First of all, I would like to thank everyone who asked questions! I must admit that I checked my blog more often than usual to see what people were asking!
Starting with Question # 1 from the lovely Leah of fiveblondes.com: “I would like to know what your career goal is. You seem to have an interesting job and I’m interested to know where you would like to take it. If that’s too lofty of a question, then how about just in the next five years?”
Answer: My career goal… is “if-y” right now. Up until recently, I have always pictured myself continuing with what I’m doing (I currently work at a therapeutic care centre with teenage youth), but lately I’ve been changing my views a little bit. I imagined myself being a program manager or program director of a youth organization or agency someday, but lately I’ve been wondering if this is what I really want. I’ve thought about going back to school, but the main thing that interests me right now is becoming a Psychologist or Psychiatrist, which would mean at least another 5 years in school. My current job has been very stressful lately (1000x more than it needs to be) and I hope that there are some big changes coming. I’ve been applying to some different jobs (within the same stream, but for jobs working with kids, adolescents, adults, the homeless, the elderly, abuse victims, etc. instead of just with youth) and I really hope that I hear something soon. That being said, I don’t know what my current career goal is. Ideally, I’d like to continue helping people and, someday, I’d like to be in a more formal role (think director or manager of a program, agency, etc.). If I somehow manage to find time to go to school again, I could see myself being a Psychologist, Psychiatrist, or maybe even a lawyer. Maybe I should’ve just stuck to the five years aspect of your question, lol. Five years can bring so much change and I really can’t predict where I’ll be in 5 years… either doing exactly what I’m doing now or in a completely different place. Personally, I’m hoping for change.
Question # 2 from Tina: “You talk a lot about family and having kids in your blog. How many kids do you want and what would your ideal family consist of?”
Answer: Ideally, I would like to have 3 children. My husband originally said that he wanted 2, but I think that I’ve almost got him talked into 3, lol. My husband only has one sibling and since they were identical twins, they never really had to experience the whole “little brother, little sister” phenomenon. I personally loved having 2 little sisters growing up. There was always someone to play with and I sometimes wished that I had another sibling who was more like me. So, if I could choose how many kids we’ll have and if I could choose the sex, I would want to have 3 children and I would want one boy, one girl, and whichever one God chose to bless us with next. In the end though, it won’t really matter if I have 3 boys, or 3 girls, or either of the other combinations, I just want them to be healthy and happy.
Question # 3 from Maria Butler: “Your “about” section says that you own over 2000 books (Impressive!). What is your favorite book of all time and what are you reading right now? Have you ever thought about a career in writing?”
Answer: My favourite book of all time… That’s a tough one for me. I spent the vast majority of my childhood reading and can remember pretty much every book I’ve ever read. One of my current favourites is “If I Never Get Back” by Darryl Brock. I will also admit that I love “the classics” and fell completely in love with Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.
I just finished reading “Safe Haven” by Nicholas Sparks. It was fairly good book and if you like romance and mystery books, I would recommend that you read it. You can find my book review on GoodReads.com/SarahDoan along with other books I’ve read and want to read. I’m also just about finished reading the Harry Potter series. I would definitely recommend them! Some of the longer books do take a while, but they’re completely worth it! They’ll make you laugh, cry, and feel every emotion in between.
As for a career in writing, I originally imagined myself becoming a writer. I wrote some poetry in school and seemed to have a knack for making people cry because I wrote about real world things and was even told by an English teacher that I “understood things far beyond my years.” I also briefly tried to write a novel when I was younger, but quickly gave up on it because I couldn’t figure out where I wanted to take my story. I imagined it to be a mystery novel, but I had trouble with the “villain.” I will admit that I’ve recently been thinking about writing again and am toying with the idea of starting something. This question has definitely got my mind going. Thanks Maria! 🙂
Question # 4 from my friend Teara: “You haven’t posted about your weight loss for a while, so I thought that I would ask how it was going. Have you found any new exercises that you would suggest to another woman trying to lose weight? Thanks!”
Answer: Unfortunately, I must admit that my weight loss has stalled recently. After I got my new jobs in London and Parkhill, my schedule got completely thrown off. When I still lived in Guelph, I worked day hours only, but my new jobs have had me working evenings and weekends. Unfortunately, working 9-10 hour shifts in the evening and 12 hour shifts on weekends hasn’t given me a lot of time to be exercising. It’s very hard to get up early and get yourself going when you don’t get home from work until 1am and then you stay up for 2 hours relaxing. Working those hours makes it very hard to get up at a reasonable time in the morning and by the time I have everything ready for work, I only have an hour or two and I’d rather spend them with my husband. That being said, I am trying very hard to get back into the routine of exercising and eventually, I would like to run some sort of “mini-marathon.” I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to run 26 miles, but I’d like to run a 5km or 10km someday.
Question # 5 from the beautiful Katelyn of fiveblondes.com: ” I’m wondering how your house search is going? Also wondering when you have kids will you find out what gender they are? And will you share the name before your child is born?”
Answer: Our house search is very slow going. Ideally, we’d like to get a home in my hometown and, as I’m sure you know, there aren’t that many options. There are currently 5 homes for sale in town and 4 of them are either too small or too old and the other is too expensive. We’ve been looking into having one built in the new subdivision in town, but we’ve recently experienced a few setbacks that are making the whole house hunt take longer than expected. Our current goal is to have either bought a house or to have one in the process of being built by Christmas. I know it seems a long ways off, but the months have been going by so quickly that it seems like it was June just yesterday.
As for the questions regarding children, I originally thought that I would NOT find out what gender they are when I’m pregnant. Our original idea was to wait for the surprise and see what we had. Now, however, I can say with about 90% certainty that I will be finding out the sex for two reasons: (1) After learning how frustrating it is to not know the gender (this is coming from my interactions with my sister and her pregnancy and trying to find her gender neutral gifts), I definitely want to know myself. My sister is currently trying to decorate her baby’s room and as she does not know the gender, she doesn’t know how to decorate it. She’s thinking yellow and green and while I’ll probably end up choosing those colours anyways, I’d like to be able to add feminine or masculine touches. (2) I am THE MOST impatient person in the world and there is no way that I’m going to be able to not ask the ultrasound technician the second they start looking at the baby. I will not be able to handle 40 weeks of not knowing.
As for whether or not I’ll share the name before my child is born, I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about that to be honest. I think that I will share the name with my family, but I don’t know if I’ll post it online or tell anyone other than family and close friends. Tyler and I have discussed baby names in the past and we’ve made some minor decisions. If we have a boy, the middle name will be Robert James after my grandfather Robert (who passed away 4 years ago at the age of 63 – Rest in Peace Grandpa) and James for both my Dad and Tyler’s family (James has been included somewhere in my husband’s family lineage for several generations). I have yet to come across any boys names that I absolutely love for a first name though. Tyler and I have thrown a few out there to eachother, but nothing has struck us as THE name. As for girls, we’ve discussed this more (mostly because I will DIE if I don’t have a girl at some point, lol). I originally liked the name “Anna” as a first name, but now I’m not loving it as much. We also discussed the possibility of the middle names being “Josepha Maureen,” but I’m also not so sure about that either. “Josepha” was my great-grandmother’s name and although I love it, my sister has pointed out that my child may not love it and that it may not mean anything to them since she will never meet my great-grandmother. My mother’s name is “Maureen” and she recently told me that giving a child the middle name of Maureen is “cruel and unusual punishment.” She said that she appreciated the sentiment, but that she’d rather my children have names that they actually like. I’ve been toying with the idea of asking her to choose a middle name as a form of tribute instead of giving the child the middle name of Maureen since she seems dead set against it. So, in short, I don’t know if we’ll share our baby names. I think we’ll share it with family and friends, but the name will also be just a possibility. If we have our baby and they don’t look like an “Anna” (for example) to us, then we won’t use that name. I think we’ll probably find a couple name combinations that we like and then go from there.
Anyways, that’s all the questions. I hope all of the answers were up to snuff and I’m sorry that it took me so long to post the responses!
Sarah - Daughter, Sister, Wife, Mother 