Observations

1. When I'm at the office, I create a mental to do list of all the things I plan on doing when I get home from work. When I get home from work I don't want to do anything.

2. I can lose myself for hours taking pictures and editing them on my computer. I grab my camera to go out in the backyard sometimes in the middle of making dinner. It's just something that brings me great joy.

3. I'm starting to understand the phrase "life happens". I think it means that I need to focus more and live in the present moment. This moment right here, this moment, IS my life. I can dream, and I can plan for the future, but I live in this moment. I don't want to miss this moment.

4. Life is all about adjusting to change. I have a five year plan. But that five year plan is based on a lot of what ifs and includes alternate plans.

5. I don't spend too much time looking back. I have good memories and they are triggered by music, locations, people, photos and I'm happy to have them. But I don't dwell there. I did the things I did at any given time in my life because at that moment it was right to me. There is very little I can go back and change and very little I would want to change. I admit sometimes I do wonder how things may have turned out different if I had made different decisions. But acceptance allows me to enjoy my life.

6. I believe that most people are good people. I give them the benefit of the doubt.

7. I love the fact that I have a friend I've known since I was 8 years old. And that years can go by and I can see a college room mate or a dear friend that moved away and we're just friends, like we always have been.

8. Sometimes I go outside in the evening when it's dark and I stand in the street and stare up at the sky. The stars and the moon. Just like I used to do when I was 14 years old and living on Cory Lane. Only now I talk to my Mom and Dad in the night sky. And sometimes I think about people I know living in different states that might also be looking at the exact same stars and moon, and it brings me closer to them.

9. I have recently learned how everything we do in life impacts the next phase of our life. It's all like building blocks, one block at a time. And it takes years before you can step back and see just what all those blocks put together has become. But at the time you might not have understood why that particular block had to go in that particular spot. Then one day it all starts to make sense.

10. I love Saturdays. I am learning that laundry, shopping and cleaning can be done other days too. Sometimes a Saturday is for a haircut, a snow cone at the farmer's market and a lazy afternoon to sit and read.

I wear a little silver ring I bought a couple of years ago, on the outside it says "love life" and inside it says "be brave". Words to live by.