Progress is made

Merry meet to your faces!

Well, look at that -- it's only been a week since I last posted. I'm getting better at this!

The past week has brought along the promise of change on the horizon for me and my little circle of comrades. As for myself, I managed to finish the biology course I was taking online. Hooray! I didn't really study for the final. I figure I should have learned it right the first time around. Ha. Not a very good reason not to study, but in all honesty I'm a terrible procrastinator, and apparently playing Hearthstone is more important. However! I think the final went well anyway. I do spend a long time learning each lesson to make sure I understand it in the first place, so that kind of sort of maybe negates the need to study a lot? That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.

So that means I can now apply to the course I want to take at community college. I'm going to become a medical laboratory assistant! This involves taking blood samples out of people, collecting other certain bodily fluids... and preparing/organizing the samples for testing. Among other things.

The reasons for doing this are quite a few, including the following: I want to get out of working in retail/customer service as soon as possible; the course is only 6 months and the tuition is strangely affordable; I have heard good things about the job outcomes of the field, meaning I should be able to actually start working as a lab assistant after completing the course; there is the possibility of working in a hospital or clinics or labs; it should be possible to find a casual/part-time position if and when I manage to start making money off my other hobbies and skills (read: art); and finally, if I like the work enough, it provides a good stepping-stone for the job I was originally looking at -- medical laboratory technician. (The people who actually test the samples.)

So, I've taken the first step towards that! I've sent in my online application to the college, but I think I also need to go in and take a keyboarding test. Which might be trouble. I can type fairly quickly but I don't put my fingers on all the right keys like they used to teach us to do when I was in elementary school. (Remember All The Right Type? Ha! "Dad eats alfalfa salad...") They might also need a transcript proving I took Biology 11 & 12. Which I should be able to get soon.

So that's all going according to plan!

As for other change on the horizon... well, nothing too crazy I suppose, but a few of my best friends are considering finding a place together. Which would be fun because then I could visit them all at once. Also, my sister and her family are planning to move away in the fall. Like, halfway across the world away. I'm not sure how to feel about that one. Of course, if that's what she truly wants, then I am most happy for her... and it does give me an excellent excuse to visit a certain tropical island. But I'll miss her and my nieces, though they'll be back to visit for a few months of each year. I'll have to get very good at letter-writing and remembering birthdays! The Fox keeps trying to get me to use the calendar feature in my new phone to remind me of things, but I've been being stubborn and obstinately old-fashioned about it. I still have a paper agenda book, darn it all! Sigh. Perhaps I'll have to get up with the times one of these days.

I have an exciting thing to do today! I'm going to have my tarot cards read for the first time. Since I got my own deck I've been wanting to go to a professional reader to sort of see how they do it; I figure it'll make it a little easier for me to get into it. I have an instructional book that I've been reading, but for some reason I've been a little held back about actually trying it myself. The self-conscious part of me thinks I can't take myself seriously enough to do it properly, and the skeptical part of me thinks it's all a bit silly... but the deep-down part of me really wants to do it all the same.

So, I'm finally using my birthday money to get myself a reading. I did some Googling and found a nice lady nearby who does it from her home, so I'll be heading out pretty soon to go do that. (There's a couple of them around here, but some of them seemed like not what I was looking for. The ones who claim to be able to "help with all problems: money, business, love, luck, hexes..." And the ones who claim to be "Best European psychic!"... Yeah, those kind of make me suspicious. I don't think the tarot cards are about being psychic or providing magic solutions to your issues. The lady I decided to go with seems much more down-to-Earth.) It'll be a nice reward for myself after finishing my course. I want to see what the cards say about my art, too. I really feel at a crossroads about it, and I'm not at all sure where I want to take it, so maybe this will give me some ideas at least, if nothing else. The ritual-loving part of me is going to enjoy the experience, in any case.

If I like it, hopefully it'll inspire me to fiddle around with my own deck more. I'd like to offer readings to friends and family eventually. I know my lovely aunt is first in line, since she is the one who gave me the deck!

It's nice to write in a blog again, friends. You should try it! By the way, if there's anyone out there reading this, please feel free to comment. I would love to build up a little network of blog-friends. I like reading other people's everyday life sort of blogs, but they're a little hard to find. Most of them these days seem to be all about posting daily recipes or hundreds of photos, without having much in the way of actual writing about life in general... which is what I like to read. People's thoughts and feelings and experiences! Share them with me!

Anyway, better go get ready to leave for my tarot card reading. Until next time!