Reflecting on 2016
2016 was a great year. It was filled with adventure, life milestones, hard work, and possibilities for 2017. Since I have not written on my blog for the year, I wanted to reflect on some of the changes that have happened.
As 2015 was coming to an end, I had learned that Executive Headquarters at The Wildlands Conservancy, which happens to be located next to our Oak Glen Preserve office where I was working as a Naturalist, had a position open for an Administrative Assistant. I love working for Wildlands, and I would jump at anything to have a career working for Wildlands. I applied. We had an interview, and I thought I nailed it. A few days later, our Executive Director paid me a visit at the Oak Glen Preserve office. He had told me that they chose to go with a different person for the position. Immediately, I became very upset (internally) that I did not get the position. Before I had a chance to say anything, Dave said they had a different position for me. Because I was really good at speaking with the public and understand Wildlands to the core, he had asked me to be the Conservation Advocate. I accepted immediately. I would work with him on large conservation projects we are working on. At the time, our organization was working to advocate for the protection of 1.8 million acres through three national monuments: Sand to Snow, Mojave Trails, and Castle Mountains National Monument. We accomplished that mission less than a month after the promotion. The job was great. I worked half time in HQ and half time as a Naturalist teaching school field trips. A month had passed since the promotion, and they had terminated the person they hired for the Administrative Assistant. I was given the chance, and time would show that I was the right person for the job. This is my first full time job, and I am loving it. I get to work on major projects that focus on the organization as a whole. Today, I am still the Administrative Assistant/Conservation Advocate. Along with those official titles, and serve as the Secretary for our Safety Committee and the Chair of the Outdoor Education Advisory Committee (which I started). My success working at HQ is paying off. They have decided to hire a part time employee that will handle a few of my day to day tasks to I can handle larger projects and operational management work. My career at Wildlands is headed in great direction. I see many great opportunities in 2017. I hope I will soon be able to live on our Oak Glen Preserve. More details on that if they develop!
My journey to obtain my bachelor's degree has definitely been one crazy roller coaster ride. A ride that began in September, 2006, at Crafton Hills College and ended on February 22, 2016, at California State University, San Bernardino. At the time I got hired on as the new Administrative Assistant at Wildlands, I had a choice to make. I was completely finished with my course work to get my B.A. in Administration with a concentration in Public Administration. All I needed to graduate was to complete one more class for my Environmental Studies minor. Due to a very unwelcoming and unfriendly professor, I was unable to get into the last class for Winter quarter. It would take an entire year before the class would be available again. After much debate, I had chosen to drop my minor. I really wanted to have that minor, but with working full time in a non-profit conservation organization will give me the experience I need. The day I went into the administration office to drop my minor was the day I graduated from college. Since I had completed my course work for my major in the last year, they choose to put on record I graduated in December of 2015. My graduation was very anti-climatic, but it was a major milestone in my life. Many challenges had come from my journey for my bachelors, and that is a story for another time. The first two months of 2016 were huge at this point. I got my first full time job in an organization I love and I finally graduated from college.
The rest of the year was great! Fill with many hikes, hanging with friends, camping trips, and other great opportunities. There were two milestones that would be some of the largest challenges I have ever faced. The first one falls in the the area of 4-H.
The California 4-H program was going through a transition to a new model of management at a state level. The program was going from a State 4-H Council and a four Section Council system to a new California 4-H Management Board System. The process has been extremely exhausting before the transition event began. The process was filled with conspiracies, lies, hope, anger, and political tension. Since high school, I have been heavenly involved with the South Section. Under the new management board, there would be one board at the state level, and the sections would be changed to areas. Each area will have an area committee overseen by a director on the board. For the Southern Area, it seemed that many were not going to step up to apply for a director position. This was worry-sum. Compared to the other sections, South Section had very strong events and had money to support the events. Many were afraid that if we did not have a person who knew the south section well as a director, we could loose a good much of our funding for our great events to support other areas programming. Because of my love for 4-H, and my involvement at the south section, I had chosen to apply. I got it. I have become the Southern Area Director on the CA 4-H Management Board. Many were shocked that I had chosen to apply. I told them that this would be an amazing experience for me to grown professionally and to continue making southern California 4-H programs great!
This has been the most challenging en-devour I have encountered as a volunteer for the 4-H program. As a director, I oversee all 4-H programming the South Area holds in southern California. I inherited seven 4-H events and their committees. I have to work with each event committee to make sure they are successful, following 4-H policies/procedures, and staying in budget. As you can imagine, that is a large amount of work. Along with that, since I am a board member, I am working on multiple different projects at the state level, including developing a two-year management plan which will go into affect in July, 2017. Several hours have been spent since July 1 until to day on conference calls, traveling to meetings, going to events, and working on 4-H projects. I have to work with many adults and youth with different backgrounds and experiences. This has become a second job. Though this is a lot of work, lots of stress, lots of damage control from issues before the transition, and traveling around; this has to be one of the biggest opportunities I have received as a 4-H volunteer. I have learned a lot, and I will continue to grow as I go down this path of being a board member. I have a year and a half left on my term, and I will most likely apply for a second term (if life agrees with this journey plan). Hopefully, I will be the Southern Area Director for 3 1/2 more years. By the time that is over, the amount of experience I will gain, and the impact I have done for 4-H youth and volunteers will be amazing!
The last major milestone that occurred in 2016 was the hardest. It was a personal battle that I had to work through for close to 15 years. On October 11, 2016, I came out of the closet as Bisexual. I chose the route of posting my coming out story on social media: facebook, twitter, instagram, and blogger. Click here to see the official coming out post! Before that, only three people knew my sexual orientation. The reaction was very positive. I did not get any negative comments. Of course, it is possible those individuals did not comment because they wouldn't have anything to say. The only big issue, which I really didn't want to deal with at all, was the reaction from my mom. The next night, my mom came into my room crying. Interesting, the topic was more about the periods of bullying I experienced growing up rather than me actually coming out. It was the most uncomfortable experience I had ever had with a parent. She was upset because I never went to her with those types of issues, and that she had to find out on a facebook post years after the fact. It took a good hour to get her to leave my room. It was a terrible experience on my end. After that night, nothing has ever come up about my sexuality or the issues of my childhood past. Never got a reaction from my dad, but I never plan to bring up that topic. He makes things very awkward as they are. This would just be too much. Life after coming out is the same. Nothing had changed. It doesn't even feel like people know I am bisexual. Because I have been in the closet since middle school, those habits are still in me to not fully speak my mind. In the future, things will probably get better....or stay the same. We will see.
2016 was filled with many exciting milestones. My life has definitely moved in the right direction. I hope that 2017 will continue to this move towards a better adulthood. What are the next steps? My first goal is to move out. Being 29 and living with the parents it extremely annoying. Ever since I started blogging in high school, I had dreamed of living on my own. I have two routes. The first is moving out with my friend Jane and my sister Ashley. The second is my priority, and that is the possibility of moving to live on Oak Glen Preserve. I much rather live at work for free than to live in an apartment over 30 minutes away. Plus, I get to live in the mountains! My second goal, which is your usual traditional goal everyone else says, is to lose weight. With me moving to a full time mostly desk job, I know I am not as healthy as I was at the beginning of 2016. That needs to change! Everything else is up to the universe. I would love to add a goal of finding a person to be in a relationship with, but I believe that love just needs to happen on its own. Setting a goal for that just sounds stupid. Hopefully I can find a special someone in 2017. Only time will tell.
That is 2016 in a very short nutshell. I hope to get back to blogging more to keep a better record of my life, as I used to do before I went up to Bluff Lake in summer of 2015.
As 2015 was coming to an end, I had learned that Executive Headquarters at The Wildlands Conservancy, which happens to be located next to our Oak Glen Preserve office where I was working as a Naturalist, had a position open for an Administrative Assistant. I love working for Wildlands, and I would jump at anything to have a career working for Wildlands. I applied. We had an interview, and I thought I nailed it. A few days later, our Executive Director paid me a visit at the Oak Glen Preserve office. He had told me that they chose to go with a different person for the position. Immediately, I became very upset (internally) that I did not get the position. Before I had a chance to say anything, Dave said they had a different position for me. Because I was really good at speaking with the public and understand Wildlands to the core, he had asked me to be the Conservation Advocate. I accepted immediately. I would work with him on large conservation projects we are working on. At the time, our organization was working to advocate for the protection of 1.8 million acres through three national monuments: Sand to Snow, Mojave Trails, and Castle Mountains National Monument. We accomplished that mission less than a month after the promotion. The job was great. I worked half time in HQ and half time as a Naturalist teaching school field trips. A month had passed since the promotion, and they had terminated the person they hired for the Administrative Assistant. I was given the chance, and time would show that I was the right person for the job. This is my first full time job, and I am loving it. I get to work on major projects that focus on the organization as a whole. Today, I am still the Administrative Assistant/Conservation Advocate. Along with those official titles, and serve as the Secretary for our Safety Committee and the Chair of the Outdoor Education Advisory Committee (which I started). My success working at HQ is paying off. They have decided to hire a part time employee that will handle a few of my day to day tasks to I can handle larger projects and operational management work. My career at Wildlands is headed in great direction. I see many great opportunities in 2017. I hope I will soon be able to live on our Oak Glen Preserve. More details on that if they develop!
My journey to obtain my bachelor's degree has definitely been one crazy roller coaster ride. A ride that began in September, 2006, at Crafton Hills College and ended on February 22, 2016, at California State University, San Bernardino. At the time I got hired on as the new Administrative Assistant at Wildlands, I had a choice to make. I was completely finished with my course work to get my B.A. in Administration with a concentration in Public Administration. All I needed to graduate was to complete one more class for my Environmental Studies minor. Due to a very unwelcoming and unfriendly professor, I was unable to get into the last class for Winter quarter. It would take an entire year before the class would be available again. After much debate, I had chosen to drop my minor. I really wanted to have that minor, but with working full time in a non-profit conservation organization will give me the experience I need. The day I went into the administration office to drop my minor was the day I graduated from college. Since I had completed my course work for my major in the last year, they choose to put on record I graduated in December of 2015. My graduation was very anti-climatic, but it was a major milestone in my life. Many challenges had come from my journey for my bachelors, and that is a story for another time. The first two months of 2016 were huge at this point. I got my first full time job in an organization I love and I finally graduated from college.
The rest of the year was great! Fill with many hikes, hanging with friends, camping trips, and other great opportunities. There were two milestones that would be some of the largest challenges I have ever faced. The first one falls in the the area of 4-H.
The California 4-H program was going through a transition to a new model of management at a state level. The program was going from a State 4-H Council and a four Section Council system to a new California 4-H Management Board System. The process has been extremely exhausting before the transition event began. The process was filled with conspiracies, lies, hope, anger, and political tension. Since high school, I have been heavenly involved with the South Section. Under the new management board, there would be one board at the state level, and the sections would be changed to areas. Each area will have an area committee overseen by a director on the board. For the Southern Area, it seemed that many were not going to step up to apply for a director position. This was worry-sum. Compared to the other sections, South Section had very strong events and had money to support the events. Many were afraid that if we did not have a person who knew the south section well as a director, we could loose a good much of our funding for our great events to support other areas programming. Because of my love for 4-H, and my involvement at the south section, I had chosen to apply. I got it. I have become the Southern Area Director on the CA 4-H Management Board. Many were shocked that I had chosen to apply. I told them that this would be an amazing experience for me to grown professionally and to continue making southern California 4-H programs great!
This has been the most challenging en-devour I have encountered as a volunteer for the 4-H program. As a director, I oversee all 4-H programming the South Area holds in southern California. I inherited seven 4-H events and their committees. I have to work with each event committee to make sure they are successful, following 4-H policies/procedures, and staying in budget. As you can imagine, that is a large amount of work. Along with that, since I am a board member, I am working on multiple different projects at the state level, including developing a two-year management plan which will go into affect in July, 2017. Several hours have been spent since July 1 until to day on conference calls, traveling to meetings, going to events, and working on 4-H projects. I have to work with many adults and youth with different backgrounds and experiences. This has become a second job. Though this is a lot of work, lots of stress, lots of damage control from issues before the transition, and traveling around; this has to be one of the biggest opportunities I have received as a 4-H volunteer. I have learned a lot, and I will continue to grow as I go down this path of being a board member. I have a year and a half left on my term, and I will most likely apply for a second term (if life agrees with this journey plan). Hopefully, I will be the Southern Area Director for 3 1/2 more years. By the time that is over, the amount of experience I will gain, and the impact I have done for 4-H youth and volunteers will be amazing!
The last major milestone that occurred in 2016 was the hardest. It was a personal battle that I had to work through for close to 15 years. On October 11, 2016, I came out of the closet as Bisexual. I chose the route of posting my coming out story on social media: facebook, twitter, instagram, and blogger. Click here to see the official coming out post! Before that, only three people knew my sexual orientation. The reaction was very positive. I did not get any negative comments. Of course, it is possible those individuals did not comment because they wouldn't have anything to say. The only big issue, which I really didn't want to deal with at all, was the reaction from my mom. The next night, my mom came into my room crying. Interesting, the topic was more about the periods of bullying I experienced growing up rather than me actually coming out. It was the most uncomfortable experience I had ever had with a parent. She was upset because I never went to her with those types of issues, and that she had to find out on a facebook post years after the fact. It took a good hour to get her to leave my room. It was a terrible experience on my end. After that night, nothing has ever come up about my sexuality or the issues of my childhood past. Never got a reaction from my dad, but I never plan to bring up that topic. He makes things very awkward as they are. This would just be too much. Life after coming out is the same. Nothing had changed. It doesn't even feel like people know I am bisexual. Because I have been in the closet since middle school, those habits are still in me to not fully speak my mind. In the future, things will probably get better....or stay the same. We will see.
2016 was filled with many exciting milestones. My life has definitely moved in the right direction. I hope that 2017 will continue to this move towards a better adulthood. What are the next steps? My first goal is to move out. Being 29 and living with the parents it extremely annoying. Ever since I started blogging in high school, I had dreamed of living on my own. I have two routes. The first is moving out with my friend Jane and my sister Ashley. The second is my priority, and that is the possibility of moving to live on Oak Glen Preserve. I much rather live at work for free than to live in an apartment over 30 minutes away. Plus, I get to live in the mountains! My second goal, which is your usual traditional goal everyone else says, is to lose weight. With me moving to a full time mostly desk job, I know I am not as healthy as I was at the beginning of 2016. That needs to change! Everything else is up to the universe. I would love to add a goal of finding a person to be in a relationship with, but I believe that love just needs to happen on its own. Setting a goal for that just sounds stupid. Hopefully I can find a special someone in 2017. Only time will tell.
That is 2016 in a very short nutshell. I hope to get back to blogging more to keep a better record of my life, as I used to do before I went up to Bluff Lake in summer of 2015.
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