It's been an interesting few days as I try and start weening myself off Facebook. It's been sort of freeing and sort of frustrating at the same time. But for now, here are my thoughts for today...:
So for the longest time, I've been trying to figure out why I've been stuck in the same place for 4+ years. Still stuck in my parent's basement, still stuck at the same job, and stuck in the same routine year after year.
I've told myself many a time that I need out, I NEED OUT, I HAVE TO GET OUT FOR MY OWN SANITY....yet I'm still here. Why?
Candidly speaking, not figuring this out I believe this is one of the reasons I lost several friends and long term relationship. But I will go into those in another post.
I'm still at a job where I am under utilized, I can't stand my co-workers a lot of the time (they have their shining moments of clarity), and it's mind numbing. It keeps me from doing the things I really want to move forward with, and I am stuck running in this hamster wheel until I'm blue in the face.
Then there are days where my co-workers are semi to mostly friendly. Days where I get to talk to soldiers from all over the country with varying experiences that expand my perception of things. Where I can help soldiers find what they need for their families, and have those glorious moments where soldiers come back from deployment and remember you a year later and tell you "Thank You, the resources you gave me helped my family get through this past year".
So I've adapted. I find ways to focus on the little joys in my everyday to help me handle my frustrations with where I work. It's safe. It's routine. It's comfortable and familiar.
I also have a love/hate relationship with money, which probably comes at no surprise to those who know me and I'm sure most if not all of us can say this. My problem is I don't really know what to do with it. I've been told how to budget PLENTY of times by VARIOUS and NUMEROUS people, and yet I'm still not sure how much of any of that has sunk in. At my job I get a steady paycheck which comes twice a week, so I KNOW I have money. It doesn't last long, but it gets me from paycheck to paycheck.
And there it is...paycheck to paycheck. I forget to put money away in savings because I think well, what if something comes up, like car repairs or something with friends. I don't get disciplined with it because I never prepare for things like that, I only react. So I pay the bills I have and don't write anything down to track my spending because I'm not strict with myself on it. "It takes too long.." I'll think. SO when it comes time to try and create a budget, I guesstimate on most of the numbers and give up after a while when those numbers don't work. I get so black and white about things that I don't give myself the chance to get back up and try again.
There was a period of time when I was at my SM internship and I was making a VERY small amount a week in my stipend. There were a bunch of times where I would be in line at a Wawa or the grocery store and my debit card would come up with that frightening two words... "Insufficient Funds".
The guilt and shame I would feel after that was horrible and I swore to myself I would never feel that again. I've gotten better over the years, but honestly I've gotten to a "comfortable" plateau. I'm not getting any better with money or worse with money at this point. And I think I'm scared of changing where I'm at because I don't want to go back to that.
So to sum things up, I've developed this comfort level with my job because it provides a stable income and I've been able to find the good in what I do and allowed it to outweigh my need to get out. All the mean while I'm slowly suffocating inside with the "day to day" and not focusing on what my passion really is. My day job is my "Job", not my "career". And I am so scared of the thought of failing with money that it has reinforced that wall around my comfort zone to the point where I couldn't really see the way out. Until recently...
I recently got introduced to this blog called Trust Me, I've Been There.... Written by this 26 year old NYC Actress who relocated to Hawaii (still reading it to understand why the move). She started it writing about her eating disorder and the negative body image she had developed while being an actress and dancer in NYC for 10 years. But she has been working on making herself healthy not only physically but mentally in Hawaii. If you get a chance to read it, I highly recommend.
It made me really look at what I use as an escape, and one of the biggest things was Facebook. I would troll through the newsfeed and see what was the latest and greatest thing on the web according to what people posted. I would be uplifted by great stories and funny/cute videos of cats or dogs doing silly things. I would find out what was going on in the world from news articles posted by the politically minded friends of mine. I would let this distract me from the things I really needed to get done.
I also remember for some reason this idea that if I want to break out of a routine sometimes you need a drastic change to really kick your butt in a different direction. Not sure why I remember that or where it's from, but I'm starting to understand it more and more. It's like jumping into the deep end of a swimming cool on one of those summer days where the water is just SOOO cold that it hurts. You just need to jump in and trust yourself that you know how to swim.
I think this is what I need to do in the next few months. I need to step out of my comfort zone and take those big leaps and trust that I'll know how to handle things and adapt.
There are two sayings that have been bouncing through my head the last few days: 1) Discipline is just choosing between what you want NOW and what you want MOST. 2) Life begins beyond your comfort zone. I think what hit me most about that first one was the fact that even now, I'm still figuring out what I want MOST. So I need to stop talking about what I need to do and just do it. Stop thinking about what I want most and just trust my instincts to guide me in the right direction.
I need to get UNCOMFORTABLE, learn how to adapt to that, and stop putting off what I really want most. Because we only get so much time to do the things we love,...why waste it?
COUNTDOWN T-19 DAYS TILL FACEBOOK DETOX.
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