Adventures

I was determined to make this year a better year.

My year started out with the huge decision of deciding what would be my next step.

Should I find a full time job? Should I continue on in school?

If I do go back to school, what do I major in?

All these questions required answers, none of which were easy to make.

Having made the decision to go back to school to acquire a Bachelors in Elementary Education, 

I suddenly realized that I'll have spent the majority of my 20s pushing myself to the limit and killing myself

over school. It's not the life I wanted. I don't want to look back on my 20s and see that the only accomplishments I made were in school. I don't want to look back and grimace at my 20s.

I don't want my life to be just about school. I want to live.

2014...a brand new year, brimming with possibilities, and welcoming us with the fresh pages of ideas and activities and newness to fulfill. I didn't want to waste this year, this opportunity.

Adventures...it's what I wanted, and it's what I've been accomplishing.

I wanted to see new places, so I took up hiking. 3 mountains down, how many more to go??

I wanted to push myself, so I tried rock climbing & discovered the wonderful puzzle it is, both mentally and physically.

I wanted to fly, so I went skydiving.

It's only June and here I am filling my days to the overflow! I feel alive, I feel adventurous, I feel happy...I feel real. But what I've learned is that adventures don't come to you...you have to pursue them, you have to push for them, you have to *find* them. And adventures aren't easy -- nor should they be! Adventures are simply that, adventures, because they aren't easy! It isn't just the satisfaction you get from accomplishing something that makes it an adventure, it is the process, the hard work, the energy, the sweat that makes it the adventure. I'm pushing myself and I love it. Suddenly I'm seeing myself as a totally different person. It's 2014 and all about the adventures.

What adventures are you seeking?

Only Human

I covered it's been hard for me to embrace who I really am. In fact, I think I should admit that I still have no bloody idea who I am exactly. I'm attempting to discover myself, the person, the girl I am deep underneath the layers and layers of nature and nurturing I've acquired over the years of my life. Asking the questions, 

"Is this really me? Or is it a remnant of who they wanted me to be?" 

"Do I really think like this, or is this left-over from the fake me?" 

"What *is* my style?" 

"What do I think genuinely about this?" 

I find myself wondering who the hell I really am. I attempt to extend myself grace as I learn the little things about myself. I attempt (and fail) to love myself. As I ask these questions, however, I sometimes forget that this self-discovery is just not that: self-discovery. It is more. It is the discovery of who I am to the world as well. It is the discovery of who I am to other people while finding myself.

Am I the girl who loves herself only to forget to extend that love to others? Or does it make me more susceptible to extend grace and love? I find myself struggling to take in grace and to give it.

I am harsh with myself, loathing of all the negative qualities that seem to consume my life. But not

only that but I am also not as giving as I could be when it comes to others and the negativity I face 

from them. 

I think of my best friend and the qualities about her very self that tend to rub me the wrong way. There's nothing wrong persay with what she does, but it annoys me and as a result I look at these actions as offensive, my sensitive mind glaring at her because she's late and I'm early, she's stubborn in the moments

where I am not and I am stubborn where she is not. You'd think we balance each other out quite nicely, and we do. Normally I just smile and roll my eyes because we are best friends and that's just what best friends do. We irritate each other. 

However there are the days where I am just not easily amused and want to speak harshly.

And while I don't, because I'd feel much too guilty to say anything, I do tend to lock these feelings up inside, harboring them. What good is there in harboring feelings? When, one day, I was faced with a sudden realization that I was the one being completely unreasonable and selfish in my expectations of those who surround me in life. 

I was reading John Green's Paper Towns. And a friend of the main character says to him: 

“You know your problem, Quentin? You keep expecting people not to be themselves. I mean, I could hate you for being massively unpunctual and for never being interested in anything other than Margo Roth Spiegelman, and for, like, never asking me about how it's going with my girlfriend - but I don't give a shit, man, because you're you. My parents have a shit ton of black Santas, but that's okay. They're them. I'm too obsessed with a reference website to answer my phone sometimes when my friends call, or my girlfriend. That's okay, too. That's me. You like me anyway. And I like you. You're funny, and you're smart, and you may show up late, but you always show up eventually.” 

This is my problem. I keep expecting people to not be themselves.

How can I expect the world to accept me, the real me when I am unable to accept others for who they are? 

Real acceptance isn't about embracing the likable parts. It isn't about accepting the bits we like about each other. It is about accepting each other as wholes. Not a part of me, not a part of you, not halves, not pieces: all of each other. Taking the good with the bad, extending grace to one another for the screw-ups, showing forgiveness for the hurts, acting kindness for the mistakes, and above all being loving through the moments when we least feel like it. 

I have written on my hand, "Only Human", because I am that obnoxious girl who writes on her hands.

But also because it is the reminder I needed this week. The reminder that I am only human not only as I struggle to find and understand myself, but also as I learn to grow and live with those around me. I want to remember that not only am I human, but so is the rest of the world. I do not live in a bubble, I do not live alone, nor do I want to be alone. And because of this fact, I want to remember that those around me?
They are only human too.