Inner Peace, Lots of Love, and Beyond Happiness.

     I'll admit that I am slightly embarrassed by my obvious extended leave of absence from the blogger universe. It has been over a year since I last blogged and my goodness a lot has happened. For starters, we moved! B. got a fantastic new job in good ol' North Carolina and with that, we said good-bye to the state that gave our family our start. We left Ohio on November 2nd of 2014 and embarked on the long and over due journey of our first PCS as a completed family. Getting to North Carolina was going to be the start of bigger and better things for us in ways that we could never know.
    About a week before we left for North Carolina I got a call back from Paul Mitchell the School asking me to set up a time to meet them for a walk through of the school. With both kids in school and Bryce working his butt off towards his dream job, I figured it was finally time for me to take that big leap into the world of cosmetology once and for all. After the kiddos were all settled in and our house in order, I had my first interview and walk through of my future school. To say that I was in love with everything about it, would be the understatement of the year. Everything spoke to me like the words from a song. I truly felt like I had found exactly where I wanted to be.
   I didn't grow up knowing I wanted to do hair. Hell, I didn't even want to do hair when I signed up. I thought make up was where my heart was going to live and getting a cosmetology license along the way, was really just a bonus. While we all know this dream has lived on for years now, it really took me losing Joshua for me to realize that I had to take time to do something for myself. His passing really opened my eyes to the face that, we often breeze through life thinking that we have all the time in the world to chase our dreams. It took his passing and me crying every single day for almost a year for me to realize that I can either cry for him or I can life a life that he would be proud of, because he doesn't have that option any more. It took his passing for me to realize that it was time for me to put all of my pieces back together (for good) and go after something bigger than myself so that I could show my girls that it is never too late to better yourself and chase your dreams. What started as me wanting to do better for myself, is soon ending with me finally finding myself and who I want to be in this world.
  I started school officially on January 19, 2015. I

remember how excited and nervous I was walking through those doors. I also remember the 45 minute wait in my car before I mustered the courage to get out and finally go into the building, anxiety is a real bitch sometimes. the fear that I wouldn't fit in, the dear that the teacher would hate me or laugh at me because of how inexperienced I was with hair all went away the second i sat down. I had never been so captivated by a group of people in my life. My core class became my core family. We hated and loved each other all the same time and even though we could really push each others buttons, we were all bound together by one common denominator, our love and passion for doing hair. After 3 long months of being trapped in a class together we all finally passed our practicals and made our very first leap in our careers onto the ever elusive floor to ACTUALLY get to do hair and we were all scared out of our minds.

  Since starting I have moved from days to nights and then nights to days due to...well... life. While on nights I managed to qualify for an amazing opportunity called Caper. Caper is a yearly event that PM holds. 2000 students from all over the country get a chance to compete within their school and sell roughly $1400 in product bags. 27 people from my school worked their butts off and all all of the required bags. Now all we had to do was survive the wait until February when we all get to be on our way to DISNEY WORLD for the training of a life time. In all actuality, the wait absolutely flew by. It was like I blinked my eyes and it was time to go. Once Caper was here,  I think we all were in an excitement induced state of panic. Caper brought the opportunity for me to not only mingle with the people that I have idolized since well before i started school, but I also took a leap of faith in myself and I signed up to compete in my very first hair competition.
     I would go into full detail about my entire experience, but I'd be here for many many days. I will tell you that I left a completely different person than when i came. That week was a week of absolute bliss. To be in a room with the owners and co founders of Paul Freaking Mitchell, to get a hug and a pep talk from somebody that is the human god of color in my eyes, or to sit in an audience and listen to the most inspirational people that I have ever met, will be a feeling that cannot possibly be topped. Despite losing (womp womp wooommmppp) my competition, I was and still am on cloud 9 I was so humbled by how much talent was in one place. I came back to school the day after Caper and I knew in my bones exactly what I wanted to do. I want to be a learning leader and one day I will be the inspiration at Caper that pushes future professionals to push themselves harder than they could ever imagine.
    Paul Mitchell has saved me. It took a long time and a lot of struggle, but here I am, 3 weeks out from graduating and it has been the most rewarding year of my life. Not only have I found a second family, but I found a place to call home. Sometimes you go through life and you question everything. Am I supposed to be here? Should I be doing more? How do I know that this is where I belong? There are very few things in my own life that I am absolutely certain of: 1. I am a great Mother. 2. I am the best wife that I can be 99% of the time and 3. I am supposed to be a hair stylist.
  I know I didn't touch much on the family this time, but I will next time. Until then. Stay Gold Blogger world, I have missed you.

XOXO,
Amanda.