I’m a little bit different.
I’m okay with that, honestly. I’ve never been one that likes to be pigeon-holed into one set of defining characteristics.
Sure, there are certain personality traits that I carry and others that I don’t. There are definitely things about me that are constant and unchanging. My love for music, animals, wine, whiskey and all things Dr. Pepper, to name a few. But there are also things about that don’t stay the same either. For example, my interest in reading. It comes and goes. Sometimes I read voraciously and other times, I’d rather watch another episode of whatever Netflix or Hulu show I’m binging at the time.
I’m a bit of a nerd.
I like spreadsheets and numbers. Tracking numbers, seeing where they lead and what they tell me feels like a treasure hunt to me. I can get really fired up about personal finance topics and get those warm fuzzy feelings when all the numbers reconcile at the end of each month. I love thinking about the future and structuring our lives in the present to reach future goals and I enjoy creating processes and trying to streamline procedures to create efficiencies.
…but I’m also a creative.
I like the freedom that comes from unstructured days and music-filled afternoons. Mornings wasted away with nothing to show for it but an empty coffee cup and a half-finished book. Moments of time preserved through the lens of a Canon camera and created to last forever in a picture frame. And hours upon hours passed by stringing letters together to create words, which group together to form sentences that stick together to create paragraphs, which pull together to – hopefully – move people.
Nerd and Creative. I am not one or the other. I am both.
I see myself as an “average Joe” (or Jo, as it were) insofar as I live an average, ordinary life. One that probably looks much like yours in many ways, though perhaps not all. So, I want to introduce that life – the one you might be able to relate to – and myself as a way to break the ice a little bit. Ready?
Family background
My name is Brandi Jo. Yes, it’s two names and, yes, I go by both. My mama was very southern. Rumor has it that she was going to name me Brandon James, but then I turned out to be a girl so it became Brandi Jo.
Anyway, Mom raised me and my two siblings as a single parent in Texas. Her family helped but she did most of the heavy lifting on her own. I attribute a lot of who I am to her and the way in which she brought me up. She was a beautiful woman, inside and out, even in light of the demons she struggled with. One Tuesday morning, several years ago, she made a decision to end her life. I’ve never been mad at her – at least, not that I can remember – for making that decision but there has been a keen sense of her absence in my life ever since. Where she once existed, only a void and an ache remain.
My two siblings and I are pretty close. My older sister is one of the strongest women I’ve ever met. She is now raising her two kiddos as a single mother. She’s also getting a college degree and working a full-time job. I don’t know when she has time to poop, let alone sleep or just be lazy but she manages to pull it all off. She is my best friend and I am incredibly proud of her.
My baby brother is not so “baby” anymore. He still lives in our hometown, like me, but is making his own way. He is charming, laid back and a cutie so, naturally, he’s found a career in sales. He and I did not get along so well when we were kids but, in and around my college years, our relationship changed and now he can’t get away from me. I’m pretty proud of him, too.
Faith background
I grew up going to church in the “Bible Belt” of the United States. I made a commitment to follow Jesus as a young child but did not make my faith my own until college. Since that time, I’ve been on a journey of discovering what a relationship with the Lord means instead of settling for a religion. My faith is a huge part of me and, therefore, naturally comes out in my daily life.
Marriage background
I married Scott, a saint of a man, in 2011. He loves me in ways I don’t deserve. We met in a Texas Indie-Rock band. He was the bassist and I was the new-to-the-band violinist. Later, I would learn that he really didn’t want a violinist in the band; at least, not until he found out that it would be the “hot violin chick” from Beltway (our church). Then, he was all kinds of interested which is funny because he didn’t really say a word to me for, like, six months after I joined. It wasn’t until he started asking me how to break up with his then-girlfriend that we said more than a few words to each other. But, out of that, a friendship was born. And, a few months later, it was as if the Lord flipped a switch in that friendship and we went from being friends who chatted at gigs and rehearsals to something much more almost overnight. Unfortunately, earlier that Spring, I had already committed to an eleven-month-long mission trip so, though we knew we wanted to get married, I left for The World Race that October.
Throughout the eleven months apart, both of us were praying, trusting and hoping that the Lord would honor our obedience to Him. And He did. Two months after I returned to the States, Scott and I married. Though I’ve had many nicknames throughout my life, Scott is the first person to have ever called me “Jo” and it has kind of caught on with other people in our life.
Current life
Our life is fairly normal. We don’t have kids but do have four dogs. Scott works in marketing as a videographer/photographer for the university we both graduated from and, up until recently, I also worked for the university as an operations manager and financial analyst for the academic division.
However, I left the full-time, 8-5 work-life to pursue something…different. What that different thing is has yet to be fully discovered but, what Scott and I are confident of is that the Lord is inviting us to something new, something better and we’re doing our best to follow Him.