Jess's Journal: Life Unscripted

This blog post is an important one for me to write. It has gotten apparent that my twenty-fourth birthday is coming up in a few weeks and I, yet again, have put myself in the crossroads of life. My devotional readings as well as my prayer time revealed revival as a #OneWord for 2020. But wait, there's more. One of the other words I've considered is grit. Grit definitely ties into responsibility. And one of the many gripping things I've wrestled with in the past few years is that while the Lord closes doors in order to protect us, we have to sacrifice our own comfort and safety to follow the path that the Lord has for us. I think now is the most important time to recognize that God  usually does not put you in the most comfortable or closest school or path. We're not meant to be comfortable. We're not meant to be secure. We're meant to get out of our comfort zone. I think that's the most important value of all. At the end of the day, our own closed doors se

Ten days until the end of the decade, and I am getting ready to reveal my #OneWord for 2020. Although this time, I will also talk about how the past decade has shaped me all the way to now. At the start of the decade, I lived through the heydays of Facebook and Twitter. I was in middle school trying to get my start in music through covers of popular songs. But then I realized a key part of copyright. Then I tried to get my comedic chops going and it did not work out either. As of today, my YouTube channel sits empty. Then, Vine came along my high school days. Humor dominated my junior and senior years of high school. If you haven't heard of Vine, it was basically a six second version of TikTok minus the lip-syncing.  In music, I gradually went from listening to pop, hip hop, and country to rock, punk, and metal with some hip hop sprinkled in. Contemporary Christian music also was a part of my playlist in some moments. That was a snapshot of my life over the past ten years

Today as I am sitting at the table, with coffee in hand, preparing for a December TV update for Pop Culture Cosmos, I thought about a lot of things. Jessica's Show is coming out of hiatus. I have been radio-silent on the podcast front since November 17. There are a lot of things to address. It is December 12, and a lot has happened since the last post. I'm going to clarify the paragraph, " When I was in college, I surrounded myself with like-minded people, same views and interests. But nowadays, I want to surround myself with people with different backgrounds, cultures, views, hobbies, etc. I have since limited contact with the people I associated with in college, with the exception of a few people. I'm probably not going to get into the details of what led to that, because I have no business putting all that stuff out there on social media. But one thing is for sure, I don't have the same group of friends I did back then. That's life. There's no drama, n

How do I word this blog post? It's December 2, and the year has gone by super fast. I've learned quite a few lessons on forgiveness and relationships in the past few years, but more so in the past year. I have a hard time putting this into words. Two posts were in my drafts folder on this blog and this year is not even done yet. There are so many open possibilities that I have at this point so I can go anywhere if I set my mind to it. Back in high school, I was trying different things. I was on the journalism staff briefly, I was in choir for two non-consecutive years, and I tried my hand in academic team. I was also secretary of my high school's Book Club and the Future Business Leaders of America, and interestingly enough, books were an integral part of my undergraduate career. Even now, I am still trying out new things. I learned that for every plan that does not work, there are always backups. I will be sharing one of my backup plans. For a backup plan, I thought