thursday motivation

I saw this recently and felt a little inspired by it. So many times I find myself and see the people around me doing something because they feel like they have to. Whether if it’s to make someone else happy or because they feel like they have no other choice. But I am here to tell you that this is not the way life should be. Only do something because YOU want to. I lived my life for far too long trying to please others. And it’s pointless.

Do what you want, when you want. And don’t apologize for it.

Coffee & sunlight are good for the soul

This morning, after a string of events I won’t talk about now, I found myself walking to the el train from a friends house in the bitter cold of an early Chicago morning. It wasn’t too windy for once & the sun was out & shining, so it was actually kind of a nice time for me to walk by myself & reflect on the morning. My life certainly isn’t perfect right now, but it’s not bad either. At some points I feel like it’s better than when I moved here 7 months ago & at others, it feels worse. But this morning on my walk to the el, it just felt okay. I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t sad either. I’m the type of person that feels each one of my emotions so intensely that when I’m even remotely happy, I’m ecstatic but if I’m having a little bit of a bad day then it’s the end of the world. So just feeling okay & at ease is something that is pretty rare to me. But this morning, the feeling completely consumed me.

I stopped & got a coffee from Dunkin & I waited for the train. It was such a simple moment, but it was honestly beautiful. The sun was peaking through the rafters of the train stop & the skyline of Chicago was perfectly visible in the distance. There weren’t many people out, as everyone in this city is probably still in bed hungover or the early risers are already at brunch or sweating through their workout classes, so I was able to get a seat on the train & relax. It’s small moments like these that I try to grab a hold of & enjoy while I can. It may not seem like much, but it was enough to soothe my constantly frantic & anxious mind. I was able to put all of my worries aside for a second & just enjoy the moment. I’m hopeful that there are many more of these moments to come.

My take on self care.

 

With the combined rise of social media & the new openness surrounding talking about one’s mental health, self care is something that I have heard a lot about lately. I never really thought much about the topic of self care, because I thought that it was always a given that you should take care of yourself in order to live a happy and healthy life. But something that I have recently learned, is that self care isn’t just about eating your vegetables and keeping up on attending your doctors appointments. I came across the quote below on Stephanie Shephard’s instagram story a couple of months ago. If you aren’t aware of who Steph Shep is, she was the once long time assistant to Kim Kardashian. The quote was rumored to have been posted after Kim fired Steph for some differences that the two could not settle. Whether you know what I’m talking about or not, I think that the quote posted speaks volumes to what the importance of self care really is.

Yes, self care can be eating your vegetables and going to checkups, but it could just as easily be eating a whole pizza by yourself or skipping out on a scheduled appointment in order to take a minute to do nothing. Self care is doing the thing that you need most in that moment. It could be anything as simple as turning off your phone if you need an escape, being 10 minutes late for work because you purposely got off on the wrong train stop in order to have a couple of extra minutes to yourself, or even laying on the floor in the middle of your room on a summer afternoon with the windows open. Or it could be much more than that. It could be spending all of your savings on a trip that is going to make you happy, it could be letting go of a person who you love but you know that is not right for you, or it could be spending an ungodly amount of money on something that you don’t need but that you want. My point is, self care could be a wide variety of things. It just depends on what you need most at the time. What that is today may not be the same thing that you need in the morning, next Tuesday, next fall or even 2 years from now. But regardless of what it may be or when it is that you need it, it is so so important to always take the time to do it. Even if it may not seem like much, it really does make a difference. I think the rule of thumb should be to treat yourself like you would treat a significant other whom you absolutely adore; give yourself that same amount of love and affection. Take the time to acknowledge that you deserve the little things and the big things too, whatever they may be.

Happier, healthier me.

Let me start by saying, it has been so long since I have taken the time to sit down and write on here, that it feels somewhat strange to be doing so now. My life has changed drastically, but for the better, in the past couple of months and I honestly could not be more grateful for that. In an effort to keep improving & growing, I decided to post a list of my personal goals for 2018. In a sense, I feel like posting things on here & knowing that other people are reading what I am writing (hopefully), holds me a little more accountable to sticking to the goals that I am making. Anyways, here they are…..

• First & foremost, I want to work on getting my anxiety under control. In the past couple of years, I feel like my anxiety has gained an increasing amount of control over my life. Some times I don’t follow through with plans because I’m so anxious about leaving the house. Anxiety has ruined relationships & opportunities for me that I may never get back & I am over it. So what am I going to do about it? When I feel an anxiety attack coming on, I need to work on talking myself through it. Breathe. Take the time to make sure that I am feeling well & to not be ashamed if sometimes that relief isn’t instant. To not be ashamed that I may have some bad days, but knowing that I will get through them. I’ve considered seeing a therapist, which is a big step for me, but it’s also pretty pricey. Now that I commute to work on the train every day, I have a lot of extra time to read, so I’ve been reading articles written by therapists about how to get your anxiety under better control. What I’ve found so far, is that slowing down & taking life one step at a time is key.

 

• Becoming more aware of my financial situation. I’ve sort of been seeing someone who works in finance & talking with him about his work has really opened my eyes to what my options are when it comes to saving. I’ve never been someone who has saved money. For small things here & there, yes. But I’ve never really had an actual savings account where I put aside money every paycheck. I have finally began to do that, & let me just say it feels great. I also would have never described my financial situation as “secure.” I am still not there yet, but I am getting there. Keep in mind, I am only 23, but regardless, I’m learning. For the first time in my life, I’ve started thinking about investing & building my credit. I hope to not only have a better understanding about what my options actually are by the end of the year, but to have also began actively taking part in them.

 

• Next, I would like to try some type of new workout class that I genuinely enjoy doing. I have always liked working out, but I go through phases of actually keeping up a schedule & consistently doing it. The reason I specifically want to find a class is because I have always wanted to do something like a cycling class or kickboxing, but my anxiety has held me back from doing so. I took a zumba class for a couple of months a few years ago & absolutely loved it, but after falling out of the routine of it I wasn’t able to comfortably get back in to it. My goal for this year is to find one that I genuinely enjoy doing & to turn it in to a hobby.

 

• Another goal that I have already made a lot of progress on in the past couple of months is to be okay with being alone. I haven’t technically been in a relationship in about 3 or 4 years, & for a very long time, I craved being with someone else. It was to the point where it was unhealthy. I became very attached to people who I had only been talking to for a couple of weeks & I would try to force relationships with them. In the past couple of months, I have made the decision to stop focusing so much on my love life & to put my career first. My goal is to grow more as a person & to build myself up before I decide to start looking for love again. I spend way to much time trying to give others love, when I never feel like I get it in return. So I’m taking time off from loving others romantically to love myself a little more. I have to love myself & put myself first before I try to love another person. Once I get better at that, I think my future relationships will be a lot more healthy & have a lot more potential to last.

 

As time goes on I’m sure I will come up with more, but for now these are my main areas of focus. Updates to come 🙂

Typing with a full set is harder than it sounds

I’ll just cut to the chase on this one: I’m currently stuck between 2 guys. Both are very casual. One is here in Chicago with me, and the other is the guy that I started seeing the last couple of months that I was in my college town and he is not in Chicago with me. I expected both just to be casual, and I figured that since I’m single why not just play the field right now? I once heard someone say that if you are not exclusive with anyone, then you should date around. Because the reality is, if you have not had the “exclusive” talk with someone, then you are probably not the only person that they are seeing. (At least this has been my experience.) Anyways, I decided that for once I was going to play it by this approach because I always only see one person at a time when we are not exclusive and end up getting my feelings hurt. And for once, guess what happened. Both guys are starting to act like they don’t want to keep it so casual.

I’m an extremely low key person, so I’m pretty confident that neither guy thinks that I am seeing someone besides them. This makes me feel guilty as hell. Still, I keep telling myself that until they initiate the conversation, that what I’m doing is not wrong. But aside from that, I’m caught in the dilemma of if I were to have that conversation with them, which one would I choose? Guy 1 has been in my life for about 2 years now and I just thought that if it hadn’t happened yet, then it was never going to happen. But as of lately, he’s been acting very smitten towards me and our relationship has become less about hooking up and more about establishing an actual relationship with one another. He’s hurt me quite a few times and has a reputation for being a playboy. I’ve dated guys like this before and I know that it usually never leads to a positive outcome, but there is so much passion between us that it’s still hard to let go. Intense fights lead to great hookups and the two of us telling each other how much we care for each other. He’s the choice that my heart wants. However, guy 2, is the guy that my head knows that I need. He is sweet, patient, caring. We get along very well and he makes me laugh. I’m happy when I’m with him, but we are long distance, so that’s not very often. I know that overall, I could be happy with him. But the passion is not there. If we I get angry, he listens and we talk it out. There is no intense fight followed by the most passionate kiss I’ve never had in my life. My relationship with him is rational and stable. Guy 1 is anything but.

As I’m writing this, I know that to someone on the outside, the obvious choice is guy 2. He’s a great guy and if I don’t want to get hurt, then he is no doubt what I need. But what is love without passion?

How to make friends in Chicago: sit outside a starbucks by yourself

I finally made my long anticipated move to Chicago. I just got a job in the city and am actually starting to get settled here.

It’s been a crazy past couple of weeks and my mind has been going in every which direction trying to figure out the city and what it is that I want to be doing. Last night was one of my lowest points since I’ve moved here. I was in the city and had to say goodbye to someone that I care very much about. The reason why it was such a big deal for me, is because I have no idea when I will see him again. On top of that, I just generally felt lost. I haven’t had a chance to see any of my friends (besides him) in the past month, and I haven’t really made many here yet. I just feel lonely. I am also stressing out about my job, because I have to commute quite a ways and I’m not sure if it’s going to work out yet.

Anyways, I was visibly upset and didn’t want to go home yet, so I sat down at a starbucks and ordered a coffee. I sat outside with my headphones in, drinking my coffee alone and watching the thousands of people pass by on Michigan Avenue when a complete stranger approached me out of no where. I took out my headphones as he extended his hand and introduced himself. He asked me to dinner and I quickly declined as I still felt full and sad from wallowing in my self pity. He then asked me, “Well what about a drink?” I paused for a second and thought to myself, why not? What else am I going to do, sit here and cry about how alone and lost I feel? So I said yes.

We made our way down the street to an upscale Mexican restaurant and we both ordered a margarita. Aside from it being the best margarita that I have ever had, the vibe of the restaurant was amazing. There were fireplaces made up of blue rocks on fire everywhere, the lighting was dim, and every one around me seemed beautiful and happy. He ended up ordering tapas even though I insisted that I wasn’t hungry. Over our margaritas and tapas, we discussed our life philosophies, what we looked for in other people, using Tinder in the city, and work. It was great conversation for it being with someone that I had just met less than an hour ago. We ended up parting ways, but before we did, he gave me his business card (so adult). I haven’t reached out to him yet and I’m honestly still not sure if I will.

As I rode the CTA home that night, I felt extremely hopeful. This is the beginning of my new life. I may feel completely alone one moment, but I am surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people every single day. There are so many people who are going to be a part of my life here that I simply just haven’t come across yet. Last night made me realize that in this city, anything is possible. And if I want something, I need to put myself out there and go get it. Because at this point, the only thing that’s stopping me is myself. Here’s to a new city, a new outlook on life, new friends, new loves, and most importantly new experiences.

right person, wrong time type of thing

 

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve slept by myself. My most recent “bae” has been staying over pretty consistently all summer. But that’s all about to change.

We both just graduated and are moving 500 miles away from each other. The worst part of it all is that if we weren’t moving away from each other, then I know that we could have made it work. I have real feelings for him and I know that they are reciprocal; this is something that rarely happens with me because I have a bad habit of only going for men who are emotionally unavailable or playboys. We’re both going through so many changes right now, and I think a long distance relationship would only put more stress on our lives. It’s one of those right person, wrong time situations. Where the person is absolutely great, but the timing is awful and there are so many reasons why it can’t work right now. Knowing that and even accepting it still doesn’t make it any easier. If anything, I think that it makes it worse, because you know that if the timing was right then you could probably end up loving that person.

This isn’t the first time this has happened to me. Last year I started seeing someone who was graduating a year before me and was moving in to a different time zone 6 months after we had met. I went in to it knowing that and still couldn’t help but fall for him. He is the guy, who up until recently, I talked about in my posts. We still keep in touch but not as much as we used to, and I finally moved on. Only it was to someone who I also cannot be with. I don’t know why I do this to myself. I can’t tell if I’m just a masochist who enjoys suffering in the fact of knowing that I can never make things work with someone that I care about or if I’m doing it to protect myself. Sometimes, I feel as though I subconsciously start to catch feelings for people who I know that I can’t make it work with, so that I don’t have to A) commit to a real relationship because all of my past ones have ended so horribly & B) so that I don’t have to risk being hurt if it does turn in to a real relationship.

The ironic part of all of this, is that if I am doing it to protect myself, I still end up getting hurt. The only difference is that I’m choosing the way that it ends. I start relationships with people who are leaving because I know that when they leave will be the end. Even if we still keep in touch, it won’t be the same because I refuse to do long distance. Whereas, if I started talking to someone who was in the same city as me for good, who knows what could happen. They could meet someone else, cheat on me, get bored of me.

***Side note: As I’m writing this, I’m realizing that this is probably the reason why I keep doing this to myself. This is why I love writing. Because it helps me talk out what I’m thinking when my thoughts are jumbled, take a step back and analyze what it is that I’m feeling or thinking.***

I need to overcome this insecurity that everyone I have feelings for is going to end up hurting me, or else I’m never going to be able to have a stable healthy relationship. The problem is, I don’t know how to do that. It’s so hard sometimes to let go of those negative thoughts. Anyways, more updates on this situation to come, but for now I’m headed to bed :).

 

What’s better for you these days, a juice cleanse or a social media cleanse? (Asking for a friend)

Confession: I love social media and I am almost always using it. I love Twitter, Instagram, and especially Snapchat. Each of these platforms holds a different purpose for me. Twitter is mainly something that I look at when I need a good laugh. My feed is mostly just memes and old vine threads. Instagram on the other hand, is where I look to for inspiration for my everyday life. I follow a ton of girls my age whose fashion I admire, Chicago foodies, my favorite stores, fitness accounts, and celebrities. I also follow a lot of friends on Instagram, but besides text messages and phone calls, I primarily use Snapchat to keep up with my friends.

Technically, I guess my WordPress page is also a social media platform, but I don’t really consider it to be in the same way as the other ones that I use. Anyways, lately I’ve felt very uninspired and my mind has been cloudy. I have also found myself focusing way too much on what others think and spend too much time comparing myself to others. I feel as though I have been focusing so much on social media, that it’s been taking away from my own life. A couple of weeks ago, a girl who I follow on Instagram, announced that she was doing a social media cleanse. This girl is about a year or two older than I am and is a socialite in Chicago. I follow her page because I love her fashion sense and aesthetic. When she announced that she was doing a social media cleanse, I was very surprised, because she is constantly posting. It also made me wonder why someone with what seemed to be in my eyes, a perfect life, would want to take a break from showing it off. Upon thinking this, I immediately realized how superficial it made me feel for even having that thought. I have to remind myself sometimes, that a person’s social media does not necessarily reflect how their life really is. Social media is really just the bits and pieces of a person’s life that they decide to share with the public, so that they are perceived a certain way. Outside of Instagram, I do not know this girl or her every day troubles. All that I know about her is that she is always sipping on fancy cocktails at Chicago bars and has an impeccable wardrobe. So many times I think that we forget that the people we see on social media, have lives and real problems that are not always made visible for us.

This whole instance and the way that I first reacted to it got me thinking, “Do I need a social media cleanse as well?” I clearly was so deep in this internet world that I was forgetting that it didn’t always represent reality accurately and I was accepting it as my own reality. I decided that the answer to this was yes. So I deleted the Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat applications on my phone. I don’t really have a set amount of time that I want to do it for. I just figured that I would start out doing the “cleanse” for several days to a week and depending on how it made me feel, I would either continue it or discontinue it. I’m not worried about going without Twitter or Instagram, I think that the two of those will be a breeze. The only one that I think I will struggle with staying off of is Snapchat. I mentioned earlier that I keep in touch of most of my friends on this application, and for some of my friends, it is the only form of communication that I really keep with them. I’m currently casually seeing two different guys and I mainly communicate with both of them through the app. I don’t really know how this became my main source of communication for both of them, but I guess that most of it was my doing. As of right now, I’m not looking to exclusively date either of them, and I think that Snapchat keeps the situations more casual. I dislike texting very much and I’m also really bad at it. I don’t always (okay, I never do) text back in a timely manner and this really offends a lot of people. With Snapchat, whether we’re snapping back and forth pictures or utilizing the messaging part of the app, it’s more laidback. I don’t have to worry about replying in a certain time frame without hurting the other person’s feelings or even replying at all. I guess more than anything, I’m just anxious to see if either one of them will reach out to me in another way. This brings me to my next point, that social media is an interesting concept all together, because anyone who has social media accounts, probably has relationships on it that do not exist outside of the accounts. For example, the person who you do not know that always comments advice on your blog posts, the mutual friend of a friend always commenting nice things on your pictures, etc. So if we take away social media and we lose all of these relationships, will it affect us positively, negatively, or not at all? I guess that’s a topic to dive into after the cleanse, but for now, it’s just something to think about.

I’m not really sure what I expect to get out of this cleanse. But it will be interesting to see how I feel in terms of my mental health after it is done. Like I stated before, I do struggle with comparing my life to those on social media and ending up unhappy a lot of times because of it. As juvenile as this may sound, I know that there are thousands (probably way more) of other people like this in the world and that’s pretty problematic. More updates to come on how goes. Until then, wish me luck.

Two double vodka sodas with lemon later

For the past 5 months or so, I’ve been in a strange funk. I don’t know how else to describe it, other than to say that my mind has just been cloudy. I can’t pinpoint a reason as to why this is, but I’m going through a lot of transitions in every aspect of my life right now, and I think that may be why. This “funk” has had an impact on a lot of areas of my life, but one that it’s affected the most, is my writing. Writing has always come easy for me, and it’s a big part of my every day life. Usually, I can write pages and pages about anything and still feel like I could keep going. But as of lately, every time that I think of a topic that I want to write about, I sit down at my computer and my mind just goes blank. It’s like I can’t find the words to say. I barely write on here at all anymore. If I ever do write these days, it’s usually a paragraph or so in my journal or a note in my phone when I get a random idea. I’ve also been thinking about switching up my page a little bit which has been holding me back from writing as well. Anyways, last night something happened that made it a little easier for me to write this.

Last night, I went out with my roommate for my 23rd birthday. We were going from bar to bar just feeling the night out and ran in to a couple of our old friends. One of them was her boyfriend’s old roommate, and the other was a guy that we both went to high school with and had somewhat been in the same friend group with for a semester or two of college. We ended up on a rooftop bar, drinks in hand, deep in conversation with both of these guys. My roommate was sitting across from me with her boyfriends old roommate. They were deep in a conversation about climate change. My roommate is very liberal and her boyfriend and most of his friends are pretty conservative. So whenever we all end up in the same place and are intoxicated, she turns every conversation into some type of political debate. I, on the other hand, was sitting next to the guy that we had both went to high school with. Him and I have a little history together; we both had crushes on each other but it didn’t work out because the circumstances at the time were just too weird. Anyways, he’s a pretty unique guy. I don’t think hipster is the right word to describe him, but it’s something comparable. He has a lot of family in Greece and spent most of last year traveling through Europe. We talked about everything from whether or not we believed in astrology, religion, and our ethnic backgrounds to what our plans were for after college. It was one of those conversations that inspired me and gave me hope for the new page of my life that I’m about to start. I told him my plan for what’s next for me (moving to Chicago not really knowing anyone or having a set plan) and he reassured me that I wasn’t crazy. He reminded me that in order to get to where you really want to be, that sometimes you have to take chances and make choices that may seem crazy to others and sometimes to yourself. He also pointed out that Chicago is a city full of opportunity and if you want something there, you have to put yourself out there and go for it. Which is what I’m doing. I have really been doubting my decision to move and just about every other decision that I’ve been making lately. So it was extremely reassuring to hear from another person, whose opinion I value, that I’m not doing so bad after all.

I think it’s little things in our every day lives that make the most influence. A simple drunken conversation with an old friend completely changed my mindset. That may sound silly, but it did, and I can’t explain it. It’s funny because as I sat on the roof of that bar last night, I was surrounded by so many people. I often forget how small I really am in the grand scheme of things and forget that all of these people around me are going through things as well. Some of them may be similar to me, some not as bad, and some a lot worse. Kind of makes me wonder if anyone else in that bar last night also got a little piece of enlightenment.

10 minutes to Linden

I had expected to get to your new apartment in the city & for so much to have changed. I expected you to be different. I expected everything to be different. But not much had.

So many things were the same. The way that we acted towards each other. Your bed and light blue bed sheets. The jokes that we made with each other. You’re laugh and the smell of your skin. 

That was the first time that I had seen you in 8 months. Not that we haven’t stopped talking, I hear from you every now and then & we still snapchat pretty often. I’m not really sure how I feel about everything yet. I mean I did just leave your apartment an hour ago, but I’m curious to see how I’ll feel when I wake up tomorrow. I’ve been waiting for this night for months on end. Not this particular night I guess I should say, but just to see you in general. I had so much to say to you that I didn’t get to express, but I’m not worried. Something tells me that this won’t be the last time that I’ll see you. Something tells me that there will be many more nights like tonight. But part of me isn’t even sure that I still want to tell you all of the things that I had previously planned on saying to you. For so long, I thought that you were it. But something about to night makes me feel like maybe you’re not. Like there’s so much more out there for me and I need to focus more on myself. I need to try new things and meet new people. Possibly fall in love with someone that’s not you. For the first time in over a year, I’m more excited about what’s to come for me, rather than what’s to come for us. 

I’m back and I’m wiser than ever (not really, but I’d like to think so)

“Don’t wait, time goes on.” “Life doesn’t stop for anyone.” “Life goes by pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile you might miss it.” 

Growing up, I’ve heard atleast 20 different variations of these quotes. In movies, in books, quotes I see when I’m scrolling through  Pinterest in a lecture hall, from older and wiser family members (you get the picture). I tend to overlook these quotes every time I hear them, because they’re so overplayed. Recently though, however, I’ve found myself paying a little more attention to them. 

I’m about to graduate college and my life is go go go right now. Between work, school, a dysfunctional family, and trying to maintain a social life between multiple friend groups while simultaneously trying to keep myself from going crazy, I’m lucky if I have an hour to myself every couple of days. Daily phone calls to my sister have become a once a week thing. I haven’t been to the grocery store in over a month because I’m never home long enough to make a home cooked meal. I haven’t written on this page or even in a journal in atleast 2 months, and writing is a love of mine. One of my very best friend’s birthdays passed days ago and I forgot to tell her happy birthday. Days of not hanging out with my closest friend turned into weeks before I even noticed it, until eventually, I don’t even know what’s going on in her life anymore. The list goes on and on, but the point that I’m trying to make is that all of these overused and outplayed quotes about life moving too fast and letting it pass you by if you don’t take a break are so god damn true. Over the past couple of months, I’ve kept asking myself, “At what point does life slow down?” But maybe the real question that I should have been asking is, “at what point do I slow down?”

Life isn’t going to stop. It doesn’t matter who you are. The deadline for your project won’t come any slower, rent won’t be due any later. Over time people will completely change from when you first met them, yourself included. Loved ones will come and go. So don’t get so caught up in such trivial things that you miss a friend’s birthday or that you don’t end up calling your sister. When your life is moving fast, it’s easy to forget these things. But I can assure you that the other person will not forget and they will notice when you don’t call or visit or send the text or whatever. I’m starting to realize that it’s okay to “stop and smell the roses” every once in awhile or to take the time to sit down and drink your coffee in the morning. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel as though our society has begun to make these things out to be a waste of time. Every thing is beginning to become about convienence and getting things done in as little time as possible so that we can have more time to do more meaningless things in our day. But I don’t want to keep living this way. When I go in to a restaurant, I want to sit down and enjoy my time with the person that I’m with and not worry about getting home in time to work on a paper. I want to take the long way to class so that I can walk past the lilac bushes near the psychology building because they’re my favorite flower and they remind me of my mom and of my childhood home. I want to lay in bed for an extra 20 minutes and be a little late for work so that I feel more well rested and am in a better mood throughout the day. I want to stay in the car and listen to the ending of my favorite song. What I’m trying to say, is that I want to take the time to live my life. I don’t want to rush through it trying to finish my next project or get to the next place that I think I need to be. I want to slow down and enjoy it with the people around me.