Guys! How is it November already?! I feel like 2017 literally just started and now we're 11 months into it and there are only 2 months left until its TWO THOUSAND EIGHTEEN. If you've been around LBS for a while, you may remember that my "word of the year" for 2017 was joy. I wanted to give yall a little update on that. I'm not trying to whine, or gain sympathy, I just wanted to take a moment to be really transparent about this year and (kind of) explain why i've been a little scattered with posts recently.

I feel like maybe choosing joy as my word of the year was a little like praying for patience, and God providing lots of opportunities to choose to be patient. 2017 has been a whirlwind! I feel like it has been filled with opportunities for me to actually really have to choose how I react to things, and I think that I've learned alot and grown a lot as a person this year. 

It's been really, really hard to be at a point in my life where I don't know what I'm going to do next. In high school, I knew college was next. In college, I knew that the master's program was next. but now, there isn't a clear "next step." All my fellow anxious friends, you guys know how stressful it can be to not know exactly what you're going to do next, and I've had to learn to be okay with not having a plan A, B, and C for the next steps in my life. Right now, I'm working with some really great people, getting lots of good experience, and getting to meet some of Tuscaloosa's nicest people, but I think in the back of my mind I know that this is only a small season, and I've been working on deciding "whats next?"  

If y'all know me, you know my love of lists. I have lists of possible ideas for the next step, and then lists of the pros and cons of each of those lists. 

I know, that seems very "J" of me, but if ya'll saw the mess that my house is right now, you'd know that i am 100% "P." (more on myers-briggs and my personality type here, #7. If you haven't taken the quiz yet, and you have less than 12 minutes, you totally should! I'll wait. Just click here to take it)

Another hard ship this year (and this one has been so hard!) was the loss of my safe place. The Department of Art & Art History and the beautiful porches of Garland Hall. Or, i guess I shouldn't say loss, they're still there, but I don't see them every day and I miss the department and my classmates ardently.  Thankfully, I've been able to create a new little bubble of colleagues at my new job, and I'm super grateful to have added such fantastic new people to my world. 

On the flip side, I have been able to travel and visit friends do a lot fun stuff in the past 8 months. I'm kind of even looking forward to next year where there will be no boundaries! I have a list of places that I want to visit and have been working towards a few goals with LBS (a big one, being accepted into LikeToKnow.it was a big goal for this year that I was SO excited to achieve! You can follow me there to see my latest linked posts & shop those looks! I link both home decor & clothing! 

How has your 2017 been? How are your resolutions going?