Talk to you soon!

I hate to be a copy cat. Mostly because I like to think I am the only person in the world full of original ideas, but I have been reading a friend's blog and I am so inspired by her style of writing. She is very honest and I am sure it is cathartic for her and liberating.

There is a little bit of loss of control when you put your thoughs down and publish a post. You want to be censored so your readers will think the best of you and you want to say things that are profound so people will just be enraptured by every authentic thought you have ever had. This is not always the case and what I am slowly, so slowly learning is that's it ok. Just be honest. I don't always have to be entertaining. And I should put my weaknesses down on paper. This is the whole point of my year of traveling...to get in touch with myself and have the outcome be the very best version of myself that I can be. The only way to do that is to come face to face with the things I want to change about myself!

So my friend's honesty in her blog when it comes to admitting to her mistakes, spelling out her shortcomings and weaknesses and how she is overcoming them is so inspiring. So energizing is her writing, that I am going to emulate it a little bit.

The number one thing I am mainly focused on is ensuring that I don't need anyone to validate who I am. There was a time when I spent a number of years clawing the life out of those around me because I was too afraid to stand on my own. I needed to be accepted by EVERYONE, which meant I stretched myself thin between different groups of people, many of which weren't people I should have been spending any time with. But if each and every one of those individuals liked me or thought I was funny or pretty or interesting, it meant that I had a successful day. But an exhausting one at that. Picking up on other's behaviors and trying to mimick them, hiding my true feelings about a particular subject or putting myself in situations I wasn't comfortable with meant my emotional energy was completely drained and at times at a deficit. This was because I wasn't happy with myself. The silence of being alone was worse than the noise of being with people who I didn't really care about and who didn't really care about me.

This is something in particular that is important to conquer immediately. The more I stand independently and enjoy hobbies that I have created out of my own joy, not others, I feel more and more secure with myself and more clear on my path in life. I however see many women my age who haven't even begun this process. They still think they need to have a significant other to be in love, rather than realizing the first person to have a relationship with is themselves. I am constantly wondering why this is. Where along the lines did we learn to compromise ourselves so well?

Why do we settle and why do we confuse lust for love and ignore what true intimacy is? We create situations out of nothing just because we are alone. For me, I know I feel the most guilty when I know I have sacrificed my values to make myself believe something other than fact because at times the truth can be something I absolutely don't want to hear.

Realizing these things is important NOW. I do not want to drag these issues that I am chipping away at to roll over into a relationship. And that is probably my biggest concern. For myself and my other friends who may be wasting their time or by-passing important issues. I am nowhere near looking to be in a relationship, marriage is so far off of my radar and dating is little bit of a hassle right now, but someday when I decide to settle down, I want to know that it is because I enjoy the person I am with, not because I need them.