Let's be real for a minute, okay?
I'm not going to classify what this is, because I hate wasting my time on labeling things when there are more important things to be done. Let's just call this "word vomit" or, if you want to get super fancy and intellectual, "stream of consciousness."
Lately, I've been in a funk, and it hits every year. Every summer, I make more goals and resolutions than I do during New Years. I'll exercise every morning. I'll read every day. I'll read my bible. I'll rededicate and recenter my life. I make all these goals because I'LL HAVE MORE TIME. And I do. And I'll adhere to the goals for a couple of weeks if I'm lucky. But not too long after the summer starts all of these resolutions fall away and I spend hours on end watching Home Improvement or Monk. I fall into a lazy pattern. I wake up late, eat lunch, watch TV. That's it. I fall into a funk of self pity. I tell myself that if I really want to change anything that I'll have to get my butt off of whatever I'm sitting on and make a difference instead of just bitching about it. But I don't.
It's like this every summer, and it's not like this all the time, my activity really fluctuates, but once school starts again I would go back to my regular routine and life would fall back into place. But it's different this year because I graduated earlier this month. Even though I am heading off to college in the fall and I'm taking summer courses at the local community college at the beginning of July, I feel more unsure than I ever have. I don't even know how to explain how I'm feeling... My future seems so unclear for many reasons. I'll bore you with a couple...
1) I've never attended to college before (duh...) and I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to handle living away from home with a crap ton of school work to do.
2) I'm planning to be an English major. I've always planned on majoring in English. I want to be a published novelist. Having planned out my life since I was in middle school and finally arriving at that future that I have planned for so long is unsettling. What if this isn't what I want? What if I never get published, never be fulfilled as a writer? And HOW am I going to find a job and pay the rent and still be happy if I can't do it by writing? What if I never find something I'm both passionate about and that I can pay the bills with?
Help. I don't want to adult.
All of these plans and dreams I'm scared of failing and the imminent future are such a huge weight on my mind lately. They make me shut down and question everything. The laziness kicks in, because if my life is so obsolete then what's the point of doing anything? Then comes the self pity. Etc. etc. It's a vicious cycle.
Lately, during all of this, I've been watching a lot of vlogs. This may not be the best idea. I love watching FleurDeForce, Mimi Ikonn, Travis Clark, and occasionally Jim Chapman and Amelia Liana. I love snooping into people's lives, but a lot of the time (I'll be fair, it's not all the time) the vloggers document the best bits of life, not the crap bits. Even there are the more raw moments where people see tears, more often we're shown pretty Sunday brunches and vacations to places we may never necessarily see. Honestly, I've caught myself getting down on myself because my life wasn't as awesome as these pretty, edited versions of other people's. It's not just vlogs on YouTube, you see it on every other social media platform. Most of the time, people don't post the parts of life that suck. They're more prone to posting the shinier parts. Heck, I'll admit I don't post when I'm upset! No one wants to see that. But if we're still being real, and I like to think that we are, I don't post all that often anyway so...
There are those people that I put on pedestals. I won't make a list, they're a mixture of Hollywood and YouTube famous people, family members and friends. Even people that I don't know and follow on Instagram and the like. I hope I'm not the only one who does this, and I don't think that I am. They live in my brain like statues of perfection. They've never experienced hardship. They live in graceful sunshine worlds that are untouched by imperfections and hardship. I know this isn't reality, I know everyone struggles with their own sets of baggage. We're all human, after all! But I still compare myself to them. That cruel voice in my head holds my figure up to theirs and points out all the niggling differences. Skinnier. Healthier. Wealthier. Whatever.
Calm down.
Or at least that's what I tell myself when I realize that I'm doing this. I've got a pretty good life going when I'm not completely shutting down and screwing it up. I just need to get this through my head and remember it for the next time I feel like crap about myself.
Sometimes I just need to drive and listen to music. Or read a book. Maybe then I can trick myself into doing something productive. Like writing this post!
If anyone is reading this, thank you for listening (reading...)
Lizzie Rose
Also, before I sign off, here's a shameless plug for a collection of stories I wrote and self published. Here's the link if you're interested...
http://www.lulu.com/shop/lizzie-rose/monsters-under-the-bed-and-a-collection-of-short-stories/paperback/product-22191604.html
