small victories | july 10, 2015

i’ll begin this blog post by starting my first small victory of the day- which is to write. although i made no promises as to where this blog would be heading and how often i would post, i have found myself here today and that is a small victory in itself. some may not be familiar with what a small victory is, and perhaps it is a different concept to every person, but i will clue you in on how i define and perceive them within my life.

let’s not get caught up in what victory actually means. well, maybe that might help. by definition, a victory is “an act of defeating an enemy or opponent in battle”, et cetera. i am aware that i am not the first to use this word, to utilize or invent the idea of “small victories”. i do believe that any victory, no matter the quantity or quality, should be recognized. of course, quality can be subjective, but if you stick with me, maybe you’ll understand my perspective of why that could be countered. 

in january of this year, i started making personal posts on my Tumblr account that i titled and tagged small victories. along with the dates, i wrote lists of the things in which i felt proud of accomplishing. the spectrum of things in which i considered to be accomplishments was and remains on a very large spectrum. i don’t think i could ever see an end on either side. basically, the possibilities for improvement, success, and progress are endless. 

i’ll get a little bit more specific for you now. to anyone reading this who knows me in any way, be it through real life or social media, i’ve always been one to make it quite apparent that i have dealt with mental health issues throughout my entire life. i am no longer ashamed of that, but i am also no longer too keen on shouting it out at every given chance. and yet here i sit, writing about it. have a laugh at my irony, i’m right here with you.

if we’re going to base the validity of a victory on a battle, then i can safely admit to the battle i fight as being one against myself. against my thoughts, against my anxiety, against my agoraphobia and introverted tendencies- these are my opponents. for you, they could vary slightly or dramatically. your opponents in this "battle" could be anything- laziness, lethargy, boredom, or doubt. i guess that recording my small victories, which i’ll detail next, became a coping mechanism of sorts. staying positive is not as easy as most people want to tell you it is…or is it? small victories are helping me to figure that one out.

gaging what a victory is for yourself is a personal call. i cannot speak for anyone else on whether or not mine would be the same as the next person. what is important and shared, however, is the concept. it may be an extremely simple idea i came up with on a good day of mine, but i’ve found myself coming back to it, especially lately. i am a person who fears change, unplanned anything, being somewhere i have never been, or pretty much any situation in which i am not the one in control. i am a control freak- i hope you’re catching on that me admitting that is a small victory too! 

my small victories have consisted of doing the things that may seem easy for most people, but are terribly challenging for me. some of my small victories have been getting through a week without a panic attack. they have been making an impulsive (but safe) decision, like hopping in a car with friends and driving to find an abandoned building only to drive in circles. they have also been sleeping at someone else’s house, going to a social event, being a passenger on a train or plane, or even choosing not to spend my paycheck the first day i get it. i fear the unknown territory and unfamiliar feelings, so i have always avoided them. that is no way to live life, and i hope that getting back in touch with my small victories and blogging them will keep me moving forward.

for anyone, acknowledging a small step or good natured decision is always beneficial for clearing your head out. it’s kind of like a mental cleaning and organizing. it’s an easy way to say to yourself, “hey, that was really cool that i did that thing yesterday. that was unfamiliar to me but it turned out great!” and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a huge action, like facing a fear. where that is the root of my small victories, sometimes it can be as basic as having a smooth day at work without getting frustrated, or getting up early and making yourself a nice breakfast. i encourage anyone reading this to try making a weekly list of your own small victories. hell, try it out monthly, daily, whichever suits you. you might be surprised to realize what amazing things you’ve done or felt. and remember, a small victory is simply forgetting the boundaries of your comfort zone, even if only for a moment.

a lifestyle blog for a life that doesn't quite make sense | june 27, 2015

strange. there might not be a more accurate word to describe the way i have always felt about myself, and my life for the last twenty-two years. in feeling strange, i have also been able to redefine and morph that word into what feels like home. strange is a feeling i reside in, (quite comfortably, i might add). i suppose that the way i view this idiosyncratic aspect of myself is how i started this year telling myself “it can only get better from here, 2015”, and how i have ended up here, six months later, saying “it can only get stranger from here, for the rest of my life.” so naturally, i am here to blog about it. 

to be or feel strange extends beyond weirdness, or the simple off kilter-ness of it all. strangeness is the unexpected, and a slight or sometimes dramatic stray from the normal. i mean this in much less of the societal norm, and more of someone’s personal sense of normality. i have always felt a deviating force in my patterns of thinking. whenever there is a desire to feel and think and act a certain way, my subconscious takes over and i end up somewhere entirely new. this has terrified me for the majority of my life, but i have somehow found a near sereneness to this unpredictable habit of mine. 

i do not feel fit in a category of any sort. this asymmetrical sense of self exists in all corners of my life. i have been battling within myself about identity since before i could ever spell that word. almost everyday, i question whether i want to be, or already exist as: an artist, a writer, a thinker, a creator, a really good guesser or a person who makes things arbitrarily. am i an extrovert with introverted tendencies on a bad day? am i an introvert by day but an ambivert by night? does the constant thought of these things make me any less or more of anything, or does it just make me stranger? somedays i believe that i never make conscious decisions, and that things just sort of, happen.

haphazardly, this blog is just happening. i can’t tell you everything now, or probably ever, but what i can tell you is how today happened. my dad and i were driving to the farmer’s market and we had a conversation about the dreaded “future plans” and my “short term and long term goals.” while these words and phrases come off as terrifying to a recent art school graduate, fear and excitement end up being a lot more synonymous than one might initially think. but i had already disposed of the five or ten year plans when i was fourteen years old. my crafty plan for the next decade of my life began to crumble when i failed algebra and was told by my writing teacher that my style was “just not good.” i stopped planning but i never stopped worrying. i never stopped thinking about each grain of sand thought in my head, and that made me feel strange. 

my dad and i talked about the strangeness of this point in life that most people go through. we talked about the embarrassment of having a degree title in which we no longer identify with, and why that’s okay. we talked about the future, and why the future is commonly and mistakenly viewed as “the rest of your life”. the future can be a plan for tomorrow. the future can be a week to week thought process. and to me, the future is finding my passions and taking my time to care for and attend to each and every one of them because i unfortunately have more than my hands can count. my dad agrees with that pseudo-plan of mine, so i’m starting off again with trying to rediscover and sort out my many passions. they’ve just gotten a little messy lately, that’s all.

the first passion i can vividly recall having was for the written word. i have veered from it, obsessed over it, craved it and then spit it back out. but writing is in my roots. actually… no. that isn’t quite right. writing is my roots. even through all of my visual artwork, that becomes very apparent. however, i was never really sure of where those words would take me. well…it’s brought me here. and as i said, it’s been haphazardly, but i ended up somewhere.

i can’t tell you for sure what this blog is going to be about, because, well, look at where this started and where this is ending. when i started writing an hour ago, i had a much different closing paragraph in mind. what i can tell you, is that this won’t be a “this is how i see it” blog, but a “this is how i think, feel, and live it” blog. i’ll tell you undoubtedly there will be more strangeness coming, and with that, more paragraphs. today, this is enough for me.