Hometown Blues

So lately there has been a lot of talk about me staying in Fort Wayne to work on my professional career. 

And just by being who I am, this is not going to happen. 

My life may not turn out exactly the way I envisioned it, and I may not end up exactly where I thought I would, but so long as I have the experiences that I have such a passion for, I don't need everything to work out on the numbered timeline of my brain. 

I grew up in a big, small town, and it was great. I met a lot of great, lifelong friends. But there comes a time in everyone's life where they have to let go of something so comfortable and move to something much more unknown. 

I loved going to high school in a small town, even going to college in a small town. In fact, someday I hope to raise my children in a small town. But I am at none of these points in my life, and the town I find myself in, is suffocating me. 

I want so badly for the people who have supported me my entire life to see that I am meant for more than the opportunity of a town. 

I need city lights and the constant sound of trains to sleep now, not the cricket outside my window. I need mountains of papers on my desk every morning and people reporting to me 24/7 to feel of use. So if I don't have these things, I simply feel useless, and really...whats the use in that?

It grows difficult to stay calm and carry on when I am being told to settle. 

Having an air of elite thinking and positive thought provokes me to not only reach for the moon, but to capture it. 

My parents used to tell me when I was young that I could do anything I wanted, and be whomever I wanted to be if I set my mind to it. And amongst a couple months of harsh realities and significant disappointment, I stare at an unmistakable pity, one only conjured up by myself. But I now hear "find the diamond in the rough" in comparison to the long gone, "you can do anything" speech, and it makes me even more ambitious.

If I don't have ambition now, and put it to good use, when will I? We all have a dream of how our lives are going to play out, some people get it, some don't. But with everything I am I have learned to never dismiss the possibility that even if everything doesn't go as planned, that you can still have that dream if you believe enough in the reality of it.

So now I look around, at a disarray of cornfields and meadows so perfectly strewn out on the leveled and flat land of my hometown as I determine what it is that truly suffocates me. A loving family, fantastic friends, and security was never the issue. 

It was the comfort I found in familiarity.

A quick beating heart and small impositions follow times of change, but that is what I love about it. Its new, and exciting. 

The broad scope of possibility that lies beyond the realm of comfort is intriguing and inviting.

So it's true, I have the Hometown Blues

 But more than that, I get up everyday and I move with a feeling of going nowhere. A feeling that is continuously driving my ambition. A feeling that ultimately will be my key to success

The Best way to Predict the Future, is to Create it.

It's no lie to say that this has been one of the hardest months of my life. 

So many disappointments, so much uncertainty. 

I have put everything I am, and everything I have into being the best version of myself that I can be. I have relied on my unique drive and highest ambitions to drive me from interview to interview. I have let a hunger for success overcome me. I let my desires get the best of me, to the point where I was running on not only the fumes of life, but of gas to my most recent interview. 

When you are in college you think that if you take a couple classes, get the right grades, associate with the right people, and build the perfect resume, that you will be home-free. This is simply not the case, and its a harsh reality, but its a necessary one. Of course we should all work hard in our education. Make the money worth it. But, it doesn't mean you'll get everything, and it certainly doesn't guarantee you anything. You walk across the stage and receive a piece of paper that promises you brighter tomorrows, and more sleep at night.

This must sound negative. The epitome of a bitter college graduate, but I have only begun.

You see there are times in our lives when all we want to do is believe that the windshield in front of us is fogged up for no reason, that all together it was meant for us to get in an accident. The fact is, that the windshield is fogged up because of a chemical reaction that isn't necessarily a direct result of an action done right or wrong by us. Sometimes the rug is pulled from underneath us, and all we want to do is fall wondering why this is happening to us. We hit the ground with intensity, and it hurts, sometimes for just a second, but many times for long, drawn out periods. 

Its easier to believe that sitting there on the ground will help us feel better, that by not moving and drowning in pity will ease the pain that we so vehemently feel.

The tears you let escape consume you, and make you believe you cannot move forward. Single tears will be shed and for a moment you will feel relief. Once that moment passes, you have a chance, to either stand on your feet or fall back to the ground. Sometimes, you are knocked back down,

 I know I was.

Every time I found something to look forward to, something that generated feelings of acceptance and anticipation, it was ripped away from me, eventually I lost my power, I lost my struggle, I lost my motivation.

When you lose sight of your dreams, even ambition cannot save you.

My dreams came back, in the most abstract sense. I found my relief in something other than physical opportunity, I found it in mental revelation. So many things, people, and events had succeeded in disappointing me, that I didn't know how to defog my window. 

But, I learned this, that I have to believe in something, and it has to be in more than "everything happens for a reason". 

I have to believe that I am destined for bigger things, that I am meant for more than what I was settling for. I had to believe that God meant for me to experience this pain as a form of revelation to determine where my next steps were. 

So now, I look to the future, with no idea where I am supposed to go. I know one thing though, its going to be hard, its not going to be my everyday comfort, and finally,

I am going to create it.

Reflections

The other day I took a bike ride. I took it to an unfamiliar place, and treated my journey as a gravitation towards some sort of worldly understanding. 

But what does it even mean to understand the world?

No body has the same view of the world, each person has their own personal perception of reality. Every person sees the world in a different light.

Along my bike ride, and in the distance, I saw the perfect spot to reflect. It was on a picnic bench behind a church, overlooking a lake. The weather was perfect with a fall coolness to the air, and the sun creating shadows under trees.

I sat down on the bench and closed my eyes. I began to feel, hear, and smell what was around me. I reflected upon the breeze which grazed my cheek, the sound of children playing in the yard beside me, the smell of the rich oak trees mixed with water flowers. I designed a masterpiece in my mind of what I would see once I opened my eyes. 

And just as my eyes saw the trees reflect against the water and the light breeze send gentle ripples towards the shore, I began reflecting on how every move I make is a reflection of myself and where I am going. 

This masterpiece, this sliver of time captured in a picture had more to say about life than anything else at that very moment. 

I continued to watch the birds fly over the water with such ease and familiarity. Flying above with clear view of their afternoon snack they dive into the water. Graceful in flight, and peaceful by nature, the confident creature captures the very object of its current affection.

Flowers and trees surround this beautiful masterpiece of nature as serving as spectators to an amazing gift. Seemingly lonely and of not much use, they grant beauty and individuality to the picture. Pleasing to the eye and so scientifically imperfect the structure and color they add is what makes it complete.

Just as the young squirrel sits upon the shore daring not to dip his feet in the water, does the lonely man sit upon the shore of life, watching as the world passes by. Chilled by the breeze creates fear and anxiety in what he sees. He closes his eyes, and develops his own masterpiece.

For he, though now afraid, will grow to be strong. Because he sees the world from the outside. 

He accepts his own reality, he understands the nature of his perceptions, and he steps in the water without fear of what comes next.

Moving away from the "supposed to's", and realizing the "what are's"

I graduated from college close to three months ago.

 And I am somewhere I was never supposed to be. So, how exactly was it supposed to be? 

Funny thing about expectations is, they will usually let you down. Having expectations that demand the involvement of other peoples opinions, actions, decisions, and/or advice, will ultimately fall short, because the only person that you can have expectations for is yourself. You only have control over yourself. You can do everything in your power to be a certain person and to live a certain way, but as life goes...nearly every one of our actions is countered by an opposing interaction which involves the impact of an outside force completely out of our control. 

So when you set yourself up for the disappointment by keeping your desires on a pedastool, your desires eventually fall. Sometimes the fall is hard and fast, but with a little control and understanding, you can swipe up the fragility of your dreams and find a way to deal with the fall without serious repercussions. As you watch your dreams fall, slowly off that shelf you kept them on all these years, that you worked so hard to keep nailed to the wall by continuously controlling every single situation you could, a sense of urgency, fear, and anxiety formulate and multiply within you. 

I worked the past four years in a daze of misunderstandings. I worked hard, and I did exactly what I should have done, I did exactly what I was supposed to do. I made it happen, the education, the experience, the solid foundation of a career that I knew I would be happy in, and passionate about. I lost myself in it. And I don't regret it, not by a long shot. I learned more about myself than I could have ever imagined. I found myself in a flurry of passion for what I did, and where I was going. I feel fortunate, I found my niche, and I found it early, I committed to a vocation, and a lifestyle that I could build upon. 

I am only 23 years old, and I know where I want to be, I know that when I do find that job that is going to jump-start my career, that I am going to be happy.

So what did I misunderstand about this passion? 

What was missing from my seemingly complete life? 

Honestly, I have asked myself this same question again and again, and it wasn't until recently that I found the answer. The finding of this answer, as I have found through a lot of things in my life was painful. I lost control of my life, and through losing control I lost myself. 

It was the day I realized that I was nothing more than a typical college graduate, I wasn't anything special, still stuck, still searching, still lost and trying too hard to be found. 

Like I said, I don't regret the way I have lived my life thus far. But I do regret placing myself in the frame of mind that I had control over everything. 

Because there is only so much I can do. I can say all the right things, get all the right grades, have the perfect understandings and it could still not be enough. 

I have made decisions that have got me here, there is no doubt about that. And in the mourning period, where you feel useless you second guess every decision you made. I am a woman of God, and through this period of uncertainty, I became stronger in my faith. But there were still questioning. "Should I have left Florida?" "Should I have tried harder?" "Did I lose focus? 

Questioning composes understanding, which develops into a cure for doubt, and helps you see more clearly.

There are still times when I question, when I let myself fall back into an abyss of uncertainty and misunderstanding. But through my faith, through my questions, through the constant support of the people surrounding me I have found truth, and ultimately I have allowed myself to see the value in this period of uncertainty. 

I may not be exactly where I should be. I might be broke, and unemployed, but I am not lost. I see opportunities for growing even in this time where I feel stuck professionally. So I guess that is what this blog is about. Its about me, about my virtual lack in control of what comes next. And the reevaluation of the things I can control right now. 

I believe God is giving me this time off. I see it as a gift rather than an obstacle. 

I have spent so much time so intensely focused on my career that I have wanted and worked towards so fiercely in the past couple years. So this gift, is letting me take a step back and immerse myself in my other passions, that have always been a part of me, but perhaps have not exemplified themselves as dominantly in my personality as the career woman in me has. 

There is this creative, passionate, caring, and communicative personality inside me that has helped me be so successful in my career thus far, but from a personal perspective I haven't had the chance to create those parts of me that will live on in me despite the demands of the workplace. 

Its true, I have written, but mostly, I think I have neglected the writer in me. I have seen my family, but I haven't taken the time to know them. I have known I loved music and singing but I never took the time to investigate that facet of my personality any further than purely superficially. 

I have a different dynamic than I have allowed anyone to see most recently. I am much more complex. So I am taking this time to develop all the other parts of me. 

So that, when the time comes for me to take my dream job, I am more fulfilled, and ultimately more complete and comfortable with myself.