The past two years have been full of changes for everyone. Whether the changes have been good or bad for you, the world looks very different now.

I decided to take some time to sit back and really look at how my life has changed recently. The past year has been full of some of the biggest ups and downs I have ever experienced. From graduating from Texas Tech to starting my first big job, I have been going through some incredible changes.

Writing that out, I realize that those sound like incredibly positive things (and they are). So, where are the downs? Well, all of the stress of the pandemic, job hunting, and trying to decide what direction I wanted to go with my life, lead me to a mental decline that put me back in therapy for the first time in years.

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I will say, in all my time dealing with mental illness, I have never viewed needing therapy as a bad thing. I feel like it truly shows the strength someone has to recognize that they need help, and use that resource to improve themselves.

The past few months of therapy have really helped me reflect on what’s been going on in my life, and just how much it has changed.

This time last year, I was in my final semester at Texas Tech. I was so ready to start the next chapter of my life, but also incredibly scared of the unknown that was looming post-graduation.

You see, I am a bit of a creature of habit, so the unknown can be a bit daunting for me. I like to know what my plans are in advance, and an itinerary will never bore me.

As that walk across the stage approached, I realized how I had never come to a point in my life where I didn’t know what the next step would look like.

I didn’t know if I would be staying in Lubbock, what exactly I wanted to do for work, or if I would even be able to find a job at all in a time when many businesses were shut down.

I was such a ball of stress at that time, stuck in a swarm of applications that were met with rejections, or even worse, no reply at all. I remember crying to my partner daily about how confused and worried I was that no one wanted to hire me.

Was my education not good enough? Or worse, was I not good enough?

I place a lot of self-value onto my success, so I really tore myself down over those rejections. Of course, it was all worth it in the end, and I am thankful those other places turned me down. Those rejections lead me into the position I’m in now, and I am incredibly grateful.

I wanted to reflect on that time now I am at another major change in my life.

I am moving into an apartment on my own for the first time, and I am once again a ball of stress. Definitely not as bad as it was during the job hunt, but it is still a big milestone.

It is interesting to look back on how different my life looks now. I had no idea I would be where I am today, and I am so happy that I have made it to this point.

If you made it this far, I hope you can at least take with you that you are not alone in your struggles. If you are currently going through a big change, a hard time, or anything of the sort, you will make it through.

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Test Your Texas: How Many of These Jeopardy! Questions Can You Answer?

Jeopardy! as we know it has been on the air since 1984, but the show got its start way back 1964.

Over the decades, the writers have managed to keep coming up with challenging questions to test the intellectual might of America's best and brightest (and sometimes softball questions for celebrities).

Texas is a place packed with personality, culture, and history, and there've been hundreds of questions/answers about the Lone Star State. Let's take a look at a few recent ones, and keep an eye out because we'll add more soon to test your Texas trivia skills and challenge newcomers.

How many of these can you get right without Googling?

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