my own decisions... again, also very hard. I need to not be afraid of screwing up. I'm human and as I pointed out above, no one is perfect. My counselor told me that there's always a solution... which my fear has been there's not.

I'm making progress on looking for a job. I've posted my resume on two job websites. I've applied to a few jobs, and I have an interview with a temp agency on Monday. I'm rather anxious about all of this, but I believe that getting a job with help with some of the above. It'll give me money so I can feel free to do things I want to do... without asking for permission. I just hope that I lead a more interesting life after this all happens, because right now, my life is pretty dead.

Anyway, there's some of my refections for now. I'll post more soon, I'm sure. :)