Your Happiness Will Become So Important To You

When did I become so preoccupied with caring about what others think of me? At what moment in time did that become so important to me? Sometime in college, surely.

I remember sitting in Dr. Matson's class the spring semester of freshman year, frantically scribbling notes in my textbook with every word of wisdom that traveled from his mouth to my ears. I remember many things from that class and that man, but in this moment I remember a specific sentence he uttered, which I suspect will only grow in value to me as time goes on. He was talking about happiness in our careers, and he said, "Happiness leads to success, not the other way around. A lot of people think it is success that leads to happiness, but it's not. And if you want any shot at real happiness in your life, you'll realize that pretty fast." The part I remember so clearly is what came next. "Your own personal happiness will become so important to you, that you will do whatever is necessary to attain it." He said we would cut ties with people, quit bad jobs, and even move elsewhere eventually, if our happiness dictated it was necessary.

At the time, I was newly nineteen years old and it is honestly amazing to me how little I had experienced in my life up to that point. That was only three years ago, but my god, it feels like so much of my own naiveté has worn off since that time. Now, a few months away from graduation and having to enter the Big Girl Job Market with nothing more than hard work and good luck between now and then, I understand what he was talking about. Freshman year, I felt no pressure whatsoever to pick a career which would be personally fulfilling, financially secure, and also provide a good deal of upward mobility, all at once. Those thoughts weren't even blips on my radar. My, how life changes... and fast.

I think about the wonderfully wise words of Dr. Matson quite often, especially during any rough patch I have gone through during my college experience. And as many college students could attest to, sometimes rough patches seem to happen a little more frequently than not. My close friends like to tease me when I quote Dr. Matson, and they say I have a crush on him. But I really just can't help but internalize messages like these. He has really played an important role in my education - both academically and otherwise.

While on the subject of happiness in career, the conversation veered off a bit into the territory of personal happiness, and especially in interpersonal relationships. (This was a sociology class, after all.) What I appreciate most about this quote of his, is that like most of his advice, it applies not only to career, but to the rest of life as well.

Recently (within the last week), I have noticed myself feeling so aware of other people. At first, I thought to myself, "huh, that's weird," and went on about my life. But the more I noticed it, the more uncomfortable it made me. I have never been one to care much about the opinions of others before. What changed? Now, this didn't settle well with me. So naturally, I had to dig a little deeper within myself to investigate.

What do I mean, I cared more about what others thought? What I mean is, over the course of the last few years, I think I have unwittingly become hypersensitive to how others perceive me. Perhaps it has been a combination of so-called friends telling me I am "too much" for them (yes, seriously) and also learning so much about the roles which are socially acceptable for women to play in society. (Being a Gender Studies student means it's only a matter of time before you start to analyze everything you do and what your motivation is for doing it.) I dunno. Some combination of these events led to my sudden hyper-conscientiousness about all my words and actions.

It really culminated this week, when I realized I was acting differently around a new dynamic of friends in a social setting I'd never been in before - and one I'll never be in again. I didn't realize how aware I was of how I was acting until after it was over, when I was alone in my own quiet time at the end of the day, and I felt that familiar proverbial exhale as I was finally able to fully embrace my solitude.

I was sitting on my bed by myself tonight, literally laughing out loud at the comedy documentary I was watching on Netflix. I laughed as a totally involuntary bodily reaction to the hilarious media I had just absorbed. I realized a few seconds too late, that I had laughed quite loudly, and that it was past quiet hours in the dorms. "Oops," I thought. But then, something weird happened. Immediately after I caught myself acting in a way which was bound to get me in trouble, I also thought, "Wait a minute, that was kind of incredible. I was just being myself and laughing and not thinking about it at all." But this beautiful thought had only been floating above my head for a few moments before it was replaced by another: "That's kind of sad, that I just realized that. Why don't I just naturally act this way without thinking all the time?" And so on and so forth. Then I had a cup of tea and slowed my brain down long enough to form my bumbling thoughts into words on this screen.

If you were to ask many people who know me, they would probably tell you that I am very much myself most of the time and that I oftentimes lack a filter. This would lead you to believe that I have no problems whatsoever with being unapologetically myself, and that I do so quite freely. But you would be wrong.

I'm not sure that it was a single moment in time when my brain decided, "Okay, we're going to suddenly care much more about everything we do now," rather than a gradual escalation of social cues on which I learned to pick up. In fact, I think most of it started when I began to examine so many social interactions under the microscope of feminism. I used to just act in the way which was most natural and comfortable to me, and screw you if you didn't like it. Granted, I ran into my own fair share of confrontation that way as well, but I didn't really care. That was the whole point. And I'll tell you what, I was pretty happy in those days. Like, really "I know what I want to do with my life" happy.

Then I began thinking about how I was acting, rather than just simply acting. That was the problem. I started putting thought behind the things I was doing, calculating. "Okay, if this is how I am expected to act, then I will actually act in the total opposite way. I will defy the expectations placed on me by society, and I will create social change all while being a rebel. I'll win!" became a common thought process in my head. But goodness, if that isn't exhausting. It downright rips the fun out of life, because instead of living, you're thinking.

Earlier this week was the moment when I realized this sort of pattern occurring and I kind of just decided enough was enough. I was thinking about so many things before I did them. It was not natural to me, and it just didn't feel right. If I can't just be myself and act however I feel is best, then I'm spending time with the wrong people. I think the goal is to be able to have that moment - that proverbial exhale - in the presence of others. That moment I had where I let it all out in my quiet alone time - that is the exact kind of myself I would like to be, without thinking before acting. And screw you if you don't like it.




So I'm not really sure when it was exactly that I started caring so much about what others think of me. I don't remember the moment in time when I started thinking before acting. But starting right now, I'm taking it all back. I no longer have the energy to be anything but myself. If being myself means I adhere perfectly to the expectations placed on me, then so be it. That's all right. If it so happens that being myself means I break every single one of the rules that were intended for me, then so be that, too. I don't care. I figure I'll lose the wrong friends and make the right ones this way. People will either love me for it, or not. Either way, I know it'll all work itself out in the end, after the dust of all this growth and self-exploration has settled.

Because my own personal happiness has finally become so important to me that I will do whatever is necessary to attain it.

The Battle Between My Brain & My Heart

Boys. I love them and I hate them. Not in a feminist ideology, equality-of-the-sexes way. In a "I've loved them and hated them since middle school for all the joy and pain they've brought me" way.

A handful of them have left marks on my life at different times, and undoubtedly, this has changed who I am as well as how I go about living my life afterward. I love it at the time; the excitement and the schoolgirl squeals and the butterflies in my tummy and all that jazz. But god, looking back at it, I can't help but roll my eyes and laugh. Why? Because I'm a cynic or a pessimist? No, I don't think so.

More likely it is because every time I have started with those squeals and that excitement, I have immediately imagined this perfect fantasy in my head, and once my heart is on-board with it, I am doomed. Doomed, because the actual relationship in reality has no chance of ever living up to the scenario in my head. So I laugh and roll my eyes afterward, because not a single one of those boys, just as young and inexperienced as me, had a prayer for giving me the perfection I didn't even realize I wanted.

One of the mind's favorite games to play is thinking without ever having the intention of acting. My brain loves to sit idly and fantasize about an imaginary future where everything is easy and things go perfectly according to plan. I like to dream up alternate universes where boys do exactly what I want them to do, and I have all the time and money in the world to make everything perfect. But I am a smart girl, and I know in reality, that's not how any of this works. Real life is not a Taylor Swift song. Time and money do not facilitate a perfect relationship. Manipulating others into doing what you want them to do, does not cultivate love and respect. It would be so easy if that's how things worked, but unfortunately it would not be even half as rewarding.

I have felt the highs and exciting squeals, and soon thereafter, the lows and the disappointed eye-rolls. I have played it cool and I have internally freaked out. I have played along in the game, just as I have been taught to do, and it worked out pretty well for me at first. But then my brain caught up to my heart and it metaphorically bitch-slapped it back into reality where it belongs. What am I thinking? What am I doing? This stuff is exhausting.

I am at odds with myself, and I have been for what often feels like forever; because my heart is busy painting big pictures and dancing around in the same euphoria it always demands, while my brain is scrambling to keep up as it files these grand ideals away neatly in their proper, alphabetized, places. I have always been a dreamer with a big imagination and enough ideas to never worry about coming back down to earth. That's why it has always been a less-than-graceful face-plant when I do come crashing down. I haven't ever really been bothered with the necessary planning that is required to build the steps on which I climb so high in the first place. But the existence of those steps is crucial for when the clouds of joy and excitement eventually fade away and I need something solid on which to support myself until my imagination can take off again.

I have always, for as long as I can remember, relished my individuality. I enjoyed alone time long before I ever enjoyed time spent with boys. My solitude means so much to me, that no obscene amount of money could ever compete. That's why I hate that I ever let a boy change that about me. There have been times in my life -- multiple in fact -- when I have felt myself lost, consumed almost entirely by someone else's being. Almost completely gone, I don't know if I would have been able to recognize who I am today in a mirror. It was a nightmare for someone like me, whose independent spirit demands to be recognized. I wondered how I ever allowed myself to get to that awful place. It is paramount that my individuality, my independence, remain untouched and intact, throughout every relationship with anyone that I ever have. I have known the feeling of losing myself in someone else before, and that is exactly why I now understand the importance of finding myself and never letting go again.

But it is so tough sometimes, when my dreamer's heart takes hold. It's like a kite caught by a strong northern wind, and all I can do is clutch helplessly onto the handle at the end of the string, holding on and being dragged along wherever it takes me until the wind dies down and all is calm again. My childlike heart does not care about the times it has been hurt before; it does not count the stitches in it or the scars it has collected over time. My heart has amnesia when it comes to the bruises and contusions it has suffered from all the times when I have lost myself in another. All it knows is, cute boy + possibility = grand illusions. My heart never paid attention to anything past this in math class.

My brain, on the other hand, gets it. My brain loves my independence more than almost everything else. Once the alcohol from the night before has worn off and the sunlight is streaming in through my window, my brain is awake and fully alert, demanding answers from my heart as if it is the main murder suspect sitting in an interrogation room. "What were you thinking? What were you doing? Didn't you learn anything from last time?" My brain is hesitant about making big commitments now, after what they have done to it in the past.  It understands that commitment to another person comes with the possibility of sacrificing a part of the whole person I already am. And my brain won't stand for such a betrayal of self anymore.

These two quarrel back and forth time and again, garnering experience and wisdom very slowly over time. My heart, throwing all caution to the wind and ordering just one more drink at the end of the night; and my brain chasing my heart frantically around, wagging its finger in its face like a disapproving mother. When will I learn?

I guess I will learn when I am ready to sacrifice a piece of my individuality for a piece of someone else, again. Out of unsolicited desire, rather than implied necessity. It will probably happen when the idea of taming my wild heart is no longer an option at all. Likely when someone else comes along and scoffs at the idea with the same disdain as I do. Someone who is appalled at the mere notion of me ever reigning my heartfelt ideals into the boxed-in framework of logic. I will finally know better when my brain draws a blank because my heart has already found the answers it seeks reflected in that of another.

But who knows when that day will be? Who knows what I will have to go through and experience in order to prepare myself for that opportunity? I sure as hell don't. So until that day arrives and hits me in the face like a ton of bricks, I guess I can just keep on dreamin', doing all the things that make me wonderfully myself. I can keep wearing my heart on my sleeve and gaining glorious experiences and having my hopes shattered time and again. Because really, it all adds up to the net sum of myself in the end, anyway. And none of it is so bad that it cannot eventually be overcome. I've got twenty-one-and-a-half years of empirical proof of that.

I'm not ready just yet to give up any part of myself or my freedom just because I like someone else. Yeah, I may like them, but I love myself more. This is something I have learned through experience over the years. And the way I see it, if someone is stupid enough to ask me to like them more than I like myself, well... they're just not a good fit for me. The day my brain draws a blank and doesn't know what to tell my heart to do, will be the day when someone comes along and tells me, "Don't you dare change any part of who you are for me. I love you for you, not for being a reflection of me." My brain will be perplexed by such an idea, and it won't have a file to reference. But my heart will finally understand.

30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 29 (Your 21st Birthday)

Day 29: The night of your 21st birthday

My twenty-first birthday was not as exciting as it could have been. My birthday is on Valentine's Day and I wore a red dress on a cold night to dinner and a comedy club with some friends. I had two drinks the entire night and in total I only spent $5 to tip our Safe Ride driver for driving us home, even though we were all well below the legal limit.

I had a good night with many people who I wanted to be with. I chose an Italian restaurant to eat at and we went to watch a ventriloquist talk about why love sucks on Valentine's Day night. I had a good birthday.

However, since I turned twenty-one, just over nine months ago, I have had more experiences going out with friends and buying alcohol in general. That being said, the night of my twenty-first birthday pales a bit in comparison as far as fun, (potentially) memorable nights go. I think I would do things a bit differently now, if I were to turn twenty-one again. I'd have a bit more sloppy fun with different people. But that's not to take anything away from my birthday. I did everything I wanted to do. Now, I just think what I want to do wouldn't be the same.

The twenty-first birthday is actually only such a big deal in Western culture, anyway. The majority of countries in the world do not place such emphasis, nor waste so much money, on the "coming-of-age" moment that is being able to purchase and legally consume alcohol at twenty-one years of age. It's really just not as big of a deal anywhere else in the world as it is in America. More important is the focus on another year of life experiences and understanding gained, another year of both formal and informal education under my belt, another span of time showcasing my growth from one year ago to now. That's the stuff that really matters. Not paying $16 for a new horizontal ID that allows me to buy a beer at Applebee's.

30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 26 (Things You'd Say To An Ex)

Day 26: Things you'd say to an ex

First things first, I just want to say that I have never really much fancied the term "ex", because it is so obviously lacking a noun. Ex-what? To me, it sounds harsh and finite and just rough around the edges. Maybe it's because I love words so much that I choose mine so carefully, but to me, "ex" conveys something less-than. It purposely reduces a person with whom you shared something of yourself, to nothing more than a monosyllabic letter of the alphabet; a slashing sound uttered only with disdain in an attempt to distance yourself from pain.

I suppose this is a completely subjective feeling, and it probably stems from the fact that I have never had a relationship end so horribly that I have ever felt such disdain. Or perhaps I simply know that attempting to distance myself from the pain with my linguistics will not actually lead me to any closure or healing in the end. At any rate, I don't like the phrase "ex" because to me, it seems like an attempt to erase the person from the word. "Ex" is only an adjective, after all. By leaving it at that, you're eradicating everything else they ever were to you. Ex-boyfriend, ex-best friend, ex-lover, ex-confidant, ex-support system... And I suppose that thinking about all those nouns is what really does a lot of people in. That's why they stick with simply calling them an "ex". It doesn't do justice to all that the person used to be to them, and that's the point.

Anyway, now that I have said my piece about that, I will get to the point: things I would say to a former boyfriend. The list is quite short, and I am going to include both those people who wore the actual title of "boyfriend" as well as those who didn't quite get there, but who more or less filled the role. While there are certainly some specific things I would say to the boys with whom I've had relationships, there are also some things which are universal to all of them, and that I'd probably say to any future former boyfriends of  mine, too, just as the nature of who I am. So I'm going to stick to those.

1. Thank you. Thank you for the experience you allowed me to have by knowing you, and thank you for helping develop my own personal growth in doing so. I am grateful to you for embarking on this journey together with me, no matter how it turned out. We have given one another precious moments of our lives which we will never get back, and invested hours into a relationship that ultimately failed. But there are tremendous lessons to be learned from failure; more so than there will ever be from success. You trusted me with your heart and we shared things together which nobody else will ever know or understand. You invested in me just as I invested in you, and even though it ended differently than we would've once hoped, we both walked away from it better for the trouble. So thank you for this opportunity and privilege of learning and growing, both together and independently.

2. I'm sorry. I am the farthest thing from perfect, as I am sure you realized this after the honeymoon phase was over. I cry, I storm off angry, I am a master of the silent treatment. I have a temper which rivals that of a grizzly bear. I am sure we fought over some really stupid stuff. I am positive I started at least half of those fights. And I probably made you feel guilty about it afterward, too. I bet when you were busy daydreaming about me during those first few weeks, you had no idea what a nightmare I could be. I'm sorry for the times when I jumped to conclusions or picked a fight over something which really doesn't matter anymore. Now that our time is over, looking back at those fights, I wish I would've been more aware that I was wasting precious time of which we were only allotted so much.

3. I forgive you. This one is most certainly the hardest, and it undoubtedly took me the longest time to get around to doing. As terrible as I can be, you can be too. We are both human and we have both done things to one another which have left permanent scars. A few of those things were intentional, but most of them were not. Most of them were simple casualties of love; or at least, an attempt at loving one another as imperfect people held up against our own stupid standard of perfection. Sometimes you broke my heart in a million little ways, over the course of time. Other times, you broke it a one big hurrah where I questioned everything our relationship ever meant to me. Yet, the beautiful thing, and the most important thing, about love and heartbreak, is forgiveness. I could name all the ways you destroyed me. Or I could focus instead on the time, determination, and energy I put into forgiving you for all of it. You broke my heart. But in doing so, you broke it free of the cage which encased it and allowed it to spread its wings and fly toward its freedom. Once I was able to forgive you for breaking it, I was able to realize all I could do after being broken.

So far in my life, I have been very lucky to have the kind of relationships which have ended in mutual respect, amicability, and a basic understanding that the rights of each of us as individuals come before any obligation to another. In my mere 21 years of life and love, I have begun to understand the adage "if you love something, let it go". To truly want someone who you love so deeply to be happy, means understanding the sacrifice you will be making if their happiness does not include you. That is a lesson which can only be learned through painstaking experience. It is inexplicable to someone who has never felt it.

I'd say many more things to the boys who have been known a temporary residence inside of my heart, but to do so would be disrespectful of the peace which I have attained with each of them. Love hurts us more often than it does not, but part of the journey to our own happiness is following our heart, even when it drags us through some of the worst pain we've ever known. Through this deeply personal pain, we gain a kind of clarity which we didn't have before; which teaches us lessons in all sorts of things, but especially in gratitude, forgiveness, and acceptance. I believe it would be foolish of us to succumb to the desire to avoid our pain, and allow ourselves to forget the very people who offered us the opportunities to learn so much about ourselves in the first place. After all, an important part of knowing where you're going, is understanding where it is you're coming from.

30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 19 (Five Fears You Have)

Day 19: Five fears that you have

This one might be a little tough, because I don't really go around thinking about my fears very often. I don't know that I really have a lot of them, at least not from examining my thoughts on the surface. But I know fear is nothing more than an emotion, and I've got a full range of those, so I will do the best I can.

1. Being alone. Like in the creepy way when you walk into a place like a large house or a shopping center that is normally noisy and full of life, but it's actually empty and silent now. The kind of alone that scares me is when I am physically alone, and I can hear every small creak of a wooden floor or draft whistling through the crack between the door and its frame. I don't like it because I have watched entirely too much television and read way too many books, and my imagination goes wild with ideas of serial killers and seventy-year-old ghosts, and suddenly the hairs on the back of my neck are on edge and a simple gust of wind gives me a heart attack.

2. Being shot. You may laugh at this one, but it is very real. There have been times when I am walking somewhere in a very open, public space and a car drives past me and I think, "I would be really easy to gun down right now." I know that sounds awful, that I think about things like that... But is it really so awful that I think about it, or is it awful that other people actually do it? I have a strong enough dislike for guns in the hands of everyone, that I fear them. I spend most of my time on a college campus located in the middle of one of the most under-served, poverty-stricken, urban areas of the largest city (the only city) in Kansas. When I read national headlines on a regular basis about shootings in movie theaters, on college campuses, and in elementary schools, I start to get scared. Even more so when the state government announces a plan to make carrying guns on campus perfectly legal for everyone. (No lie. Google it.)

3. Losing a loved one. This one is pretty self-explanatory, I think. I have always been afraid of loving my loved ones since I can remember waking up from a nightmare at a young age and fighting back tears to tell my mom I had a dream that she died. (Analyze that for what it's worth.) I think as soon as my childlike brain was able to comprehend the adult idea of never seeing someone again, I realized that it could happen -- that it was in fact, going to happen -- to people I know and love. And that's a tough pill to swallow; one that I don't know if anyone ever really learns to get over.

4. Being left. That's a pretty real fear that I think most people have, but they are too afraid to admit it, or maybe they just can't articulate it because they don't even consciously realize it. The thing is, for many serial monogamists, or even for someone whose parent accidentally forgot them at the grocery store once, being left by someone you care about is frightening. It's frightening because it is such a real possibility; because you know, deep down, that it has a chance of actually happening... again. Not to get too terribly spiritual, but one of the main lessons of Buddhism is that "attachment leads to suffering". That's the whole game of life. You can't get hurt if you don't get attached. But, like so many others in the world, I get attached. It's only human to do so, after all. Getting attached is literally what makes us human. (That, and opposable thumbs.) Getting attached can be a beautiful thing! But like most other beautiful things, it also deserves respect for the danger of hurting you that it carries with it. Being left scares me because it has happened to me more than once before, and I know it will probably happen again. But that's okay. It cuts deep and it makes you examine yourself at the core of your being. And my goodness, do you ever grow from facing that fear.

5. Failure. Not the baby kind of failure, like getting an F on a midterm and crying about it then eating junk food all weekend long. That kind of failure I've experienced and I have recovered from before. I accept that that kind of failure happens on occasion. I mean the kind of failure where you grossly disappoint someone you admire, like your parents, your friends, your mentor, or yourself. I am afraid of the kind of failure where you have nothing to show for your effort except for a tough lesson learned and some scarring life experience. Failure like "I dropped out of college because I just couldn't be bothered to try," or "I moved halfway across the country and couldn't find a job that would hire me after graduation, so now I have nowhere to stay". I think everyone is a little bit afraid of failure, because like it or not, avoiding it is often what keeps you motivated to succeed. I am fairly confident in my ability to succeed, through whatever resourceful means are necessary, though, so I don't know that this fear is very realistic for me. It's more like encountering a serial killer: the chances that it'll happen are slim, but dire, and the only way to survive is to use what's around you to get out alive.

30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 17 (A Quote You Try To Live By)

Day 17: A quote you try to live by

The first thing that came to mind when I thought about this was something I will always be able to hear my mother saying to me. The first memory I have of it comes from a very long time ago in my childhood, when I was probably only four or five years old. "Just do the best you can. That's all anyone can ask of you."

I have since heard her say this phrase on countless occasions to not only me, but also both of my siblings, my nephews, and probably several other people who I have forgotten about. When you're young, you don't really think about stuff like that or how it is going to shape you for the rest of your life. But looking back, it's easy to see how it has.

I always do the best I can, even to the point of groaning begrudgingly but carrying on when I just don't want to try anymore or I am exhausted past the point of caring. I always seem to be able to hear my mom saying, "Just do the best you can!" Not in a condescending or authoritative way, but in a genuinely helpful and supportive way; letting me know that my best will always be good enough.

The second part of that quote is the part that has helped me the most in getting through my adolescence, as well as my college education. I think that somehow inherently knowing that all anyone can ask of me is that I do my best has actually helped me learn how to create and maintain healthy boundaries and perspective as an adult.

If a person -- no matter who it is -- asks me to do something, and I have legitimately tried my best and still fallen short, then I have no problem whatsoever in being at peace knowing that I did all I could do. No amount of guilt tripping or shaming me will make me feel bad about not being good enough or not doing well enough. All that trying to make me feel bad will accomplish at that point is make me very angry at the source of the attempted guilt or shame. This translates over into my interpersonal relationships, as well. I am capable of loving a person with all that I have, but if all that I have is not good enough, that's too bad.

Similarly, through college, I have come to learn that I am a B-average kind of student. All throughout my academic career up to this point, I have always been an A student. Yeah, I got the occasional B in a hard math class; but again, my best in math was a B and I was okay with that. However, in the senior year of my baccalaureate program, I can say, getting more B's than A's is totally no big deal to me. Even now, some of my peers gasp at the horror of that idea. I don't care.

My parents never pressured me to be a straight-A student, and both of them always told me that I am incredibly intelligent and capable of doing anything. They supported me in whatever academic endeavors I dreamed up, and they still do. What the educational system does not recognize as A-student material, I acknowledge as being immeasurable on a grading scale. I have done my best, and that's all anyone can ask of me. 

Essentially, my mother instilled in me at an early age self-confidence and acceptance of the fact that my best is good enough. As long as I am really doing my best, then that's all I'm capable of offering. That is really all there is to it. It would be impossible for me to do anymore than I already have. So don't expect me to do the impossible.

I guess I never realized it until now when I actually sat down to think about it, but hearing my mom tell me those things over and over again as a young, impressionable child really helped instill good self-worth in my psyche. I don't think I actively try to live by that quote all of the time, but it is certainly always there in the back of my mind for me to fall back on when I need it. It has subconsciously shaped my life, teaching me how to be consciously aware that no matter what I do, when I have given my all, it will always be good enough.

30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 16 (Bullet Your Entire Day)

Day 16: Bullet Your Entire Day

Well, my day isn't quite over yet, but I've currently got about 15 minutes to kill before The Daily Show comes on, and after I watch it, I'll be going to bed. So this is as close as it's gonna get.

• Forced myself to get out of bed in the cold morning air
• Took a shower and soaked up the hot water
• Got out and got dressed for work
• Turned on my One Direction playlist
• Did my hair and makeup for the day
• Caught the bus to campus for class
• Went to class and discussed our Euro Disney case study (which was pretty interesting to me)
• Went to breakfast in the cafeteria
• Read today's issue of the school newspaper
• Went to work (for almost two hours longer than I intended)
• Caught the bus home while Skyping my little brother on my phone
• Laid down for about five minutes, which was long enough to start to doze off
• Got up and went to dinner in the cafeteria
• Stuck around after dinner to socialize with some friends for about an hour
• Left the cafeteria and drove to campus to attend a Spectrum meeting
• In the meeting, we played LGBT Trivial Pursuit and laughed quite a bit
• Left the meeting ten minutes early to come home and catch the new episode of Scandal
• Watched Scandal and managed to fall asleep once during a commercial break
• Crept through social media for fifteen minutes straight before I realized what I was doing
• Took off my makeup and took out my contacts
• Made myself a cup of tea
• Sat down to write this blog entry

That's a day in the life of Alyssa!

30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 14 (Your Life in 7 Years)

Day 14: Your life in 7 years

Good grief. I can't even picture my life in seven months, let alone seven years. It could be anything -- literally.

Let's see, it will be 2022 in seven years, and I will be 28 years old. I already don't like the sound of this. Where will I be living? What will I be doing? Who will be in my life? This is stressful.

Just last week, my chiropractor was making small talk with me and, knowing I'll soon be graduating with an IB degree, he asked me which country I want to live in when I grow up. My knee-jerk reaction was to say France or Britain. But, I told him, I would also be fine staying in this country (for now) as long as I can move to another state. I told him about Boston and I think he could see the stars in my eyes. But for the moment, any permanent decision remains to be made.

I haven't the foggiest idea what I'll be doing at 28 years old. Will I be writing? Will I be a digital content manager? Will I work at McDonald's? Will I own a company? (God, I hope not.) I don't know. But that's kind of the terrifying beauty of it. I don't know what I will be doing seven years from now, any more than I know what I'll be doing seven hours from now. (Sleeping, I hope.) Whatever I'm doing, I know I'll be happy.

Who will be in my life? That question is yet another amorphous blob of mystery. The people who are in my life now may stay or go, and certainly there will be others I've yet to meet who come along as well. Will I be married? (I certainly hope not.) Will I have children? (No.) Will all my friends and family still be alive and available for me to call on the telephone? (Fingers crossed!) But we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

I think back on my life seven years ago, and that's how I know there is no way of knowing the future seven years from now. Seven years ago, I was 14 years old. It was 2008, Obama was just about to win his first Presidential election, the US economy was almost ready to tank due to the housing bubble, and The Black Eyed Peas had just dropped "Boom Boom Pow" on the radio. I was a freshman in high school (oh how I wouldn't relive those days) and I had no idea I was in for a long and bumpy road of school, homework, bad teachers, late nights, early mornings, boyfriends, heartbreak, best friends, questionable haircuts, hard work, international travel, a feminist awakening, and even becoming a big sister.

There is no possible way that if I were able to go back in time to 14-year-old Alyssa right now and tell her everything she has in store, that past Alyssa would believe it. Who I was then and who I am now are two different people, entirely. The damage and the growth alike are irreparable and irreversible.

So, as for my life in seven years, the only thing I can say at the moment with any clear certainty is: I don't know.