I've still got a lot of learning to do in life. I know I'll never stop learning, too.

Everything I've learned and experienced thus far in life has led me to this very moment and has me reaching towards several dreams I've conjured up in my mind. It kinda looks like this:

I've always been creative. Since I could retain memory, I've been crafting with my mom and watching her start a hundred creative projects that she was 100% passionate about. Since 7th grade, I've loved to write. Since 11th grade, I started indulging in that love for words and wordsmithing.

I've dabbled in photography throughout high school, and finally put some money where my passion was and got a professional camera in college.

Each creative "milestone," per se, had got me thinking about my future from one time to another. In elementary school, I wanted to be a dog-walker when I grew up (OK, obviously I cared more about puppies then). In middle school, I wanted to be an artist. That was before I understood what bills were and how you can't just claim yourself an "artist" and just acquire money. My dad also always reminded me that a lot of artists don't get famous until they're dead. And that doesn't do a lot for me now.

In high school when I delved deeper into my passion for writing, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I took journalism classes, wrote for the local newspaper and the school's online paper... and at that point I was satisfied. I would be a journalist for the rest of my life.

After one year of journalism in college, I was burned out. It wasn't my forte anymore. I realized I'd be covering news and feature stories for bigger, more important events than high school dances and football games, and that's where I got uncomfortable. But not in the I'm-too-scared-to-step-outside-my-comfort-zone kind of way.

I have opinions, but I don't have loud opinions. Confrontation, conflict, and controversy scare me, and that's exactly what a journalist in the real word has to do every day. There's enough of a stereotype around journalists anyways that involve those 3 deathly C's.

So what did I do? I turned to the light of my inspiration, the one who is basically me but in another body... my mom. She said to try advertising. It's creative, I can still write, but I can do more and go farther in this field than the dying one of journalism. My second year of college, I enrolled in advertising classes and fell in love. From there, I wanted to be a copywriter or social media strategist. Or both. In advertising, you wear so many hats and you have to have a hand in lots of things, so having several creative interests is actually beneficial.

To keep me writing while I'm in school and not full-time in the industry yet, I'm writing for Odyssey. I've written one article every week for the past year, and even some extras in between. If I can help it, I wouldn't ever want a life without Odyssey pushing me creatively every week. It's helped me build confidence as a writer, build a portfolio, a voice, and has evolved my skills grammatically and otherwise.

When I started, I even used my own pictures for cover photos just to push me to keep shooting on my camera. With photography, I think I've always had a knack or sense for it. I naturally understood the rule of thirds, the importance of depth of field, and the power of an effective filter. Whether or not I accomplished those well with my editing tools on Picnik in 2011 when "photo editing" was much different is another story.

Photography started becoming more important in my life again, so that's when I got the professional camera and began driving out to the middle of nowhere to just take pictures. Like I mentioned in the beginning, I've always been a creative person and inherited my mother's creative genes as well, so photography became one of my bigger passions rather quickly.

While I still have sights on copywriting in the advertising industry, my biggest dream in life is to be a photographer. These days you have to make a significant effort to distinguish yourself amongst anyone with an iPhone who can take an "artsy" photo, because everyone thinks they're a photographer these days. But there's something to taking a photo for more than the vanity or clout you'll receive after posting it.

Most of my photography is nonhuman-based, because anyone can do that. I want to capture the things people miss in a glance or don't get close enough to see. Once I started acquiring all of these photos, I made an Instagram for my photography solely to showcase all of my proudest pieces (selfless plug: follow me at @lydiographer).

Through Instagram, I can reach anyone around the world. People from countries in Europe will message me with a compliment or leave a generous comment, and I think that's amazing feedback from strangers simply scrolling with my photos catching their eye.

Alongside this big dream to be a photographer, I'd want to be a travel photographer. Maybe for National Geographic? Who knows. I know I'm not that good, not yet anyway. But if you saw what my 2011 photos were compared to now, you'd have faith in me too that I could step it up even more to find my way.

This was a long-winded way of saying I know I'm shooting maybe a little too high for the stars, but I can probably make it. I'm happy with starting my professional career off in the advertising industry that I have a passion for if that means someday I can work myself up to a position where I'm a recognized photographer that can drop her stable life here to travel around the world and really do what I want to die doing.

My mom always told me that if I'm putting all this effort in to going to school and getting a degree, to make sure it's going to lead me to a place where I'm happy with my life and my job. I know I'm on the right track, and it'll take me awhile to get where I actually want to be, but I think I'll make it some day.

All the thanks in the world goes to my mom who passed on her creative genes to me, understanding all my struggles, pushing me to do whatever my heart says, and for being my inspiration to do good in life.