Closing up shop.

Dear readers,


First off, I would like to thank each and every one who has ever taken the time to read my little blog. It has been so great. :)


I have decided to close up shop on It's Only Life. I started the blog back about a year and a half ago (I think) and I've decided to end it here. 


If you kept up with my blog with any consistency, one of the main things you would notice is that I would often talk about my college woes and victories with you. One of the main issues I've dealt with during this season of my life, and having this blog, has been not quite knowing just what I'm doing at college and with my life. I've talked about creative writing, tech writing, and recently journalism. I keep flip-flopping between ideas because I truly have no idea what I'm doing with my life. I felt like that was such a big deal, being in college and having no solid plans. I was literally freaking out every other week because I got so overwhelmed with choices that I still have time to think and pray about. I was allowing myself to be crippled by fear and anxiety by something that I don't need to be afraid of. If you know me well, then you know I don't like talking about my problems with other people. But I was getting desperate so I talked to a couple people. Suffice it to say, they are much wiser than me. And they helped me to see a little more clearly about the whole situation. Over the past couple weeks I've uncovered some deeply-rooted fears in myself that I didn't even know existed. It's been upsetting but freeing at the same time, and I've decided to end this blog, because I am ending this season of my life. This season of worry and resolutions and generally driving myself mad with all the "what ifs?" and "how comes?" in my life. I'm just going to do the things I love to do and wait for God's direction.


I'm not sad at all to leave this little season of my life behind. In fact, I'm quite excited. And I will definitely keep blogging! I've decided to make a wordpress totally devoted to the things that I write. It'll have a lot of the stuff that I posted on here like song analyses and those little pieces that I wrote. I just don't want to write about myself anymore, it's pretty boring. ;)  I'm going to make the wordpress over this week (CAUSE IT'S SPRING BREAK!!) and I'll post the link so you can check it out, if you so desire. :) 




So here it goes.

My name is Molly O'Sullivan and I have no idea what I'm doing with my life, but that is okay because my God does. I will continue to seek out his will for my life, but right now I'm just going to be still. 

Once again, thank you SO much for keeping up with this blog. I won't delete it or anything, because I make a point of never deleting the things I write. :) But anywho, I'd just like to end this post with some of the verses that I have been thinking a LOT about. 

Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. James 4:14



For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. Matthew 16:25

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33


M

Adventure is out there!

So it's been a while since I have updated on here, and I have a few minutes so here we go:

This semester is going to be one of the better ones I've had at UNT. I am enjoying almost every single one of my classes, and I feel like I'm actually learning something in each one...even math! Who woulda thunk?

Anyhow, the class I'm loving the most is my intro the media writing class. It only meets on Mondays and Wednesdays, but I am learning so much. My professor is incredibly intimidating, and she challenges us all to make the class a priority and do nothing less than the best we can. I know it's only a core class for the major, but then I stopped and thought about it. I came to conclusion that this class may be the most important one I take for this field because it is laying the foundation and teaching the principles I will use for the rest of my journalism career (scholastic as well as out in the actual field).

I really don't know where I see myself in the journalism field. I would love to work for a newspaper. One of the main things I'm learning right now is that all venues of media are merging together, so I may end up working for a plethora of different media outlets. Who knows? Who's worrying? Not me! I'm just having fun right now.

My photography is going very well. I just did my first couple shoot this week and it went over splendidly! I have a couple senior sessions in the scheduling process right now, and overall, I've been having a fantastic time doing the whole thing.

A few weeks ago I bought the Ten-Minute-Trainer exercise program. The program is done by Beach Body and it's basically P90X for people who don't have an hour and a half everyday to devote to exercise. Every workout is just ten minutes and you can do up to three workouts a day. I started a couple days ago and I really had no idea that just ten minutes of intense workout could make me so sore. I love it! :) The program lasts a month and I'm very excited to see how well it works. I'm also coupling the program with eating healthier. Maybe (maybe maybe) if my results are good (which I'm pretty sure they will be), I'll post my before and after pictures. MAYBE.

I'm writing still. Last time I wrote on the blog,  I talked about this idea that I had been cooking up for a while. I'm still working on it, as well as other projects. With the recent changes I've made to my major, I've felt a lot less pressured to get a project finished. I still want to write creative fiction and hopefully get it published, but now that I have a better handle on what field I want to work in I don't feel like a failure if I don't finish something as quickly as I had planned. I'm working on three projects: the one I talked about last time, a new idea, and a very very old idea that I started writing when I was 15. They're all going well.

I absolutely love studying journalism. I'm so excited to see where it will go. But I was talking to a new friend the other day and we were discussing our majors. My friend talked about what he saw himself doing in his major and wanted to know about me. I was telling him everything about the field I'm studying and about how I didn't know where I would end up. As I was telling him where I wanted to end up, I found myself subconsciously thinking that a career is not where I ultimately see myself.

I see myself married and a mother. I realize that most people hear a young woman say something like that and think she isn't smart because she should make something of herself or whatever. But I believe that God has someone out there for me. Maybe I'll have a career first, maybe I won't. It doesn't matter to me. My life will be an adventure no matter what happens. The way I see it, I'm following greatest storyteller in the whole world. He's written my story already, all I've got to do is seek out His will and my life will be an adventure.

Well, it's been lovely catching up. I feel like I say this every time, but sorry for being so inconsistent! Thanks for reading. :)

M

Not too shabby at all

Well, this horrible semester was officially over as of this morning when I got my grades for all my classes. Two As and two Bs, 3.4 cumulative GPA, not too shabby. I'm just glad to be done with this nasty round of classes.

I launched my official photography website; it called Illustrated By and you can check that out here. I'll be posting all things photo on there, so It's Only Life will be primarily written updates from me. If you want to see my pictures, check out Illustrated By.

Christmas is coming soon and I'll be having Christmas in Denton with my grandparents on Thursday. Then my family and I are going to Houston on Friday and we'll be there until after the New Year.

Thanks for putting up with my inconsistent blogging, and I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

Short and sweet

Hello blog, it's been way too long...

A lot has happened since the last time I wrote to you. Government class if about to start - oh, joy! - so I'll make this short and sweet.

I passed the GSP test and have already enrolled in Journalism classes! :)

I have been doing more photography gigs to build back up my portfolio. I tried to do a photography business before, but I really didn't have the time or energy to make it what I wanted it to be. This time, my photography 'business' will be much more laid back, more like a hobby, but still a business. I'm very excited to see where this project goes.

Writing is going slowly, but surely. I've gotten most of the plot figured out and a prologue written. I've started writing the first chapter, and it's going well.

I cannot wait for Christmas break.

I think that's all I've got for now.

Until next time,
M

Zephaniah 1:18 Neither their silver nor their gold Will be able to deliver them On the day of the LORD'S wrath; And all the earth will be devoured In the fire of His jealousy, For He will make a complete end, Indeed a terrifying one, Of all the inhabitants of the earth. 

We cannot be indifferent on this issue. The Lord is a merciful God, but this period of grace we live in will not last forever. There is a day coming. Who among us will be ready? 

Am I the only one who is not watching the game right now?

Why, yes. Yes I am. My entire family (sans my brother who is working on his homework) is sitting in the other room watching the World Series. I think the Rangers are winning, but I'm not sure. Anyhow, I figured since I had a minute, I would update a bit. 

I'm sort of on an Owl City streak; I guess it would be more appropriate to say I'm on a Deer In The Headlights streak. :) 

Anyways, today was the first really cold day of the fall! I woke up and it was cold, rainy, and overcast which is my favorite weather in the whole world. So I put on a sweater and my favorite boots and I enjoyed walking around on campus with the wind blowing crisp and cold. And it only rained when I was inside. :) After my first class, I saw my dad's jazz lab band play in the student center. They were really good. I always forget how much I love jazz until I hear it live. I don't really like listening to it on CD (unless it's Jamie Cullum or Kurt Elling) but watching live jazz is an experience. I love it. 

Tomorrow I have a tutoring session for the GSP test. The Grammar, Spelling, Punctuation Test is a prerequisite to entering the Journalism program at UNT. In order to pass the test, you have to score 14 out of 20 questions (70%) on all three sections. I wasn't nervous at first, because I don't typically have issues with spelling, grammar, or punctuation (I bet you go back and reread this post to check for errors. Its okay, there you found one!) but when I took the practice tests I scored around a 60% on the grammar and punctuation parts. This test really gets down to the nitty gritty rules of the English language, so I'm a little concerned right now. Everyone keeps telling me I shouldn't be nervous, and I know I shouldn't be. I'm just a very poor test taker. I rarely make As on tests, and it is not for lack of preparedness. I don't know if it's actual test anxiety or if I just psyche myself out. Whatever the reason, I don't do well under testing conditions. So I'm just hoping to get in there and kill this test so I can register for my classes. 

Work is going well. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I really love my new job at Justice. I love the atmosphere. It's very chilled out, but at the same time we do a lot of sales competitions and, for some reason, that sort of thing is really fun to me. I love doing customer service. I know that sounds really hokey, but I like helping these little girls that come in find outfits and birthday presents and their moms good deals. At the beginning of the summer, when I'd first started looking for jobs, I had pretty much accepted the fact that I'd get stuck in fast food or something because of my lack of experience. My grandfather worked in retail for 20 some odd years, and retail was kind of my ideal when I started applying places. The fact that I landed my first job at a retail store is completely amazing to me and I'm very thankful. I love my coworkers, they're all amazing. 

Writing is also going very well. I think I said in one of my recent posts how I decided to cease working on The Lion to work on another project, but I didn't really say why. So here's a long rant about my writing: 

I have been writing fiction since I was ten years old, so that means I've been writing for eight years give or take a few months. I only finished an actual story this past August and it wasn't very good. After struggling through plots and characters and settings and all that jazz, I've come to the conclusion that I've been writing the wrong genre for at least a few years. I tried to make my style mimic that of my favorite authors and that doesn't work for a myriad of reasons. I was limiting myself creatively by trying to fit my style into a neat and tidy box, which made my characters flat and the plots meaningless. I wasn't writing from my heart and while that is a corny statement, it was detrimental to every word I wrote. Another that was was wrong with the way I was writing was that I didn't really have a purpose in a particular story. I suppose, for most writers, the goal is to write something great that readers will enjoy. That is an awesome goal, one that I'd like to fulfull someday. But that cannot be my ultimate goal in this process of writing a story or I will fail. I belong to Jesus Christ and the purpose of my life is to further the Gospel and bring glory to the Creator. That purpose bleeds over into every aspect of my life: work, school, friends, career, everything. If my purpose isn't to glorify the King, then I have no purpose and my life is meaningless. So whatever I write has got to point the readers to the first Author who loves them and wants them for Himself... 

And that is what I am endeavoring to do with this new project. I've been putting together this plot for a while, and I've only written bits and pieces. It's tiring, but I take great satisfaction in what little bit I can get done for it because it is all for a purpose greater than myself. Please pray that I would continue to persevere in this idea and that God would bring creative ideas to my head and that I would not loose my focus and get discouraged. He is good all the time, and I know whatever happens, happens for a reason. 

Sorry for being such an inconsistent blogger. Things have been crazy busy with school and whatnot. I will do my best to update more. Thanks for reading!

M 

PS: I don't know why the letters are highlighted black. I didn't do it, and I can't figure out how to turn it off. Sorry :P 

And nearly a month later, the online world learned that she had, indeed, not died

There you are. I have not died. 

And I am sorry for not writing in so long. 

I really do not have time to blog right now, so be content with the fact that I am still alive. 

M