Influence is everything.

Influence is everything, it prompts choices and carries them out. It can cultivate or crush. Influence is an important catalyst to change. One isn't a leader with out it.

I've been spending a lot of time mulling over my influences and the type of influence I want to be on the world. Ole and I have had this thing we've been saying a few years now and remarkably enough it is something my mother would say, though I always think of thumper from "Bambi".  

"Does it heal, bless, or uplift?!" Sadly, I often have to really think about it because I also say "Is it kind, loving, honest" things that are truth aren't always kind, yet it is loving to be truthful.  

Right now I am getting my life back on track. Renewing my nursing license, school in the works, I have a job in sales again (imagine that!). But I want more than anything to be the right kind of influence. Regardless of state of mind, status, or time of day. What does my character say?  I am working hard on this question. And I am ok with it keeping me up at night.

There are a few people that daily influence me, probably because I'm good at gaurding myself. But they deserve mention. Mike, Ole, Ezra, Nikki, and Megan. I am lucky to have them in my life and I know that out of all the paths I cross, theirs are the ones that choose these cyclical terms.  I'm so grateful for the Good and the "What the fuck?!" influences they all have on me! 

Randomly notso random...

So here I am trying to stick to blogging regularly and a month has already passed.

I don't know if I can technically say "I've been doing this 21day leadership challenge" when I actually started it like a month ago and I'm stuck on Day 3 (what infuriates me), so maybe I can put it like this... 

So I started this 21 day leadership challenge, a challenge it is, because I am stuck. I am "realizing",  which is a tad annoying but also growth worthy! 

When I began to think about what infuriates me and to come up with 3 things I had two thoughts of opposite pallet. The first thought was "only 3? Holy crap what doesn't irritate me?" And the second thought I really dug into myself and now I'm having a hard time finding 3 things. I'm a very intense (like so intense my own mother needs a snorkel, when in a personal debate with me. We are very similar, it's freakish!) I'm very passionate. But, angry? I don't know about that, and though I've had my share of WTFs I am so good at moving forward that I can't think of defining moments. The small ones I can think of are all the same type things. Am I petty? Or just beating a dead horse? Is the main denominator me? All things I have been paying close attention to since day three was presented. 

 

I recently had a couple job interviews, one in particular that kinda knocked the wind out of me. I did not get this particular job.  The last year and a half since I stopped working for Kim in Santa Barbara, something in me has changed, I don't know. I have never been turned down for a job, ever,  before my leaving the position over there. Always on the spot hired, people freaking loved me.  I chose my jobs they didn't choose me. Now... It's like a cosmic joke!  A friend recently posted somethkng and it hit me kinda hard. 

Sooooo, drop all plans for med-school quit cussing and get plugged into a church, become a LIFER like my parents, grand parents and great grand parents then become a youth pastor. Even typing it makes me shake and a hair shy from projectile vomiting. I have more than one calling, I just don't know so much anymore about any of it. I guess that is what living in the now is doing to me. Everyday I give my life to God. I am not going to school this semester to allow myself time to live and breathe and not feel restricted by "MY ADGENDA" which in the last year has completely led to shit grades, and stress out the wazoo! 

     *SIDE(shit)NOTE: Upon waking this     morning the cat was vomiting and Ezra yelling (in a pair of footy Jammie's, pacifier in mouth, blankey in hand, monkey under elbow while pointing at the cat) "noooo, oh shit, mommy, look!" 

Anyway, am I not ready for what God has planned? Am I where I am supposed to be and that is, a place of wandering? What infuriates me? What passions drive my focus? Like Jesus, Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill... Angry for the right reasons, passionate about change and hope. All men that lived lives of being themselves and being "ok" because the understanding for their cause was on it's way. What is on it's way for me? 

All I truly know is I'm excited for it. I am open, ready and willing to take the plunge or twiddle my thumbs. Only time will tell.

~Mandi