I personally love to write. I express feelings of frustration, joy, humility, inspiration, and whatever else happens to be on my mind at any particular moment. With an unscripted personality comes unscripted thoughts that are random and perhaps sometimes ridiculous, but if you take a few minutes to read, I think you will not only come to better understand me. You will better understand my perspective with what I write.
I am one of the most random people you may ever meet. I do my best to enjoy life in general, and I try to be content with what God has blessed me to have in my life. I am a blunt, honest individual that will give you an honest opinion if asked. Relationships are the most important things in my life. I am concerned with only the opinions of close friends, family, and other close relations of people who care about me. Otherwise, I tend to not care what other people think of me. I am not here to please the world. I am on this planet to serve others in hopes that God finds favor with my efforts to do so at the end of my Earthly existence. I am a good-natured person that lives for the moment. Even though not always successful, I try to look at things in a positive light with a productive attitude and world view. I am thankful for each breath that I take because each breath that is taken is a blessing in of itself. Make the most of what you can while you can. You get one chance at this thing called life. So try your best to Glorify God and Enjoy Him Forever. If you have any questions about me or my BLOG, don't hesitate to ask, and I will give you a straightforward answer.
Now while I would consider these dreams genuine and definitely in the progress of attaining; it would be nice to share the world with someone for a life time. I am not necessarily looking for that person, but if it happens in His Will, then it will happen for obvious good reasons. People say the best things in life come when you least expect them. Well, we meet people when we least expect it. In everyday life, we continuously have the opportunity to meet amazing people. Now do we make it a point to interact with the world around us? Sometimes we are so busy being busy bee grad students that we forget to embrace those around us. I am about to graduate, and while I might stay in Auburn, I also may never come back, except for Homecoming, other football games of course, and prominent alumni events. The person you are meant to spend a lifetime with may be right in front of your eyes, and the funny thing is you may never even realize it. God has a sense of humor like that, I think.
I have pursued many a day in my time here on Earth, but the puzzle has never quite clicked as I have dreamed. I believe that when God is ready for the moment to happen it definitely will without hesitation, but then again my personality is to act upon my own intuition (sometimes more so than I need to). I have found several folks that have insecurities about such a direct approach, but my mentality has always been to face things straight on….to go for it….to never ever look back! Those who look back get in stuck in today’s past. I am who I am, and I am ready to share that genuine Southern gentleman persona with someone who can appreciate the God-given talents I have been given. This is my dream….to share life with someone who elevates me to levels of untouchableness because she believes in me that much. I think that is the way it is supposed to work; your best friend encourages you to levels of invisibility because my God just has that kind of radical personableness and creativity. Made in His image, I think He can handle the curiosity of those who seek Him.
We live in a very self-serving and individualistic society, but I believe that America sometimes distorts what life in general is all about. Please do not misunderstand me. America has perhaps as a country given more to the world in generosity than any other country in history. While this may sound like a very self-centered perspective, I do not think Americans are self-centered because they mean to intentionally do so. I think Americans, including myself, may be like this because our society seems to suggest this is an okay individualistic, me-on-top way to live, but when in that quiet moment of a place, something tells me something quite different to this philosophy. I believe that people are inherently meant to help each other. While I cannot theorize or explain why divorce rates in this country are perhaps more than they ever have been, if you do your very best to serve someone with all you have, with all you believe in, with everything (holding nothing back), then and perhaps only then will a life of sacrifice mean anything. You act in such a manner to achieve her dreams, and she acts in a manner to achieve yours. Instead of your own worst enemy, you each become each other’s best team mate. You score the winning shot because unselfishly you both want each other to make the winning shot. This is my dream….to meet someone who doesn’t give up on me because I would never give up on her. This is when dreams come true….when we work together to achieve them.
This picture is of Shaq on my last day of work at the Alabama School for the Deaf in Taylor Hall, the dorm where I worked. His laugh could literally be heard quite a distance away in his own true gift of joy; you could not help but smile and feel the joy this boy just happen to express in the personality God gave him. If you click on his picture, you will find a link to the Alabama Institute of the Deaf and the Blind. If curious, check it out to learn more about the Deaf and Blind Communities in right here in sweet home Alabama.
“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Jeremiah 29:11
When we were introducing each other in class, it may have been obvious I have a very intricate plan for what I would consider my sincere dreams, but then again, every five year plan I have ever conceptualized has never exactly come to realization as I have expected it would. In fact, on many occasions, it has turned out better than I thought in the first place. As you may see in my introduction, I am a very spiritual individual, and God has indeed been very good to me, my family, and the dreams I have attained thus far in my life.
You see….many thought I would never get this far in my life. Many implied, if not said directly, that I would never amount to what I have. While these discouraging remarks have not been my sole incentive to prove those people wrong, because quite frankly, if that was my original motive, that is just plain stupid and perhaps even selfish. I would like to think my life has amounted to more than that, to more than what people told me I could not do.
I always wanted to work with the Deaf since I took my first class in American Sign Language at Clemson University. I attended an interpreting program at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and then worked one full school year at the Alabama School for the Deaf. I have always wanted to go abroad in some fashion……first just to travel and on another trip to serve others in a mission-type capacity. Before I came to Auburn, I was fortunate enough to backpack in Europe six weeks alone, and thanks to the support of many people (friends, family, and beyond), I was able to spend ten weeks in South America traveling and working on three separate servant-like projects this past summer. The experience transformed my life in living a dream through God’s creation. I could never have fathomed the journey in the capacity of my experience without just going to experience what I did firsthand. Now I am about to graduate from Auburn with a perfect GPA when many believed that someone with a disability could never do so. I do not express this to brag but rather to express that you can achieve goals even when statistics simply express that you cannot. I am not the standard of a statistic. I am rather what I believe I am intended to be and what I intend to become.
From Auburn, I hope to publish two books, both of which are a considerable work in progress. The subject matter of these texts will be to express the adversity my family has faced and overwhelmingly overcome. My goal is to inspire because I believe that so many people today are hopelessly living stagnantly day to day, surviving to breathe and pay some bills. I refuse to live my life in such a mindless pursuit or even perhaps to the extreme, mindless ambitions. If I die tomorrow, I will know that I did so in well-performed fashions to glorify something much greater than myself and that I could not have accomplished all that is possible without that much greater thing. I will take the summer to simply write. I believe that certain seasons are meant for certain things, and while I can, I plan to take a season of my life to write a book that has been on my heart for a very long time, to aim for the stars, and to see where God shows up in the mixture of all this excitement in the journey we call life.
In the next few years, I would like to work full time in a prominent position until I am well on my way to publishing and becoming a professional speaker. Eventually, I would enjoy the success of becoming a doctor of academic excellence because I believe that knowledge is the most powerful substance to move and change lives for the better. The best place to perhaps mold minds for a better future is in a collegiate environment where minds are seeking direction to be shaped. I would like to own several successful businesses (perhaps an art gallery, a restaurant, a non-profit, and some type of creative-driven project). I desire to be successful financially so that I may help as many people as possible in the blessings I have been given. To me, so much has been given, and in the blessings of being given so much, it is only worthwhile to give back to those less fortunate than myself. Please realize these dreams will only be achievable because of the relationships in my life and assistance that is given by so many to get where I am going.
I do not know where God will have me, but I certainly will be had. In the long term of things, I have always wanted to be a father and perhaps am approaching one day where I will be. I am kind of biased towards boys. Perhaps the thing I have enjoyed most in my life is the relationship I have with my father in the good and bad times where sometimes we saw eye to eye and other times, not so much. I want several sons, not seven brothers for seven brides, but perhaps four brothers for four brides. As people often say, we will approach that bridge when we get there. I have the gift of fluency in sign language, and it would perhaps be a tragedy not to use that gift in raising my own Deaf child through adoption. And if I can, I would enjoy throwing Spanish into the mix perhaps through a Hispanic nanny….really no joke. The reason why people in our country know one language and only one language is because we are raised with one language immersed in one language. While my children may not understand the importance of knowing two or perhaps three languages, the gift of doing so will have rewards that otherwise would not be achievable if a bilingual home environment is at all possible.
Dreams are not about what you will do; they are about what you are doing. We can all talk about dreams, but it is quite another thing to live that which we talk about. Please understand that I have only been able to do so because I have been surrounded by the right people at the right time. The people around you will most influence you and the dreams you attain or in negativity do not attain. I owe everything in my life perhaps to the two most prominent people who have believed in me even when I did not believe in myself, my mother and father, Diana and Jim Cartee, Jr. God promises, “I know the plans I have for you,” but do we really believe that? Desires are planted with good reasons. I have been fortunate in my background to live out those desires, and dreams are not really lifelike until they are done in actuality. My plan is to live, and in the process, dreams will come true. Dreams will change, but they will happen. You just have to have something that is often lost in the chaos of a let’s-just-check-of-the-my-to-do-list society. That something is faith. My faith is in He Above that He will indeed provide to the fullest of my heart’s passions: “plans to give you (and me) hope and a future” in something incomprehendable to most human minds, going home.
Well, I guess that about covers the dreams I can think of off the top of my head at this moment. More will come, but then that will work for another more than perhaps necessary elongated blog entry. I realize this entry is very lengthy; so if you succeeded in reading its entirety, thank you for taking the time to do so.
