I'm trying to avoid writing so much about my emotions, but that's pretty impossible considering who I am :) Besides, this is not just a weblog; it's my journal. I save everything I write for posterity's sake. I don't know who is going to want to go back and read all this stuff, because I'm so darn long-winded, but, well, someday someone's going to find it fascinating, lol.

Anyway, not much went on today. I'm feeling really out of place. It's hard to deal with, because of my recent 'conversion' to gratitude. I finally am happy with my job, not because it has gotten better or changed, but because I've changed. I just started to count my blessings, and my job is a major blessing. Yet, as I walk to and from work, I have plenty of time to just think, and I just feel like I do not belong here anymore.

I had a hard time last night trying to decide whether to join the Princeton Club or not. They have a year or two year contract. I just shudder to think I might still be here in a year, but the probability of it is very high. I would be out quite a bit of money if I move though (I decided to join the club), but I don't want to start putting a price on my health.

But, I have been applying for jobs everywhere. Well not everywhere; I won't apply for a job that isn't better or more oriented to my interests than my current position. I'd take a pay cut if where I move has a lower cost of living, so that's not exactly the problem (although as I search I'm finding that I'm paid pretty well, even if not competitively with people whom I work with). But nothing, absolutely nothing has come up. Not even one phone call. Not even one rejection letter. They simply do not respond, and it's grating on my nerves.

Part of me wants to go back to Spain. I don't know; after September 11th I really learned to value the USA and I decided then and there that my obsession with living in Spain wasn't in my best interests or in the best interests of my future family. But now that I know I won't have a family anytime soon, I just want to change my life. It's not that I have a bad life now, like I said, this whole 'attitude of gratitude' of mine has caused me to appreciate the very things I complained about before. But...I want a change. I want a challenge. I want to meet new people. I want to expand my horizons. However, every time I pray I don't get an answer. So I take that as the standard "make a choice and then ask me" answer. So I'm out there, being unslothful, trying to find the right path to take, but so far I've come up with nothing. Does that mean I'm supposed to stay in Madison? It seems like it, yet the feelings in my heart tell me otherwise.

*Sigh*. I want to get out of debt and live simpler. I want to focus on my blessings and not on my wants. Oh, I've said this a million times, but how I wish I could backtrack. I know what I want to be doing; the very thing that the Lord planned for me and that I refused to accept (ironic how things change, huh?), but I don't have that option. It is so frustrating, so dang frustrating, and while I'm not murmuring, I just feel hopeless about certain things. YES, I want to be a wife and a mother, but it's not my time. I understand that now. I accept that now, whereas I didn't before. The desire has nestled comfortably in the back of my heart, no longer pounding at the gates -- because it now knows why it must be patient and it is more than happy to wait. It took some coaxing, but....anyway.

So what's pounding at the gates now? That's all too obvious. My desire to serve in the capacity I was born to serve. To love. That is my mission in two simple words. I have given greater explanation and depth before and I don't need to repeat it now, but I am simply to love. You would think that would be an easy mission *ironic chuckle*, it sounds so simple. Yet for some reason it is so terribly difficult. Why? Because my mission depends on the free agency of others. Grrr, there's that term again. A gift I embrace and am grateful for, because the opposite of it was Satan's plan, yet it's a gift that just seems to always be fighting against me. But what can I do? Not much other than to keep loving. If I stop, my world stops. My mission stops. My life basically stops. So I must continue on.

Well, enough of the psycho-spiritual metaphors. I should be getting to bed, because I have an early meeting tomorrow. I'll continue this later.