mindblown

I often question my path and what it is that I’m doing. I question my identity — who I am both on paper and in spirit. In doing so, I formulate plans to become something different — something else.

I set goals that, in the moment seem like everything to me, that in reality, mean nothing.

Get into snowboarding. Become a yoga instructor. Become a marketing executive. Make X amount annually.

I formulate plans to reach these goals, and then I wonder why things don’t work out. I wonder why I wake up years later with none of those goals accomplished, only to find myself diving into the same patterns time and time again.

Feels bad and/or is confused about life, sets goals that I don’t even, truly, want.

I realized something today.

Someone asked me, what I do — who I am.

I told them I’m 26. That I moved to Boston a little less than a year ago from Nevada by way of Montana. That I work in marketing by day and that in my spare time, I, pretty much, write.

I write.

I got home and got into my classic Sunday routine of creating plans and goals and perfectly strategized timelines.

And then I realized, I told that person that I write.

I told that person, that the most important thing to me outside of my family, friends, and job — is writing. That that is what I want, that that is what I strive to do.

And then I realized that I had never once, not until very recently and years into my love and experience with writing, truly set a goal around it.

I didn’t wake up one day in my childhood and say “I want to be a writer.” In high school, I never took pen to paper for fun. In my first years of college, if someone had said, “you’ll be obsessed with your blog one day,” I would have laughed (and then taken a shot of tequila because duh).

I started writing organically — for no reason at all. I don’t even remember the exact day, but I know, that at one point, I just decided to sit down and write.

And somehow, some way — something beautiful was created.

Or at least something beautiful to me.

And from there, I wrote. I wrote at night, in the early hours of the morning, and any time I felt the urge to write. I wrote because I couldn’t not write. I shared parts of me with people around me that were raw, uncensored — scary as all hell.

But I didn’t think about it, this writing. I just did it. I just did it because I wanted to and it, all of the sudden, was just an innate part of who I was.

I didn’t really think about it.

And now, here I sit, about five years after having discovered this love — realizing that the thing I want to identify with the most — the thing I do identify with the most — was never a perfectly pictured goal at all.

So maybe life isn’t about the plans we make on paper or the things we think we need to bring into our lives.

Maybe it’s about the things we do because they just, for some reason, make sense — even if it’s something we’ve never done before.

Even if it’s something that’s never been written in our ten year plan.

So maybe my plan for the type of man I want to meet, the place I want to live, the job I want to have — the person I want to be — maybe it’s all unwritten yet. Maybe I need to let go and let live.

Maybe, the best is yet to come, and maybe I simply need to make room for it at the table.