Goal #38

Just about everyone knows now: my family is going to Ireland this summer!  We leave Sunday and will be there for about 2 weeks.  I'm, you know, just a tad excited.  Just a little.  To go to the place I've wanted to go my entire life.

In placing myself under house arrest today to get my enormous pile of stuff done, I wound up doing what I always do whenever I need to clean or pack or do anything that's required of me: I look at old things.  I pull out old notes, pictures, stories, art, books, ANYTHING that has a connection to my past, sit myself down on my bedroom floor, and go through it all.  It never fails.  I don't know why this is my go-to procrastination technique, but there you have it.  So naturally, when my laundry hamper overflowed yesterday and I ran out of underwear, the need to do it today translated to Erica sitting by her bookcase looking at her experiments with Prismacolor pencils and markers from when she was 16.

And somehow that led to reading my French children's books.  Which led to me digging out my old list of 38 goals that I had to do for a high school project my freshman year and that I've never thrown away.  Of course, "Visit Ireland" was goal #4.  That'll be nice to scratch off.  My goals have changed drastically over the years, but I was quite surprised to read goal #29: "Learn about advertising, maybe?"

I had no idea I was that interested in that subject field that early.  I thought I hadn't been interested in it until my senior year of high school, when we had to do ad critiques in class (a daily habit, now!).  It was fairly interesting to see that maybe this has been a goal of mine longer than I realized.  On the other hand, for a while now, I've been thinking that maybe this isn't quite the goal for me anymore.

I'm still testing the waters around me and trying to find a place where I feel comfortable.  I recently had an interview for an internship that left me very thoughtful for a while.  I don't HAVE to work in an agency and I don't HAVE to follow the straight lines that I painted out for myself for so long.  There are so many options and so many open ends and so many... choices.  Choices terrify me.  Choices lead to change.  And we all know my fear of change, and my recent battle to overcome that fear.

The reason I started my OGTAD journal was because of some things that happened last summer.  I was so unhappy, and I finally realized that only I have the power to make myself feel whatever emotions.  No one has the power to make me feel upset, guilty, ashamed, embarrassed, or anything of the sort unless I let them have that power.  I chose OGTAD to show myself the good things about my days to end each day on a good note, to give myself the power to be positive and go to bed happy every night.  This past year of OGTAD has been leading up to seeing whether or not, finding myself in a similar situation this summer, I have learned anything from my experiment and if I can keep in mind the amazing lessons I have learned, and more importantly, the things that I have learned about myself.

It is not easy.  But everything that's happened over the last year has taught me that I do have the ability to overcome the things that I fear.  But it's NOT easy.  And I can't expect life to be easy, and I can't expect myself to just glide over any obstacles.

The final goal on my list, from when I was 15, is very, very simple: Goal #38: "Do not rush!"  I think that's the most important goal on my list, in my life, and I don't think that at 15, I had any idea how important that sentiment would be to me at 21.  Do not rush.  It is not a race.  I have all the time in the world.  I have my entire life.  And if my "entire life" should consist of only the next few moments, if I were to die tomorrow, then I have to ensure that I am happy.  There are so many ways to achieve that happiness.

Becoming a better person has been exhausting, stressful, almost embarrassing at times, and though this is a goal, journey, and task that will never have an end, I think so far, it's been worth it.  Taking up the idea of being constantly aware of myself has been the biggest thing I've ever done in my life.  That's why goal #38 is so big to me now.  I wonder what significance it held for me when I was 15.  I wonder what I was so worried about that I felt I was rushing.  I cannot rush life.  I can only hope to take everything in stride.

My next stride is Ireland!  Traveling makes me think, big time.  I'm so excited to see what revelations about myself I'll make in this beautiful country.  My pen is already poised.  My journal was the first thing I packed.  But even as I look forward to my trip, I'm aware: do not rush.

And on I write!

Depending on what school you're at, the semester is either OVER or very, very close to being over!  Huzzah for surviving another semester of the only thing I really know how to do: school.

That's part of what's been freaking me out so much.  I have one semester left, and then... what?  The longest I've ever held an office job is for three months, summer internships.  I don't know how to function in any situation other than school, really.  I keep trying to get myself to come to terms with the fact that that is LIFE, but my mind won't listen to me.  Aie.

Anyway, the last couple of weeks have been fairly sleepless for me.  Lots of thinking, studying, worrying, overthinking, etc.  But what helps me a lot is... go on, take a guess... writing.  Of course.  When it's 2, 3 in the morning and I'm sitting up in bed staring out my window, I finally have to accept that sleep is not going to come willingly, so I grab my notebook and start writing.  Sometimes I write in a journalistic style and blah-blah-blah about my day, sometimes I pick a specific problem to write about, and sometimes, I do my favorite exercise: stream of consciousness writing.

I never used to like SOC until I did it on my own time.  Writing it in school was frustrating because we were fairly limited.  I would write a page worth of, "This is stupid.  My hand hurts.  I wish time were up.  I'm hungry.  This is so dumb."  And that's a perfectly fine way to start SOC, but I never had enough time in class for it to go somewhere.  But when I'm writing on my own now, I can write for as long or as short as I want or need.

It's truly a great stress reliever.  If you've never heard of or written in a SOC style, I truly encourage you to try it.  Here are the rules:  There are no rules.  You simply put your pen to the paper (or your fingers to the keyboard) and start writing.  You can give yourself a set amount of time, or you can write until you just peter out (I prefer the latter).  You just WRITE.  And you don't worry about what you write.  In time, your words will evolve to what you're really thinking/worried/anxious/nervous about, and you may find that you've presented yourself with a solution while writing.  You may learn something that you didn't know you were repressing or frustrated with.  You may not get anything special out of it at all.  It's wonderful.

I've been doing SOC quite a lot lately, and figuring out a bunch of stuff.  It's quickly becoming my go-to form of stress relief, but I can't let myself think about it too much, or it ruins it.  Pen to paper.  Go.  Write.  Be.  

It's so amusing for me to reread what I've written, things I don't even remember writing, having written so quickly and letting the words roll from my mind to the page like water.  Song lyrics and quotes and things someone said to me earlier and my own thoughts and feelings and emotions I was trying to hide, they all appear, and it's so random and yet exactly what I needed and wanted to say.  And after I feel my writing's come to an end for the moment, I'm somehow able to finally fall asleep.  It's like physically taking a weight off my shoulders and feeling so much more relieved.

I really do encourage everyone to try it if you have a half hour or so.  Just write.  No thinking about what you're writing.  "This is stupid, this is stupid, this is stupid" is just as good a start as, "I had PB&J for lunch today", which is just as good as, "I'm frustrated with my day, and I don't know why."  Go for it.  I hope someone out there finds the peace that is waiting in writing to the degree that I have. :)