New Beginnings?
So, I made it the four years. I got the degree. What next? I'm a 22 year old fresh out of college graduate. I'm left with burn out and a head full of high educational skills and a promising return to my university with their graduate program. However, I decided to take a gap year. I decided to skip immediately jumping into education again, that, mind you, I've been in since I was a child. While I have a dream and goal for myself, where I am now in the present I'm not sure what I want to do except use the time that I've given myself to get my life together. For context, I'm not only coming off of a recent graduation. I'm also emerging from a terrible and devastating bout of anxiety and agoraphobia induced by the untimely death of my father during one of my hardest semesters in college. In all honesty, I'm just now feeling like myself again. I just now gotten over my fear of life and worry of graduating and now I have all this time to build myself back up. But, the idea of a gap year, the phrase turns a lot of people off or insinuates a failure of not immediately pursuing a career. And while that is true for many, I feel as though this thought process ends up fucking over many people in the process. Graduate school, immediate employment,etc, is instilled onto us because of many reasons, which I completely understand. But the people that go against that grain shouldn't be seen as failures or lazy for focusing on being a functioning human given the privledge and chance to. I mean, I can barely get the motivation to get up in the morning and take care of my teeth following my mental health recovery. I have a long way before I think I can consider myself a person with motivation to do things, to live life. That doesn't mean I don't have goals or desires or plans. But, it means I know myself and want better for myself so I can grow into someone I can be proud of outside of my value in the workforce or education system. Trust me, I've come to this understanding in high school after being an overachiever and experiencing the detriment of placing these taxing things on yourself for approval and struggling underneath. Not again. Not after beginning to build a healthier self.
Am I Writing Again?
For the first time in about 4-5 months I've had the urge to start writing again. I felt that spark again, and a whole whirlwind of emotion accompanied that. Now I'm no stranger to that feeling of falling inlove again with a passion or hobby and quickly burnout from it. However, writing is one I find myself coming back to every time yet I prematurely over light it--splashing too much gasoline onto a simple kindle. I overwhelm it too much without letting it breathe and organically spread. I just get so excited to see that story in my head come into fruition. But that leads to burnout, second-guessing, and imposter syndrome. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. I want things to be different this time. I want to tell this story. I want to be able to write this story. I don't want to blow out the fire before its had time to catch. So, I guess the question I want to ask myself is am I actually ready to write? Or am I ready to reenter the world I created to rework--refigure everything from a new perspective? Right now, I have sparks of character relationships and significance to the story but nothing else. It's a slow start but I'm happy to see where this journey goes this time.
Finding My Style
About a week or two ago, I had a major meltdown. Like full on crying, blubbering and panicking about still living with my family, not having a job, being a failure, not knowing what I wanted, the whole shebang. And like, I’ve had these before, but this time it felt real, the effects of second-guessing myself, being unsure and not confident. The one phrase from that breakdown that is still sticking with me is when I said that I don’t know myself. I don’t know what I want or what I like. Of course, I have things that I enjoy like books, movies, music, clothes, and hobbies. But, if you were to ask me anything of substance about these things, I wouldn’t truly be able to tell you aside from the fact that these things make me feel interesting to others. I don’t know who I am outside of my social performance and expectations. It's taken me a long time to fully acknowledge it, and I think I had to fully develop my brain before I could fully understand what this entailed, but now I can look back at myself and see that along the way I've compartmentalized myself to feel validated, but when those people are gone what’s left is nothing but a hollow shell—a lost soul. However, after coming to this realization. I decided to make a change and to not pity myself into further compartmentalization. Instead, I decided to change some things about my appearances, like wearing nail polish, getting new piercings, and trying different styles of jewelry that I normally wouldn’t do at all. This past week I’ve learned that I love jewel tone wine-ish purple nail colors and that I love homemade & vintage jewelry. I’ve learned that I favor silver jewelry over gold but I don’t majorly dislike it. Outside of physical experiments, I’ve challenged myself to explore more hobbies and pastimes. I like doing research like reading analysis and essays in my personal time. I also like playing chess and doing online crossword puzzles though I'm not the best of them. And I find working out enjoyable. Anyways, I say all of this because I want to figure myself out. I’m 22 years old and I’ve pitied myself for years but now I have the power to customize myself and explore things and truly not give a fuck about others opinions (though that will always be a hurdle to work on). Also I’ve decided to put this whole thing into my style section because to me style isn't limited to fashion, it entails almost anything that affects you over the course of your life.
My Trinkets
Just some simple things that I've gotten over the past few weeks after discovering some things I like.
