First of all, some of you who read my blog know me in real life and some don’t. Either way, nobody is probably following what I write here regularly anymore for many reasons. One, I haven’t really been writing much here for a good long while. Two, I’m not all that active on social media and never really have been. Such is life. I’m still here but I’ve been shifting my energy elsewhere for the past many months.

This last year has been about trying to survive by juggling the many balls I have in the air at all times- kids in virtual school, me back to school full time, deaths, sicknesses, huge decisions to make for my family, trying to have some semblance of normalcy so we don’t go batty, trying to make time for my health, etc. 2021 has been about taking a step back, a pause, making time for self care, etc. and allowing me to really remember who I am and what I love to do. I’ve been reading more, playing with my kids, meditating, journaling, and listening to my intuition more. My gut feeling over the winter was that it was time to pursue going back to college, and so I just went for it!

This spring semester I took three classes, or nine credits. 🤯 Was it the best choice I’ve ever made? Was it the timeliest decision of my life? Ehhh…..probably not. Do I regret it? No. I’m so proud of myself that I’m on the cusp of the semester being over and I’ve accomplished so much. I was so afraid of my capabilities of learning online and being able to do a good job with everything else I have going on in my life. So far, I have two weeks left of classes, and I’m rocking an A in every single one of them. I’m currently in classes for a Writing major and a Psychology minor. I’m having so much fun with everything and learning really cool stuff that applies to my life and really should be basic human knowledge that everyone should have access to. I am so excited about what I’m doing and what really fires me up is learning super cool things and then passing them on to other people. Ironically, my first rodeo in college was for a Music Education degree. So it seems fitting that my second time around I would pursue something else creative but also still have interest in the education piece. It would be dreamy if I could eventually go on to teach and do research on cool things for the rest of my life. It would be so fun and wouldn’t even feel like a job, which would be so rad. I don’t think it’s necessary or even always healthy to feel like your job isn’t work because you love it so much, since that can lead to super unhealthy boundaries and a terrible work/life balance. But I wouldn’t hate it if I was doing something that was really fun for a living where I could always be learning and growing alongside students.

My gut also tells me I’ll be back to posting here again in the future when I have more time on my hands. Maybe this summer? But in the meantime, my college professor has told us it would be great for our future writing resumes if we ever want to write a book or anything rad like that, to have a social media presence. I ended up starting a new IG account for that very reason, so if you want to follow me there, you can see what I’m up to. I don’t know exactly how I’ll be separating the two accounts, but I’m thinking beauty/self care/mindfulness/mindless reading will live on my @justinasgems account, and all the other real life, vulnerable, less pretty but more open minded stuff will exist on my @justinagemignani account. Feel free to check out both if you’re interested.

Thanks for being with me on this journey! I’d love to read a comment from you if you do check in here regularly, whether you’re a real life friend or an internet friend. What have you been up to?