Day 14: Regrets, Lessons, and Evolution

I did a thing. So my dream of having an awesome professional camera has come to fruition. I bought myself a little birthday gift, and I hope to soon share fabulous pictures with you guys along with my posts and stories.
I know pictures aren’t everything when it comes to blog posts, but it doesn’t hurt. All I need to do now is learn how to use it. Yes, I know, you point and click the button, but there’s so much more to taking great pictures than that, and I want to learn how.

Also, I’ve been toying around with the idea of making a vision board. I can never seem to figure out what I want in life or what I want to do with myself. I know I want to read, write, take pictures, and do what I want to make me happy. I want to make it so that I can do those things all the time and have it benefit me. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to convince someone to let me do these things and then pay me for it. I know I bring this up all the time, but now I’m trying to think up ways to organize my thoughts better on it. I think the gist of vision boards is to organize your thoughts on what you want into visuals so that you can achieve it. I want something tangible in this process.

One thing that I’ve learned recently is that I need to stop settling for just any place to work because, in the end, that’s never going to work for me. In my daily job search, I am continually reminding myself that although I could easily do several of these jobs, they are not what I want to be doing. My current job isn’t terrible, but it’s not what I want to be doing several years down the road.

I bet yall are wondering how this is something that can help you. What does this post, this blog mean to me? How do yall benefit from my ramblings? I guess part of my constant ramblings allows other writers to see my evolution as a writer or as a person. It definitely allows me to go back and see that evolution as well. I also like to think that I might inspire you in some way.

Please don’t do what I did in my life. You’re all better than that. Search for ways to continue your learning outside of the classroom. Don’t settle for a job that won’t make you happy. Stop waiting for later. Fight to evolve from where you are now to where you want to be in life.

One of the greatest regrets I have in life, up to this point, is not educating myself sooner about what I wanted to do with myself. Not only did I not know what I wanted to do, but I also didn’t even try to research anything. In my attempt to hit the ground running, I hobbled myself, and now I limp through life. It is my hope that I can still turn this ship around. That’s what I want for everyone who reads this. I want you to see that it’s not too late for any of us. I know it’s not for me, and I refuse to believe otherwise.

A lot of the journey so far has been learning about what I don’t want. I think now is the time where I need to focus on what I do want and how I want to get there. I remember a few years ago before I moved to Tucson, I had realized that I needed to be kinder and gentler with myself. It’s something that I think we all don’t do enough for ourselves. This realization is something I feel that I have forgotten over time, and instead, I’ve been focusing so hard on just surviving. The world is not so kind to those of us with softer hearts, and as someone pointed out to me, it seems as though I’ve sealed off certain parts of myself to the not so kind world. Perhaps this has hindered me in the end, cut off my voice, kept me from my journey and evolution.

I feel as if I was once awake, fell asleep, and still haven’t woken up. I want to wake up. I want to wake up and be excited to begin the day and know that if I don’t feel like doing something, I don’t have to. Maybe I should do an “Eat, Pray, Love,” kind of thing. If only we all could do that, perhaps we would all be a little more focused and a little bit happier.

Okay, storytime. I found this one in one of my writing books. I’m loath to call it a journal or a diary because it’s not. It’s where snippets of writing happen to end up. In my writing process, I tend to jot down things at random that aren’t full stories. Sometimes that’s all they are, and other times they turn out to be part of something more. If anything you’ve seen here at the end of my posts looks like something you want to see more of, hit me up either here or on Facebook. Sometimes another set of eyes can see something you didn’t see there before.

Closing her book, she decided it was an excellent time to take a break from her work. Her eyes stung from staring at the pages for the last several hours. It was time to get up, stretch, and find something to eat. Rubbing at her arms, she stopped at the thermostat to adjust the heat. The wind was picking up outside, promising to be another noisy night as the wind whistled through unseen cracks throughout the house.
Her feet slapped against the tile in the living room on the way to the kitchen. The room was dark except for the porch light left on in the backyard. On her way to the kitchen sink, she did not see the man standing just beyond the lights reach outside. She filled a glass with water and turned to lean against the counter as she drank it. Out of the corner of her eye, she finally noticed the man, the light orange color of his shirt caught her attention. He stood with his back to the house.
Quickly she set down the glass and rubbed at her eyes. Perhaps she was seeing things. She had been working for hours, she might have just imagined the man. She blinked a few times and looked up again out the window. At this point, he was now facing the house but still stood just out of the light.
The strangest thought entered her mind that it was odd he was not even wearing a jacket on such a windy night.
Through the thin fabric of the curtain, she could see that it looked as though he was staring at her standing there in the dark kitchen. Although the sliding door was closed, she heard him as though he was standing right next to her, whispering in her ear.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, his words carrying right through the glass.