All Rolled Into One

I’m a little bit of everything

All rolled into one

I’m a bitch

I’m a lover

I’m a child

I’m a mother

I’m a sinner

I’m a saint

I do not feel ashamed

I’m your hell

I’m your dream

I’m nothing in between

You know you wouldn’t want it any other way

— Meredith Brooks, “Bitch”

Hi friends! I’ve been dying to get back to blogging and writing my heart out to share with you ALL KINDS of things that are going on in the world of KK. So here is a deep post I have put together after a shitty week where I found my silver lining.

Because no matter how shitty the situation, there is always something positive that can be said for what comes next…

Some events have gone down recently that have made me dig pretty deep about WHO I am, WHAT I am capable of, and how I MOST want to be spending my time. We all only get one life (unless reincarnation is real in which case we all have QUITE the surprise coming) and the way we spend our time as well as the mentality that we hold while marching through this time is so so important.

If you are spending your time doing things that you don’t love and don’t allow you the freedom of creativity, you may not have a positive mentality as a result.

Conversely, if you don’t have a great mentality about what you are showing up to spend MOST of your time doing, day in and day out, you might not be able to love what you do or even think that you have creativity.

You might feel stuck.

You might feel like you’re waiting for life to REALLY begin.

You might feel like you’re a buzzing ball of life with curiosity and valuable lessons to teach other people, but you aren’t spending your precious time doing these things that light you up.

You might feel like, “I’ll be happy when…”

Oh wait, am I talking about myself out loud?!?!

All of this introspection got me thinking about all of the things I have done in my life, the things I’ve learned, decided I was interested in enough to focus on it in school, and I have never followed all the way through on any damn one of them.

But that is ooooookay!

Because I WILL. In my own way.

And I’m glad I didn’t, yet. I have learned so much about a plethora of different things that I now can take it all with me and add it to my arsenal.

Those who know me really well may know all of the things I have gone to school for or the directions I decided I wanted to take at one point. As I was thinking about all of these, I HAD to smile a really really big smile because it’s like this full circle moment for me. I am finally starting to see how my interests ACTUALLY make sense and can all be combined into this great big CRAZY life dream that I used to never understand but felt somehow pulled along towards….. SOMETHING. I am finally starting to see how it IS possible to have crazy dreams that seem so scattered and unrelated and you can bring them together into something truly innovative and exciting.

Before anyone asks, I’m not yet sharing all of this in detail. It is MY dream, and I’m not going to throw it out there for anyone other than me (or Sammy!) to scrutinize and shape before it’s even had a chance to come to fruition. I’m just going to keep plugging along in what I hope is the right direction because that’s really all a person can do. Day after day, until it all takes shape. So bear with me.

The universe has been throwing a lot at me recently. I’m just trying to nod my head and let it know, “I hear you, loud and clear!” I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s amazing what you can find when you are open to being guided by something that is outside of your control.

SO, for funsies, I did want to back it up just a bit to discuss my past. It’s awesomely scattered and for some people, you might just understand me and where I am coming from a liiiiiitle bit better 😉

When I was growing up, I ALWAYS wanted to be in science somehow. I loved the thought of being a veterinarian and I’m not sure how much thought I ever REALLY gave it past defining this comfortable childhood dream that put me in the category of Kids Who Know What They Wanted To Do. Of course, I never really knew what the hell I wanted to do, but alas, this is what I thought I SHOULD do because I had said it aloud so many times that it must be true. I loved animals, but I also LOVED nerdy things like checking the water quality of the creek by our house (I had a water testing kit, y’all), the constellations, and gemstones, and I was obsessed with the way of life of the native American.

You can’t make this up.

I’m gonna stop for just a second to insert the reminder right now for anyone who may have forgotten, that I am an only child. The imaginations in only children must truly be unlike any other. It honestly should be studied in depth. If anything, the books that could be created would be much better than those by most well-known authors of children’s books, for real. Only children have enormous amounts of time that we have to fill by doing curious things that only WE understood, unlike you people with siblings that are always bounding into your atmosphere and forcing you to be social.

When we learned about native Americans in school, I took their way of life home with me. I spent a lot of time outside in the woods as it was, so I started imagining that I was some sort of hunter/gatherer. Of course I didn’t do any hunting, but I did lots of gathering…. no eating, just the gathering of berries and acorns and stuff. Kids are weird, man. I have no explanation other than I just was captivated by their DIY natural lifestyle and everything they made and did by hand. I thought it was so cool to have been responsible for the MAKING of their own things, food, clothes, supplies.

However, I am not aware of any real-life major where they teach you to do these things and allow you to just go out and LIVE in a teepee forever in feather and leather like the tribe of your choice.

And so, regardless of any of my other interests, I still grasped at the straw that was labeled “veterinarian” when I was asked what I wanted to be for the rest of my life at 18 years of age.

Of course, they also don’t make Veterinarian as a major. So I had to randomly choose SOMETHING that was related and could set me on the path.

Somehow, I decided to go with Biochemistry.

I’ll never forget the feeling when I received the Biochem major introduction packet from Virginia Tech and it had this giant 3D molecule on the front of it that caused me to immediately FREAK OUT thinking, “oh no, WTF did I just get myself into?!”

I didn’t know at the time how Biochemistry ties in to food science in the body, and nutrition, and the importance of certain substances in the body until I actually took the class later on. But, the not knowing and that giant molecule of you-don’t-know-what-the-hell-you’re-getting-into on the cover of that folder scared me enough to change my major before I ever got started to Animal and Poultry Science. It just seemed like the right choice given the options.

Only there was no concentration for small animals. So I decided still that I was going to stick with it and I really think that was the most interesting major one could have, in terms of experiences — haha! Seriously. I went on an overnight field trip to all of these farms and places in the industry. After my labs, I would come meet my friends at our dorm’s picnic tables and be like, “oops, I need to wash my hands, I still have sheep shit on my palm!”

Seriously. This was real life.

I learned how to flip a sheep upside down (hilarious) and what high quality feeds looked like, and what high quality meats looked like. I went to an auction and did a report on it.

I mean who ELSE can say this??

I took classes in the business of agriculture and I started feeling like, okay, I didn’t actually sign up to be a farmer, here. What am I DOING with my life?!

I then learned that I had to choose two five-credit courses to concentrate in to finish my major (5 credit classes are de.man.ding in case you don’t already know), and my choices were: cows, pigs, chickens, horses, or sheep. THIS is where I decided this major was definitely going to be a big bag of NOPES from me as long as I had the time to change it up.

Now I feel like, the joke’s on me!

But back to the story 😉

I got scared about that farm life, and switched to Biology instead.

As the end of school grew near and I got to where I actually had to make life decisions in terms of a career, I started thinking maybe I wanted to go to med school. That human health and the birth of life really interested me and I just HAD to be a part of the process.

But there was this looming issue that stood between me and grad school: the fact that I had no experience. I had worked at some vet hospitals over the summers and holidays, but I didn’t really know what I was doing or why I thought I wanted to be doing it. I studied my ass off and took the testing to get into med school and I then received a completely average score. That made me feel like, in that arena, I really was nothing special. I had never worked in the industry whatsoever and just kept choosing things that sounded cool and related to my interests.

But you wanna know what I WAS doing for work while I was in college?

Cooking.

I worked for a catering company for a couple years while I was in school. Back then, I was much different as a person, I think. I was more shy, and less intuitive to creativity and less likely to branch out, but the people I worked with were amazing and I learned so much. I decided that I would next go to culinary school.

I landed on the Art Institute of Charleston as my next place of learning and that summer I moved to South Carolina and started school in October. I worked at a restaurant in the evenings and went to school in the mornings. Culinary school was super fun! Showing up to class where you just have to cook for a few hours – are ya kidding me? I even got my science fix by having a food science class, as well as microbiology.

BUT THEN the real life realization that I, of course, had not previously thought through, was the lifestyle of your typical chef. Or at least what I thought it was limited to. Working long hours on your feet, those hours being nights and weekends (I am a complete MORNING PERSON who very much values her holidays off with family!!), not to mention the risk involved in the industry as restaurants come and go by nature. It scared me and ultimately made me decide that I was going to quit school. That I had learned the basics and I very much appreciated all of that knowledge, but it wasn’t for me. I would say, “I can always cook on the side if I decide I want to later!”

So off I went, to figure out my shit, once again.

In case you haven’t decided this for yourself yet, I’m not super great at “figuring out my shit”, but I swear I am at least chipping away at it diligently! Maybe I’m just made for some complicated purpose that I myself have to create. Like everything else in my life, how will I know if I don’t try?

In my post-culinary school quest for “what am I meant to do with this life”, I got a little lost for a while.

I eventually came back down to earth.

I knew I was going to need some help in terms of a job, and I landed on the Charleston Young Professionals website and found a mentorship program they had going on. I was so lucky, because that particular day I literally stumbled across the page, it was the last day to sign up for this program and I had barely made the cut. The program worked by entering in some information about yourself and your background and you would be paired with one of the mentors who volunteered to help out based on the similarities.

I remember them telling me how difficult it was to place me with anyone because there were no science people on the mentor list. My background was completely different than your average “young professional” (I strongly felt like anything BUT a young professional at the time, still kinda do) and I ended up paired with an engineer for lack of anything more closely aligned. I mention this here because it’s funny to me now. OF COURSE I was the oddball who they couldn’t place, because I really don’t fit any molds. So I keep ending up with stepping stones until I can figure it out for myself. Most people may not understand this, but I wholeheartedly do because it is my life.

My mentor lined me up with my first “big girl” job with a great company and a {mostly} great team of people that I still keep in touch with. I worked in the field of IT, which came in REAL handy for the job I currently hold and the work I’ve done with this particular company over the past 4.5 years. But like all good things, my first corporate job eventually came to an end when I decided it was time to move forward in my 8-year personal relationship and I moved in with Sammy in Raleigh.

I struggled to find work there for a few months.

We got to the point where I was not going to be able to pay rent, and literally the month before that happened, I got so lucky again and was able to get a job working for LabCorp as a Cytotechnologist. I was ABSOLUTELY ECSTATIC to learn and be in the science field, finally! And I was working in the field of prenatal Cytogenetics, so I felt somewhat aligned with my previous OB dreams. I became certified in Cytogenetics, but was realizing that the repetition of being a lab technician was something that was boring me. Mentally and physically, it was tough to be the lab tech who does the same procedures over and over and over again every single day, but doesn’t get to make any decisions or participate in the innovation process. For me, the edge of innovation just is where the excitement is at and I know this NOW without a doubt. Repetition with little freedom or creativity just makes me feel naturally boxed in.

I quit when we moved to the Charlotte after 3 years in Raleigh, and I had an even tougher time finding work there.

I searched vet assistant jobs.

I searched all kinds of lab jobs.

I applied with all the temp agencies.

I decided again that I needed to dig deep and figure out my shit. I did some soul searching. I took some personality tests. I searched really hard for the things that brought me joy in a career, and I decided I wanted to be a counselor. I wasn’t sure which kind, because there really are a lot of options there, so I started taking some grad school level classes at UNC-Charlotte for a little bit in Counseling. I was extremely interested in this, but when I am told I have to pick one and ignore the rest, I tend to become really indecisive.

And after about 10 total months of searching for work at the same time, I finally landed on an admin assistant job. It paid shit and it was a haul to get there, but I did it anyway because I had no other option at the time.

And you guys, If I had never done that, I might not be sitting here typing this or have arrived at the decisions that I have now. I am so glad I stuck it out because though there were obvious boundaries, I was allowed to grow my position into what it is now through mentorship, learning new information, and my innate drive to just be GOOD at whatever it is that I do.

I have ALWAYS gotten really mad at myself when I think I am a failure at something, so when I run through all of these life choices that I’ve made and walked away from one by one in this post, I don’t say them lightly.

But they have all led me to where I am now and I have zero regrets.

They have all taught me so many things and introduced me to so many new people and ideas and industries. I have learned what I like and dislike about them all, but the beautiful thing is that I can take it all with me upward and onward to the next level.

So we have now caught up to the present day… Is anybody as exhausted as I am just talking about all my life’s directions??? There are good reasons why my blog is called the Kurious Kaleidoscope! I always like to say that I know a little about a lot. I am literally a walking kaleidoscope of curiosities and random tidbits of information. The constant here for me (and many many others) is that I start feeling stagnant and freaked out only when it becomes forced and there are boxes placed around the idea of what I am allowed to do in any given career itself.

I am still learning… but in general, I feel so unleashed with possibility all of a sudden!

I just wanted to make this post to point all of this out for those who may not know some of my biggest focuses over the years of my life. It’s fun for me to revisit all of this because, they say history repeats itself… Might as well be prepared!

Health. Homesteading. Writing. Science. Helping and counseling other people. Cooking and nutrition.

This is ME and some of the LOVES of my life, in a nutshell. I really don’t want to live in a world where I have to pick just one… and so I won’t. I’m working really hard to mesh it all together because I truly want to do them all.

I don’t claim to know it all BY ANY MEANS; I just know a little about a lot 🙂 But I still show up every day willing to keep growing and learning and changing. I wouldn’t change one part of my past indecisiveness for the world for what it’s gained me in knowledge about the things I care about, and myself.

I’m a little bit of everything, all rolled into one.