Purpose? Huh?

What is my purpose? Hmmm....good question. I bet you could answer it better than I could. I guess my purpose right now is just being a daughter, a sister, a student, and an aunt. Being an 18 year old senior in high school doesn't come with a lot of meaningful purpose if you ask me. My purpose is to have fun, don’t do anything too stupid, and get good grades so I can go to a good college and get a degree in something. Being a daughter comes with doing chores, and making my mom happy, I guess. Being a student means I need to work hard and be responsible. I think responsibility goes along with pretty much every part of your life. Responsibility is key in accomplishing tasks, keeping a job, and even creating friendships.

Every time I see an adult that I know and don’t see on a daily basis the questions are always the same, “How is being a senior? Where are you going to college? What do you want to do with the rest of your life?” My answers are always the same, senior year is awesome, it has been a lot of fun so far. As for where I want to go to college I have decided to attend Northwest Missouri State in Maryville, Missouri. My sister attended college there also and was a Tri Sig, I plan to follow in her footsteps. Not completely and not intentionally actually.

My mom wanted me to visit there because it is where my sister went, and my sister loved it there. So when I went I already kind of knew the campus but, I was really little when my sister went so it was kind of new at the same time. I didn’t expect to like it there so much; it just felt so nice to be there. When attending Northwest, I plan to major in Business Technology and minor in either Business Management or Business Education.

I feel like my purpose after college is to move back to Aurora, I know I for sure want to live in a smaller community and why not live where I grew up? It seems pretty logical to me, I had a great time growing up here, the community is really expanding, and everyone here feels like family, you get that small town fame and I want my children to have as great of a childhood as I have had. Cities are not for me, that’s one of the main reasons I chose Northwest also, it’s in a smaller town, not quite as small as Aurora but definitely not as big as Lincoln or Omaha. The small towns are what I like, the country feeling, where my kids won’t have to go far to be in the country and ride horses, or drive a tractor, or go hunting. Everyone in the town knows you and cares about you; in big cities you don’t get that feeling.

         For most people their purpose is to make the people around them happy, and I think that’s right, part of everyone’s purpose is to make the ones around you happy, if you’re happy most likely you’re making them happy, and if they’re happy they’ll make the ones around them happy. It’s a continuous cycle that never ends. Thinking about it I realize that if there are people around me having a bad day or just grumpy it tends to alter my mood as well. So everyone’s purpose should be to make people happy.

         I believe that people have many different purposes. Some purposes may not even become relevant until certain points in their life. Your purpose changes in every stage of your life. Some say that your purposes are set from the beginning and they’re always the same. But to me it just depends on what turns you make in life. Maybe by some freak coincidence your end up somewhere differently one day and meet someone new, your purpose may be to help them on the journey of their life, whether it being getting on a straight path, or just giving them a little advice. Your purpose that day has changed from what it was that morning. Achieving your purpose most likely will affect the ones around you and hopefully for the better.

         I’m still not completely what my purpose is besides being me, making people happy, and going to college but, one day I will know. And right now that’s all that matters. I don’t need to know my whole life right now. It’s fun to have surprises. J

Where am I? I am geographically in Aurora, Nebraska home of the Huskies.

 I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but here. Aurora has been my home since I was two day home. It’s where I came after I was born in York. My family has lived in my current house since a few years before I was born. Most of my friends say my house it really big but growing up we barely had any room. With both of my older brothers that have booming loud voices you could never get far enough away in the house to block them out. You could be clear up in the attic and they would be in the living room two floors down and you could still hear them talking. My sister and I have loud voices also, but I like to think that we can’t be heard from that far away.

Most people refer to my house as the Christmas house because the trim colors are red and green, the green isn’t a Christmas green though thankfully, it’s more of a light olive green. My house is about 120 years old and has tons of little character in it. My mom is also an amazing decorator and loves to bring out the old little things in the house so people notice them.

When my house was built a man was building for his lover who was forbidden to see him by her father, she was forced to move to California right when the project began, but the entire time she was there they sent love letters back and forth expressing their love and finally she was able to come back shortly after the house was finished. They saved all of the letters and when I was little my mom found them hidden in the storage room in our attic. She copied them and put them in a nice binder altogether. She tracked down the descendents of the couple and contacted them. The family knew exactly what she was talking about and so she sent another copy of the letters to them. A few years after the exchange of the letters they came down to see the house and be able to look at all the detail they talked about in the letters to make sure the woman was getting the best house her lover could make her.

My house resides in Aurora, Nebraska obviously and I am very proud of my town. Ever since I was little I remember every year they improve by updating or creating some new recreational thing, the skate park, disc golf course, splash pad, PAC, football field, softball complex, and soon the pool. Aurora always strives to be better and it encourages us kids to do the same. In a community that wants to make sure it can offer something for everyone it makes the kids feel loved and we try harder in our athletics and academics. If our community was falling apart and going downhill I’m sure it would affect our dedication to do well in school. We wouldn’t care if we won our athletic competitions because our town would be supporting us as much as they are now. 

Whatever you do in this town whether it’s winning some small prize at the county fair or making it to some event on a national level you know you’ll make it in the paper and be recognized for it, as you walk around town there’s no doubt that people will congratulate you on your hard work and it’s a great feeling. Now if you would live in a larger town even Grand Island you wouldn’t be recognized like that and most people wouldn’t even know who you were. That’s one of the perks of a small town, everyone knows you and knows who your family is, that can also be a problem sometimes like when you get a speeding ticket and it’s in the paper. Nobody will congratulate you for that piece of paper. But even knowing that my grandma can see when I’m breaking the law on the highway and I’ll probably get a call from her shortly after she reads it I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else but here. I counting on Aurora to keep up with the development and improvements so I can move back and send my kids to school here.

                I live in the south eastern part of Nebraska, only 56 minutes from Memorial Stadium (timed it with my brothers) and you can count on our family being represented there every Saturday that there is a home game. We are Husker raised and there is no other way. My brothers almost didn’t let my sister’s wedding happen when they found out that her husband was an Oklahoma Sooner fan, but now that we aren’t playing each other anymore the Christmas celebrations aren’t so loud with the debating and arguing about who has the better team. 

I wouldn’t dream of living in any other state than Nebraska. I don’t like big busy places I’m more of a gravel road type of girl. Interstates are for the people with nice cars they don’t want to get a little bit of dirt on, I prefer my car (Spike) to have some mud on him, he looks better that way.

I love my home.

I love my town.

I love my state.

This is ME!

Who Am I? This is a question I honestly have no idea how to answer. I think I'm a very outgoing and fun person. My friends are very important to me. They are always there for me and help me through everything. I do the same for them. We have been through a lot together and it has brought us  that much closer. Without my friends I don't know how I would have gotten through the past few years. My family is right up there with my friends. They're even in my book and I think that's the way it should be because friends are pretty much your family also. Friends know just as much if not more about your life than your family does. I love to hang out with both my family and my friends, I have five nieces and two nephews who mean the world to me. I'm with them every chance I get and I spoil them like crazy. They are all soo dang cute and just funny. Little kids are so much fun but as a profession I know I wouldn't be able to be around them all day. I am planning on going to college at Northwest  Missouri State (GO BEARCATS!) and major in business management or business technology. I haven't quite decided yet. I like the more professional side to things. So that’s where I’m  trying to head towards for my future.

My friends think I am a very loud individual, which I guess I am. I can't help it, it runs in the family both of my brothers and my dad are loud also. Our voices just carry very well and I am very energetic sometimes so it gets louder then too. But one think about my loud voice that I love is that I can scream like crazy and cheer when it comes to athletic events and never loose my voice. No matter how much I yell and screams I never loose it, it never even goes raspy where it sounds like you’re dying of a cold. The  loud voice goes with my personality. I’m an outgoing and out spoken person, I tell you how I feel and I expect others to do the same.

I  work at Cornerstone Bank in Aurora, Nebraska and I love it there. I love the people I work with and the amazing customers that come through. In my free  time you can usually find me with my friends doing just random things. We love to have bonfires, go hunting, and just hangout outside most of the time. When I’m not with my friends you can most likely either find me at the cabin, playing with my nieces and nephews, or just sitting around the house relaxing. Every Friday night during the fall you will find me in the stands of every Aurora Huskies football game. Aurora Husky football is a way of life around here. You don’t choose to go to the game it is a must. If you miss it you better be on a death bed or a close loved one is. Heck we’ve had two kids with cancer even make it to most of the games. If they’re that dedicated I think the rest of the town should be too.

When I was talking about how my friends and I have been through a lot I was mainly referring to the one key person we lost just about 10 months ago. He was a very close friend of mine who was like a brick wall. His name was Jacob Ervin Peters. I always have to use his middle name because I was the only one brave enough to ever call him by it. Normally if a guy would use it they would get punched or tackled or something. But he knew not to hit me because I hit right back. Jacob was in my close nit of friends and he was the one that wouldn’t ever shut up about sports, we would be trying to just hang out and have a normal night with all of our friends and he would just start talking about sports. I think that’s the only thing he ever talked about unless it was making fun of somebody and how much smarter he was than them. He did that quite a bit. He knew he was smart and like to make sure people knew it. Jacob was a big part of our class and all of our lives. He died on November 16, 2011 after fighting for about ten months against the one thing that takes the most lives in this world. Cancer. Cancer just plain sucks. My sister  had it, it’s been about five years now that she’s been clean of it, but when Jacob told all of us he had cancer, which was on Facebook by the way the worst place to tell someone he has cancer, I felt like the everything was going down hill. I knew that my sister had gotten through it but she had melanoma and Jacob had lymphoma in the beginning which I knew he could get through because he was so strong and persivered through everything, but then the infections started coming and soon he got diagnosed with leukemia also. That’s when I didn’t know what to do anymore. I was scared to talk to him because I didn’t want to loose him but I knew if I did talk to him I would probably start crying because I was so scareed and Jacob hated crying he was the tough macho man. When we lost him I knew he gave it everything he had because Jacob Ervin Peters does not give up on anything. Because of Jacob and all he went through I feel I am a stronger person because knowing he was so weak in the end but still tried to do exercises so he would be able to play football this season just makes me want to try so much harder in life for him. My friends make me who I am today. I know everybody has heard it and it’s so corny, but it’s so true and I didn’t realize that until I lost Jacob. So you need to realize it now!!! Before you loose someone close to you like I did. 

 Peace out.