I know I’m still one post behind, and I’ll catch up eventually, but I had a dream last night that sort of spurred this line of thought, so I thought I’d share.

So I had a dream last night that I dyed my hair. I have naturally medium-dark brown hair that gets sun-bleached easily. So in my dream, I dyed my hair pink which essentially only tinted the lightest parts of my hair. It was really pretty and I’d love to try it out IRL, but I seem to have a problem with any sort of body modification.

I can’t bring myself to do it.

I’ve dyed my hair before, different shades of red, black, brown, highlights and lowlights, but always very careful to make it look as natural as possible. I’d love to dye my hair into several pastel shades.

I have a single set of piercing in my ears. No other ones, even though I’d love to get a constellation piercing on my left ear. No tattoos, even though I’ve been drawing and planning tattoos since I was in college.

The big reason why I don’t follow through with any of these ideas, I’ve realized, is that I don’t think people would approve. My parents likely would not approve. My boss might not approve. My friends might not approve. Complete strangers on the street might not approve.

Who gives a shit about all that?

Me, apparently.

So, I’m gonna dye my fucking hair fucking pink because it’s my life, my body, and I don’t require anyone’s approval to live my life as I see fit.

Yeah, so I didn’t post yesterday.

I failed my task to post every single day.

These things happen. It’s life. It never goes the way we plan.

My father used to tell me to never let anyone see me cry. It was a sign of weakness and anyone who saw me do it would think me weak and would walk all over me.

I have a lot of issues that stem from things my father taught me.

But I know that crying is good and okay and healthy. It just means that I’m experiencing profound emotions. I’m feeling so much and so deeply that I can’t hold it in my body.

I saw the musical Rent for the first time in about ten years a few weeks ago. Cried pretty much the entire second act. Sitting there listening to this beautiful music, these wonderful actors pouring their souls into their craft, tears streaming down my face. I made no move to wipe them away knowing that my movements would distract those sitting around me. I just let the tears fall and fall and fall.

It was beautiful and perfect and I couldn’t stop the little voice in my head from shaming me.

I hate the things that have been ingrained in me for no reason except someone along the way in my father’s life or his parents or their parents, someone decided people shouldn’t cry in public and passed it down through the generations to me.

What other things were passed down? What other things are we told we shouldn’t do in public. How we should or shouldn’t act. What we should or shouldn’t say. Arbitrary rules that someone made up that governs all our lives. That keep us from being happy or at the very least content. Imagine what humans could accomplish without the time and effort being used to following these arbitrary rules.

We made these things up.

We can unmake them.

We can cry in public.

Hoo Boy! So much has happened since my last post!

I’m sitting here, thinking about what I want today’s topic to be, but there’s so much to unpack and I’m not just talking about my suitcase.

I’m back home now, on this Sunday evening, mentally recovering from the past 38 hours and mentally preparing myself for the next week of work.

The weekend was a success. The car made the successful two and some hour trip to the next major city over (not gonna give you too many clues as to where I live). I picked up one of the other guests on the way since she technically lives in the same city as me, just a half hour drive to the other side… and yet we haven’t seen each other in over 2 years.

There were other college friends there who I haven’t seen since graduation, but it was nice to see everyone and reminisce about the old days.

There was good food, music, dancing, and an open bar.

But boy oh boy were there bombshells aplenty.

I won’t go into too much detail just in case, but the whole thing has left me unnerved.

I talked to three other girls who were all at the wedding about the bombshells and we were all sort of left with a few main thoughts:

1. How do you support someone you love who has done something that you vehemently disagree with?
2. At what point does love for someone outweigh all the bad things they’ve done?

Those are tough questions with even tougher answers. Especially since there is no correct answer and the answer can and probably will change over time.

But I know what it’s like to love someone who has done bad things and made bad choices. I’ll never condone those things, but I love this person enough to allow them to learn from their mistakes and grow. I will always support them, but I’ll also tell them when they’re being an absolute idiot.

I went to a friend’s wedding today.

It was a shotgun wedding.

I didn’t know this until I got there.

I’m so tired.

Longer post tomorrow.

Before you panic, I’m not going to kill myself. Not literally anyway.

While on the bus home today I thought about what it would be like to take all the things I don’t like about myself. Everything that I do that hurts myself and who I want to be. Every memory that causes me pain. Take all those things, separate them from myself into an image of myself…

And kill it.

All my failures gone. All my insecurities gone. The damaged person who sabotages everything I want to do gone.

Dead.

I’m going to use that and make some art.

That old person will die in the process and the new me, like a phoenix, will rise.

How do you find the motivation to do anything?

I find myself going through the motions of life without any thought. My alarm goes off in the morning, I either hit the snooze button or turn it off altogether. Eventually I drag myself out of bed, get ready for work, ride the bus in, work for eight hours, ride the bus out, go home, make dinner, bum around the house, until the sun goes down and I go to bed.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I can’t bring myself to do anything other than the bare minimum. Even when I know I should. Even when I sit here and drown in the guilt of all the things I could be doing with my life, but just can’t seem to do.

I just want the motivation to be the best me I can be. Maybe the best me is the me I am right now.

That’s a depressing thought.

Today was my last day of New Years vacation. Tomorrow I have to go back to work.

Notice how I said “have to” not “get to.”

I have a good job. It pays the bills and gives me enough left over to indulge in moderately expensive hobbies. I get to work a typical 9-5 without having to put in too much time over the requisite 40 hours a week. I work with some really cool people that I enjoying being around.

I hate my job.

The best part of my weekdays are when I finally get to leave and not think about work for a few short hours. The best part of my week is Friday when the weekend finally arrives. I long for my days off.

The thought of doing this until I’ve saved enough to retire is soul-crushing.

I was listening to a podcast earlier today and the guest on the episode I listened to was talking about jobs. She worked in a job that she did well but didn’t put in any extra effort than what was required. Her friends on the other hand talked about the job at night, on the weekends. They read books about their jobs for fun. They were doing, for a living, exactly what they would be doing anyway, but they got paid for it. This realization led this person to follow suit. She decided to start doing what she was doing while not at work, and get paid for it.

The problem is the things I do when I’m not working are not profitable. So… I need to find something that is.

It might take me my entire life, but the search for my calling might end up being more important than actually finding it. Imagine all the things I might learn about who I am as a person while I find my purpose. And maybe in the meantime I’ll finding meaning and purpose in the job I have now. Maybe instead of spending time and energy focused on the things I hate about my job, I can focus on the things I do like and do more of that.

Maybe I can find a way to change the things I hate about my job to make it better for me and others. Maybe this can be a catalyst for change in other areas of my life.

Maybe that’s my calling.

The Oxford Dictionary defines a resolution as “a firm decision to do or not to do something.”

The New Year is typically the time when we make resolutions, whether to lose weight or exercise more or read more or drink less, and there are plenty of studies that aim to determine how long these resolutions typically last and why they fail in the first place.

I’ve never been big on resolutions (the thought of doing something for a whole year overwhelms me) and yet here I am having resolved to blog each day this year.

2019. Three hundred and sixty-five days. Eight thousand, seven hundred and sixty hours. (Sing it with me now…) five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes. How do you measure a year?

I guess I’ll measure this year here, with you reader, if you read it.

But back to resolutions…

I’ve grown reluctant over the years to even have resolutions to begin with. Mostly because I know I’ll fail. I know this. I know I’ll probably fail this one as well. I’ll fail to lose weight or to exercise more. I’ll fail to read or save money. I’ll fail doing anything I don’t already do. Change is intrinsically hard to do. Intentional change. Change happens by itself, naturally, all the time. Every day. Every hour. Every minute. I am not the same person now as who woke up this morning. I am not the same person in this sentence as I was in the first. But cultivating that change, molding it to your will. That is where change becomes hard.

As much as I love writing. I don’t do it every day. I think about writing. I imagine the scenes and dialogue. I imagine the intricacies of the world’s I long to create, but the actual writing is harder.

Because I’m afraid to fail.

I can read any advice to starting writers about how writing is a process and how the first draft of any story is barely identifiable as an iteration of the finished product. And still I’m afraid that my writing will never be good enough. Not even for me.

I’m afraid to fail.

I know that the person I am now is not the person I will be on December 31st, 2019. There is no telling the choices I’ll have to make. The roads I’ll go down. The people I’ll love. Those I’ll lose. I am paralyzed in the face of my future.

I’m afraid to fail.

I don’t make resolutions because I’m afraid to fail.

I refuse to make firm decisions to do or not to do something because I’m afraid to fail regardless of what that decision is.

So here’s my first act of 2019. I forgive myself for failing. I forgive myself all my past failures; there is nothing I can do about those. I forgive myself the failures of the future; I am human, failure is my middle name. I’m going to fail, but I can choose to pick myself back up again and continue in the face of those failures.

I hope you, too, can resolve to continue in the face of your failures.