The Written Word
The written word has always been close to my heart. It doesn’t take reading past the title of this blog to discover my love language. As a child I fell in love with books and discovered the world through visualizing a world described in words. Reading fiction was my escape into the fantasy worlds to fall in love with characters. It wasn’t until recently when I transitioned to Non-fiction and appreciated the beauty of being able to tell a story that converged with reality. Fast forward to last year, I was introduced to Brené Brown, whose work put words into my feelings and catalyzed my desire to delve deeper and create open dialogue. I thought that the beauty in writing was the ability to connect it with your own thought, something that no one can replicate. A connection between two mediums that is so powerful and can be heightened when it’s brought to life with conversations, visual adaptations, and creative interpretations.
So why start now? Three things: moment, mentality, and movement. But first, a little more about me. The best way to describe me would be with the definition of one of my signature strengths - zest: approaching life with excitement and energy; not doing things halfway or halfheartedly; living life as an adventure, feeling alive and activated. I graduated from high school passionate about my future, confident to obtain success, and excited to exit college with a new job in a new city. Somewhere along the two years since graduation, I lost my zest and ended up in a cyclical phase of monotony I like to coin as “the rut.”
What caused it?
That’s for another post.
Was it anxiety?
Duh, I’m a millennial.
Was I depressed?
Maybe.
In the haste of life, my aspirations shifted as my priorities turned to making it to work and then through the day. I didn’t have the mental capacity to dare for more, but little did I know that it had always been in me to transform my life back to the direction I wanted it to go in.
In Glennon Doyle’s book Untamed, she describes a cheetah who was trained to behave like a Labrador because the two were raised together from when they were just born. A beautiful metaphor for society’s impact on human beings, I realized that I WAS the cheetah pretending to be a Labrador when I had the audacity to DARE to do more. I felt like it would be ungrateful of me to want more when my parents didn’t have the opportunities themselves as immigrants. I felt fearful of failure and apprehensive of others’ negative opinions. But then I was forced to slow down due to the pandemic and realign to my values by prioritizing myself and my happiness. I realized that I could be grateful towards my parents, fearful of my future, apprehensive of “failure”, and KNOW that I was a goddamn cheetah. And I was ready to take back control of life!
Moment: I was a compulsive planner who was a people pleaser. A non compatible duo unless boundaries are learned and successfully set. By being forced to have the time, I worked from the ground up to do what it took for myself. Something that I never knew the full meaning of as someone who always prioritized others. This was my moment.
Mentality: It was a challenging time for many, but I was an optimist by nature. Looking at the time gained rather than experiences lost, I was determined to come out of this making progress personally and professionally. Which leads us to -
Movement: ‘There’s no time like the present’ was never so relevant. After realizing how much I was living in my past, I took back control of my life and am not only living in the present, but ready to bring thoughts into action and manifest my future.
I couldn’t think of a better way to start than to return to what brought me happiness as a child and what taught me to dare to dream. Some of my earliest memories are the joys I experienced through the written word, from books to letters. I knew that it would also get me out of the “rut” and propel me towards my journey working towards the future of my dreams. It’s my hope that if anyone reads this, they’re able to find some sort of comfort through my words and know that they aren’t alone.
“Connection is the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they device sustenance and strength from the relationship.”
So here’s to building new connections and strengthening old ones at a time where we all need some extra support, positivity, and hope.
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