About

Hi, I’m Anna, nice to er… sort of meetcha. (Of course if you comment and share your own blog links, I’d love to get to know you better!)

So, in this one-sided conversation so far, I guess I’d better tell you a bit more about myself.

First, what this blog’s about:

Adventures in life after the jump.

Which means I want to write about:

Celebrating life from the day-to-day to the spectacular, and learning how spectacular the day-to-day can be as I live into a transition time and discover not just how to be, but how to live holistically and in balance.

Now here’s the short “About me:”

I’m God’s beloved daughter, an artist, a wife to Jody, who’s the pastor/priest at St. Joseph of Arimathea’s in Hendersonville TN (and a very a-typical pastor’s wife at that!), a dog and cat lover (don’t ask me to settle that age-old dispute), a writer.

I’m a beginning farmer, a self-proclaimed foodie, a bit of a wine snob, a coffee and a tea lover.

I’m a teacher, a student, a photographer, and a martial artist.

I love to hang with friends and talk to all hours of the day or night (over wine or coffee or tea). I love to bake my own bread when time permits, to watch the sunrise and sunset, to play with my dogs on a cold winter day.

I’ve been known to dance in my kitchen, rock out in my car, and talk to inanimate objects.

And for the long-ish story

I hinted in my sidebar about a transition phase… hoo boy, here’s my attempt at the short story. (note, I don’t really do short stories, but below is my best try, cut me a little slack, k?)

So back in the first part of this century I was working as a volunteer youth minister and decided to attend Fuller Theological Seminary and get a Master of Arts in Youth, Family, and Culture.

I did. (graduated May 2003).

While at Fuller, I started working part-time at a church to the east of Los Angeles, working with their junior highers, and eventually starting a junior high program for them. I worked there for two-and-a-half years before getting fired over a mis-understanding on a doctrinal issue of all things. yeah, weird right? Okay, there’s a little more to the story, but that little more will take too long, but that’s the basics of it.

So I began an in-between time starting in the fall of 2004 where I was teaching at Mt. San Antonio College as a philosophy adjunct, teaching major world religions. That was really fun. I also was a TA at Fuller for my old youth ministry prof Chap Clark, and in that same time period, met my amazing Husband.

Well, meeting Husband set off a chain of events that culminated in me moving to Tennessee after we were engaged to be closer to him while he finished seminary and while we prepared for our wedding. I accepted a job at a local Episcopal Church (Husband is an Episcopal Priest), and worked full-time as their youth minister for 2 years, when my job was cut due to funding issues. (yay fun!). That was Summer of 2007.

The good thing that happened in the middle of those crazy two years is that Husband and I got married, June 3, 2006. Best thing I ever did (For more on our story, read this series of posts).

Now out of a second youth ministry job, I continued with an application process to become the coordinator for youth and young adult ministries for the an entire episcopal diocese and was offered the position beginning July 1 2007.

Spent a year and a half in that job, and felt like I was just getting my bearings and about to actually get some good work done when, really long story short, things got very, shall we say, political and leave it at that. After my previous two experiences, I decided enough was enough, and resigned effective the end of June 2009.

So when I knew I was leaving (turned in that resignation letter April 1st, glad they didn’t think it was a joke ), I began marketing my photography, formerly mostly a hobby, as a full business.

I love photography as the sort of culmination of my artistic expression. I’ve been dabbling in art since I was a kid, took art classes and learned to make art with everything from paints to crayola markers, to clay and sculpey.

My dad had an awesome Pentex SLR which I grew up taking pictures with varying degrees of success, but at least I learned a basic understand of f-stops and such.

My brother has been a photog buff for ages and I absorbed a lot from him as he played with various cameras. So when I discovered my own love for photography, I saved up and bought a dSLR, the Nikon D80, and begin to learn even more.

I developed a passion for taking pictures of people (for more on this, visit my photography site’s about page), and launched into portrait photography as my primary market.

I’ve been so busy the first six months of this transition I’ve hardly had time to stop and breath. and I’ve gone several rounds with random health crap that messed with me in July and August, and then decided to try the flu toward the end of September.

I’ve also starting teaching Karate as an assistant instructor at Rising Sun Karate Club, a business started by some good friends of mine in the area.

I was featured on Groupon December 8th, and sold 238 portrait packages in a day all to be used this year, the ensuing spike in business and sessions has really kept me hopping!

All this to get to my sabbatical, my in-between year, my liminal space.

I’m writing here because I’m at an interesting place. I don’t really know what’s next for me in the field that I’ve been trained in and worked in for the past eleven years, but I’ve decided that’s okay, and I’m giving myself until next Epiphany (Jan 6, 2011) to make any decisions in that category. I’m trying to just be open, and place everything that comes along in ideas related to youth ministry on the back burner of my brain to simmer for a while.

In the mean time, I’ve giving myself permission to actually call myself an artist, something I hadn’t really lived into before, and explore what that means. To get back into shape and enjoy a job that is very physical in nature (karate) and one that is partly physical and partly long hours editing pictures and talking with clients. To simply be, something I’ve been striving to do for a long time and really resist the urge to be defined by what I do for a living.

If you’ve read to the end of this, congratulations! and I will say, I warned you it wouldn’t actually be short. Just imagine how long it would be if I’d put the details in!