Introducing: Courtney Allen

Hello again world,

Please visit my new website  CourtneyAllen .  The site is only three days old, so please come back and visit to show your support.  Thanks!

Courtney

Daily Dose: A Person Who Is Free & Only Associates with the Brave

My Morning Prayer


I've never been one who has ever feared my potential...the older I get, the more I learn that people fear their own courage and the courage of others. Not me! I'll never be quick to back down. I know my value and I know I am blessed. More importantly, I know courage does not mean fearless...it means being fearful but still pulling through. THANK YOU GOD for my courage and not allowing me to be ashamed of it.

Resurrected

Hey Everyone...I'm back from the dead! LLS. It's been almost a year since I've updated this blog. I began two new blogs after I stopped updating this one. One that is less personal and one that is for work and professional. I recently decided to come back and make some updates concerning my personal life. I figured that after a 10 month hiatus, I've lost a good number of fans and my personal life can still maintain a certain level of privacy. However, I will be beginning a new personal blog some time in the near future that I will make a little bit more public than this one and the one I have on live journal. I will not be deleting either one of these as it is always interesting to look back and see where I've been and how I got to where I am today. Until I make the switch over to a new personal blog, here is my 10 month update since we last spoke....


CAREER

I graduated from Carnegie Mellon University last May.  Wow...it was a long, rough road getting that degree but my crazy, insane tail finally made it after SIX years.  I thought I would feel really far behind all my friends considering I graduated two years later but it seems that I've charged full speed ahead.  I'm still not quite where I anticipated and I am still slightly playing catch up to my long-term goals but I know, as an adult I have to have patience.  Unlike many of my colleagues, I do not have a fear of turning 30.  Maybe because it's still five years away.  As of right now, I am excited to see who I am then.  It will not happen fast enough.  In your 20s it seems that you are driven by your will but 30 something year olds seem to be more driven by their wit.  I look forward to being smarter because the thing about being driven by your will is that you are more prone to be reckless.  Impatience tends to get the best of you and you gradually become a self-fulfilling prophecy of all that you fear.

I went on bit of tangent but to continue...it took me awhile to find a decent job like many of the people these days.  Initially, I was working part time for a law office as a legal assistant and was only bringing home on average $400 a month.  Needless to say, during that time I had to move in with my dad.  That was not as bad as I expected it to be because we actually got along fairly well and I did feel taken care of despite our rough history.  It was then that I learned the benefit of savings.  All throughout college, I was forced to save because I was pretty independent and I had to figure out my tuition payments.  So when I left and had a hard time finding a job, I had enough savings left that I could get by on only making $400 a month.  I still was able to save even though I was not making much.  Of course, the fact that I did not have any real expenses at the time also helped (I deferred my student loans).  I enjoyed the time of not having any real financial obligations or stress.  I really couldn't remember how that felt like.  During that time, I was able to discover a lot about myself and I began a couple of small projects.  I currently have put them on hold b/c I did have to get an actual job but I will begin working back on them some time around the end of the month.

Anyways, it took me about 9 months after graduation to find a full time with benefits.  I now am working as a Marketing Analyst.  I had 3 weeks to make the big move from Baltimore, Maryland to Henderson, Nevada back in February of this year.

I must say that even though I am lucky to have job security and I have a decent paycheck, I eventually plan on heading back east.  Nevada is just not my cup of tea.  In addition, I want to be closer to family and friends.  I've been spending too much money on airfare flying back and forth.  Not only is it expensive, but most importantly, it is exhausting.  I flew out last week and then I have to take that 10hr plane right (total round trip) for the labor day holiday.  It is hard meeting people out here as Nevada is a very strange, and unique place.  I live right outside of Las Vegas and in a recent study, the city was ranked the #1 most stressful city in the US.  Who has time for stress?  I'm going back east.

Furthermore, even though I am getting considerable amount of experience at my job, I know that it's not where I should stay.  Without going into much detail, it seems that too many people are leaving.  I was always of the school of thought that when you see animals flee, you follow....and people are fleeing....I'm not quite sure why as I am a newbie but I think it is safe to say that I should not stay long enough to find out.  But as of now, it's neither here nor there.  I've just been thinking and am beginning to reconsider some things.  Who knows what the outcome will be.

FAMILY

I have to say that I am on pretty good terms with almost everybody in the family.  Me and my mom still have a couple of kinks to work out but there is nothing that is too serious or pressing.  My niece and nephews are growing up so fast it's wonderful.  My younger sister and the kids had moved to Hartford County for a little while (she moved in with her kids babysitter after a falling out with my mom) but is back living with my mom.  She left the kids with the babysitter for a week (which may not have been a good idea) and when she finally got her kids, Tristan had a fractured collard bone which had been like that for days and Jelauni had a cut on his face that still had dried blood on it.  After that, my sis moved out.  My older sister bought a house and recently added a new addition to the family, King, a German Shepherd.  He is a 4 month pup and Jaylen just loves him.  Me and my younger sister, although we have very different values I still feel like on some level we have a good understanding of each other.  My older sister and I have very similar values but the way each of us goes about accomplishing them is completely opposite.  But all and all, everything is all gravy.

On the downside, I recently lost my grandmother this month. Her birthday was yesterday.  She would have been 83.  Hence, why I flew out to Baltimore last week.  I had to take bereavement leave to go to the funeral.  I wrote a poem which I read which I will post later.  If you know me, you know that I've always considered myself to be pretty close to my grandma.  She had Alzhimer's Disease so her death was a bit bitter sweet.  Watching someone go through that disease is hard...especially someone who was previously so full of life.  As Jawai said "she's finally free".  R.I.P.  Patricia Thompson.

 FRIENDS

Love them! My friendships have been up and down and up and down throughout my life.  But I feel that my friendships now are much much more stable.  Probably because we are all grown and do not have time for that petty shit.  We have learned the value of having extended support and know that what you put out in terms of people is what you get back.  I have cut who I've needed to cut and kept who I needed to keep.  And that puts a HUGE smile on my face.

Being from Baltimore, I've grown up with such a unique dynamic between me and my friends.  I've worked hard and I've played harder (Work all day, drink all night! yea).  At the end of the day, that lifestyle was nothing but trouble.  I am so glad to be free from it because it was immensely skewing my perspective on life.  Anyone who has grown up in lower middle to poor urbanian here is just a piece of advice:  Be careful to heed the friendship and advice of failures because the only support they can really give you is to support you in a quest toward failure.  Make sure that your friends from "'round the way" and "bookie and dem" are truly down for you being a better person.  Make sure you are surrounded by strong-minded people who have a strong sense of identity and an unshakable value for love.  Your friends should not be trying to compete with you, hurt you, talking down to you, trying to suck your precious time with their drama, and most importantly.....they should SHOW UP...and I don't mean when you are in need of a possie to help you in a fight.  That's not support, that's just people who love drama and not necessarily love you.

I thank God each and every day for helping me understand the value of real friends and I hope he continues to bring people in my life who will support and cherish me.  Thank you Jesus!

Other friendship news....everyone is basically getting seriously coupled upped, having babies, getting married, etc....we all are really growing up...and I am anxious to see how we all change and who we all become.

Hmmm...the only real story right now on the friendship front is that I recently cut off a friend that I was semi-cool with for the past six years.  I will not go through the whole shabang....to make a long story short, I just felt like it was time to dissolve the friendship because I was too grown for her.  I understand people come into their own at their own pace but if you are going to lag behind the rest of the world as far as your development of common sense is concerned, you better come with a bit of humility.  She was way too selfish and ingenuine and I just got tired of wasting my time on someone who was more or less childish.  She also was exceeding judgmental towards other people and I've always found that level of judgmentalness to be somewhat disgusting.  It goes against what I believe.  I think people should be humble and approach people with a level of tolerance and understanding.  She was way too much of an attention seeker for my taste.  Even though she's not fit for my life, she's not a horrible person.  We just were not compatible.

Oh...also, I have to send a shout out to baby Ava who was born back in March.  I also reconnected with an old high school friend.  She's recently divorced, in med school, and has the cutest little son...so a shout out to him as well.

LOVE

I am currently in a relationship with KDT.  The friend described above who I recently cut off encouraged me to do the online dating thing (apparently it has worked with A LOT of my friends).  Within about two weeks of joining blackpeoplemeet.com, I began talking to KDT and we have been dating since labor day weekend of last year.

Since my move to Vegas, things seem to be getting rockier and rockier.  In addition, I've learned that I have a lot of baggage....more so than what I thought was there.  I used to think that my baggage came from having really bad experiences but I'm learning that my baggage primarily stems from the fact that there is a lack of strong women in my family.  A family is only as strong as its women.  I think without having good relationship reference points and having good relationship mentors, a relationship feels far from my comfort zone....and the more I stray away from my comfort zone, the more bitch is crazy I tend to get.  But it is what it is.

KDT is younger than me (not by much) so that is also an obstacle because his relationship skills are not that well developed either.  He can be very conceited and overly indifferent at times which to me, makes it hard for us to overcome disagreements or misunderstandings.  His occasional stubborn conceit and indifference, causes mountains to be made out of mole hills because he takes everything too personally.  We would have more of a good time together if he would learn to be warm and flexible and stop trying to be so emotionally controlled....a habit that I, myself, had to learn to break in the past.    

All and all however, I think the two of us have a similar approach to people and family.  We are both good people who strive to do the right things even though we are not flawless.  KDT is an absolute gentleman and I do enjoy being with him.  However, this past month or so, he has become very inconsistent and for me that is scary.  I do not trust inconsistence in people especially if they have a penis. lol j/k.  It seems as though at one point in time in our relationship we were planning a future with each other....now it seems as if I am still planning my life around us while he is busy planning his life without me.  He thinks that my insecurity in this regard is unfounded. They say actions speak louder than words but in this case even words have been spoken to allow me to draw this conclusion. His actions have always been pretty positive.  So what does that mean? When words don't match actions but it's the words that are bad and the actions that are good?  **shrug**

Maybe my thoughts are unfounded but I feel the way I feel so until those feelings subside, I am inclined to make my future plans with my own personal benefit in mind.  I am sure this is just a small hurdle that we have to get over but until it's resolved, it is what it is.  I have every faith that we will get over it.