Thursday, September 22, 2011

A Year of New Things

Today is the 1 year anniversary of my blog. When I think of the person I was when I started this blog and who I am today, I am astonished at how far I've come. This blog like many pieces of writing or artwork came out of a painful experience. Without going into detail, I was frustrated with a lot of things in my life and felt that nothing was going well for me. In every direction, I had hit a wall.

And then something happened... in one experience I suddenly realized everything was going to be ok. For me it was as simple as making new friends at my gym. I remembered how social I could be, how easily I was able to meet people and fall into a friendly banter. Things were really bad for me and then, suddenly, they weren't. At some point you have to live your life again.

The idea for doing a new thing a week was my way of making lemonade out of my rough patch. It started when one day I wanted to go on and adventure and all of my friends were busy. I realized that I had to entertain myself. That being on my own was about to start happening with much more frequency, and that I had a laundry list of things I wanted to do and see the Bay Area. From there, my things to do changed. They became ways to connect with friends, fall in love with a beautiful city, meet people, make mistakes, learn that some people change, learn that some people don't, stay in touch, move on, and learn so much about the person that I am going to spend the rest of my life taking care of - me.

I've learned the most important lesson in the past year. Your life isn't going to get better unless you make it better yourself. It's hard for me to find the words to get the idea across. I know it wasn't about loving myself, confidence isn't something I lack. It was about independence. It was about making myself happy. I grew so accustomed to needing other people to make me happy. In the last year, I learned how to have a better outlook, not get upset so easily, and if there was no one to hang out with - learning how to enjoy a day or evening to myself. Once I learned how to do that, everything else fell into place.

I'm sure this post sounds like I'm ending things, but this adventure that I'm on is just beginning. This has been one of the most incredible years of my life and I can owe a good deal to what I've done here. As many things as I've done this year - so much of it was just putting myself in a better place to appreciate what comes next. It would be a shame to end this here because I think this next year is going to be really exciting.

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