one love 2 love - one life 2 live

So I’ve been thinking about 3 things in particular lately: (and I promise that they do connect)
1. marriage
2. the past 5 years
3. the next 5 years

I started thinking about marriage when I found out on facebook that my ex is engaged. To be married. ANYWAY - Angela and I were talking about marriage and how grateful we are that we aren’t married yet. Don’t get me wrong, I do want to get married. But I would have never been able to do what I’ve done in my life if I had been married. And as I think about it – once I get married, I plan on staying married for ETERNITY. And that’s a LONG, LONG time. And so then I thought to myself, Rach you aren’t married, so what can you do and what are you going to do before you do get married and can’t do whatever YOU want anymore?

Which brings me to the second thing that I’ve been thinking about. It’s now June 2010. Five years ago, in June of 2005, I graduated from Redmond High School. And as I thought about what I would do and who I would be in the five years after high school I definitely had other ideas of what would happen. I thought that I would be married and that I’d have had a kid and I would be a wife and a mother. Well, sorry to disappoint my past self but that isn’t what Heavenly Father had in the cards for me and my life. I look at facebook and see these people I went to high school with, they have their degrees and have these important jobs and I feel like they’ve accomplished a lot with their lives. And when I think about what I’ve done in the past 5 years, I don’t feel like I’ve done as much as I could have or accomplished as much as I should have.

In the past 5 years I’ve:
- attended BYU-Idaho for 2 years and gotten my associates degree

- worked at 4 different clothing stores: Victoria's Secret, GAP, Laura Victoria, American Eagle Outfitters

- served an 18 month mission for the Church which included me:

o living in western Germany for 16 months

o learning to speak German


- and after being home from Germany for 10 months, I’ve:

o gotten my job back at American Eagle

o moved to Utah

o completed a semester at LDS Business College

o and I can still speak, read, and understand German



I remember several years ago writting down 3 life-long goals that I had for myself:
1. serve a mission (at the time I wrote that thinking that I would serve a mission someday when I was old, like with my husband or something)
2. learn to speak another language (and not just study it like in school but actually be able to speak and communicate)
3. live in a foreign country
WELL in the past 5 years I've done all of that! So this brings me to the third thing: what am I going to do in the NEXT 5 years?

To begin, I thought it might be a good idea to graduate from a university. I think its about time I get it together and decide what I want to do and study. I’m thinking that I want to be going to Utah Valley University and that I want to graduate with a bachelors in marketing. I also miss Germany a LOT and just being in a foreign country. So I’m thinking that I need to be doing some traveling. I’ll probably do a study abroad or something along those lines. ALSO thinking that I may want to get an MBA. We’ll have to see about that though because I hate school. But who knows, maybe when I’m studying something that I love, I might actually change my mind and like school.

I heard once that if you don't take the time to sit down and write out some goals, that you won't accomplish as much. So this is me taking the time to sit down and type out some goals for my life. Let's see what the next 5 years has in store for me!