Friday, July 31, 2015

A Growing Journey

One thing that can happen when transitioning into full on adulthood is really learning who you are as a person. When you were a teenager, maybe you were beginning to see who you were. In college, you got to see yourself as an independent person while you had no curfew, partied whenever you wanted, skipped a few classes, became a feminist and a democrat, and maybe experimented with all sorts of things from drugs, to sex, to deciding if you wanted to go Greek.  And when all the chaos of being on your own starts to settle in, that is when who you were always meant to be starts to develop. As time goes by, you grow out of those experiments and learn to narrow down what exactly it is you want from life and what you are going to do in order to make it happen.

    I could keep going with the list of what happens mentally as we progress in our lives, but I can’t go much further into the future because this is about where I’m at. I’ve learned so much about myself through the process of growing up in all stages and I know I have much more to do. The prospect of growing even deeper into who I am supposed to be absolutely thrills me. However, there are always fears that I won’t live up to who I want my future self to be. Then again, this is a price we pay for growing up. There is no fast forward or rewind, as we all wish there were. But wouldn’t it be a fantastic discovery if we learned how to replay our greatest hits in life whenever we wanted? Since this hasn’t been discovered yet, we as mere mortals must always live in the present, never able to return to the past and never really certain of what the future might hold for us.

    The truth is, I’m not where I want to be in life yet, but wanting everything to be here now is just a side-effect of being young. I want to be able to skip ahead to all the good stuff, but I know I need to remember to enjoy all the little things and the good things I have now. For instance, I’d say getting my first car this week was a step in the right direction. I am so in love with it and it is just one step closer to the rest of my life. Although there are bigger goals in my mind’s eye, those are for another day and today has its own agenda. There is still so much of myself I have yet to discover, and as I continue the process of being an adult, I have to remember that the journey makes the destination, not the other way around.

We Got This...Right?

So you’ve graduated college. Now you should be prepared to be in the “real world” and know everything there is to know about being an adult, right? I don’t know about other recently graduated individuals, but I know that when it comes to knowing how to adult, I’m far from having it down. All I’ve ever known is how to be a student, to learn, to observe, and honestly how to just screw around. One day maybe I’ll know exactly how to do my taxes, how the stock market works, and what jobs give me the best security. Right now, I’ll settle for someone who hires me despite the fact that I don’t have two plus years of experience because I’ve spent nearly my entire life in school.

    As a recent college grad, sometimes it’s hard to navigate where I’m supposed to be in life. I haven’t landed a job yet, and although it hasn’t been that long since I’ve been out of school, I still don’t feel as accomplished as I would like. Job aside, there are so many things that come with growing up, and it can be difficult to know exactly what those things are until we are faced with them in our own lives. This blog will be my journey through adulthood and where ever that might lead me.

    In the past year, I have learned a lot about myself and a lot about growing up as I studied abroad in Italy and traveled around Europe. Life changing events like this can make you stop and think about who you really are and what you actually want out of life. As for me, I want nothing less than to seek out adventure in all that I do, to chose the life that I love and never let anything get in my way, and to cherish what I have and not dwell on what I don’t. Saying this is all well and good, but sometimes, it can be difficult to not let our emotions cloud our judgement. For instance, as much as I embrace being a strong and independent woman, I can admit that this path can be lonely at times. As great as I am at being alone, I don’t want to be doing it forever, and that desire has only grown with age.

    Being a woman in today’s society, there are so many things thrown at us through social media, television, and other individuals in our lives that can mold or skew our perspectives of what we want or what we should be. Shows like Say Yes To The Dress, the myriad of wedding posts on Pinterest, and people you know getting engaged every other day on Facebook causes us women, especially those of us without a significant other, to not only long for those fairytale wedding moments, but at the same time makes us feel inadequate about what we don’t have in our own lives. Let’s be honest, we all want to be loved and we all want to be able to have our special moments, but the truth is, it doesn’t happen all the time, especially with half of marriages ending in divorce these days. It can be difficult to be a young and independent woman in this day and age, no matter how much #Girlboss support there is out there now.

    Dealing with things like this is just a part of being an adult and trying to do it right. Honestly, there is probably no right way to adult, but then again, how would I know? I’m only getting started.