My New Chaos

Wow, it has come to an end.

This is the sappy journal post about what I learned this semester. The highlight reel with short stories is on another post titled, “Chaos in bullet form: Highlights from my semester”.

Onto the sap…

To start, I dislike endings. And, I’ve never been a fan of beginnings… Who’s the problem here…? Not me…

This semester was FULL.

I experienced a great change. The change was good, but also hard. This brought new emotions that were once foreign.

I started this semester newly married. It had been one month and two days.

I was still on the learning curve for lots of things in life.

I lived off campus this semester for the first time and commuted at least three days a week, sometimes five.

When I was on campus, it was an 8-5 shift. I was quite done and exhausted by the end of the day. I spent no additional time there and usually rushed home to cook dinner.

Oh, let's linger on that dinner subject for a minute.

No one tells a perfectionist how frightening it is at first. Cooking for someone else seven days a week, managing groceries that are escaping quicker than ever before… Overwhelming, I tell you… o-ver-whelming.

But I got the hang of it.

Rather quickly, too—either that or school took over my brain with no room left to worry about the once daunting task.

I learned to meal prep and shop at Costco. But also, I learned that I married the perfect man for me. We cook together most nights from start to dishes. I recognize this will not always be the case, as one day our family will expand, but for someone with a dislike for beginnings, this was a big help.

And, I'll add to his credit—I don’t even ask, he just does. Now, he often cooks the whole meal when homework grabs my time for the evening.

Can you tell I'm newly married? Yeah, still overly obsessed with my husband, and you get to suffer through my thoughts about it. :)

Moving past the dinner subject…

Our life felt oddly routine and balanced for about two weeks.

We had school and work, with often free evenings…

Then we decided to move.

We lived in our first cute house for two months. It was a farmhouse—super cute renovated shack. No joke.

I will always remember:

• Crying on the bathroom floor, thinking our washer was broken after just one week

• FREEZING EVERYWHERE WE WENT

• Sleeping with 5 layers

• Having 5+ cops on our street for various reasons...twice

• Making new friends with our neighbors

• Overcoming my dinner fear

• Planning a book club party and a Thanksgiving dinner

• Bonking my head on the low-A-framed ceiling

• Hearing Logan bonk his head on the ceiling and fall down our stairs that were individually twelve inches above each other in height… a hike

• Having an under-the-stairs cupboard

• Getting fresh farm eggs from our neighbor

• Squishing to share our tiny Amazon couch

• Always keeping the shower curtain closed to mask the stench

• Racing flies and gnats inside

• Living 5 minutes from my parents

• Eating so much wedding leftover ice cream

• Unlocking our love for grilled food

And many other things.

It was a wonderful start.

Circumstances lined up for us to be in an all-around better situation. Tired of the cold, we jumped on it and have loved this new place ever since.

So yes, moving was a great idea, besides the fact that we moved on Halloween and at the end of midterms. Moving week was also the coldest week Idaho had yet experienced during this oddly warm winter. Great moving conditions, as you can imagine.

Somehow, my midterms did not kill me; my professors were gracious, we packed everything quickly, and we had many hands to help.

I was about to write “the process was fast,” but I just remembered it was not… lol. With my parents' help, we loaded our trailer on night one with half of our things. We drove to the new apartment. When we pulled in, we realized we had forgotten our new key. So, we left my parents in their warm car and drove back to get the keys.

Night two comes. We had just packed everything we did not need for the last and final night. We drove over to the new apartment and… forgot the keys AGAIN. Not realizing until, of course, we went to unlock the door. My family was with us again, and again, they waited patiently while we carefully raced back to get the keys.

The next day we cleaned, and that night we became parents.

For a little over a week… Ok, calm down.

My parents went out of town, and given the situation we were in, they asked us to stay at their place while we unpacked our new place. We happily accepted.

It was fun…

We ran carpool, got sick, made dinners, played games, and finally started back on our Harry Potter journey. (Logan had never watched them. We set a goal in January to watch the series, and the first week of November, we started the Chamber of Secrets, aka the second of eight movies.)

While all this was happening at home, my school life was giving me a run for my money… or sanity… or both.

I took a class this semester and realized I REALLY enjoyed what I was studying! It took quite an emotional toll on me.

What to do? Career pivot? I could. not. decide.

After what felt like weeks of being pulled in two directions, I had a simple realization in the shower of all places…

People make me happy. I know myself best. Creating makes me happiest…

So with that, I decided no matter how much sweet talk I heard about this new career, I would ignore it and continue on my jolly way to my previously selected career.

Guess what happened? My anxiety eased. My mind was clear, and I could once again feel confident about where I was headed with my life.

The other biggest part of my semester was the journey to creating and starting this blog.

I love it!

Truly, truly, love it.

I took a class… again. Obviously, I am a full-time student with a life revolving around school.

In my class, we had to start a new small business.

I WAS OVER THE MOON.

I have always been obsessed with the idea of business and creating.

But now to decide…

A podcast? Creating planners? A YouTube channel? A blog?

I had so many ideas… too many ideas.

Early on in the semester, my professor made an interesting statement. He said, “Discover your genius. What are you better at than anyone else?”

Confident… was my first thought. My second was “Well, what talents do I have? What could I do?”

To save you emotion, I landed on this blog and jumped right in.

I have lots of thoughts… as you can so obviously tell.

Just as many stories to tell as well.

All the good, bad, ugly, pretty, unique, and ordinary.

So, summing up this semester, I would say it was chaos. This post only grazed the surface. Wait until Tuesday, Dec 23rd, when I post my highlight reel of this semester. Thinking about it makes my eyes start to bulge out of my head just a little. I am amazed it all happened, and in the end, I still smile.

So thanks for reading, because this reflection allows me to remember all the reasons I have to smile and all the many more thanks I have to give.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS WORLD,

Megan