I started this blog weeks ago with the intent of writing (hopefully) two posts a week. I haven’t written one since my original post which is on brand for me. Maybe it’s undiagnosed ADHD, the fact that I am a sagittarius, or my need to be constantly reinventing myself (probably a combination of all three) but I love to start projects and then abandon them. You know when employers ask what your weakness is? What I should say is that I create new goals and start new personal projects and never see them through. The only one that I can say I had the dedication and will power, was to finish the last two years of my degree.
For those two years, I showed up to nearly every class, always participated and constantly got my work done. A total 180 from the college student I was post high school. Back then the freedom and lack thereof, since I stayed at home for school, ate at my success. I didn’t want to do the work let alone show my face in class. I have always been smart, which might be a blessing and a curse. General education classes didn’t keep me engaged either.
I wanted the social aspect and boy did I get that once I moved to Breckenridge, Colorado. In my opinion, every want-to-be party girl should move to a tourist spot and work. Sure, the Rocky Mountains might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but there are beach towns for a reason. I was surrounded by other young and adventurous people that had a zest for life. We worked all day, partied all night, and then would take turns puking the next morning as guests checked out of the hotel. In reality, it was a hot mess that I don’t regret for a single second. I met my best friends there and learned real-life lessons that will never be taught in a classroom. Like, how to not cry when a Karen is yelling at your for her mistake, or that sleeping with co-workers is almost always a bad idea. If it weren’t for the pandemic, there is a chance I would have never left that snow covered town, or at the very least that magical state.
However, I did leave and went home. Now the thing about Western Pennsylvania is that it is small yet pretty and sometimes suffocating. I actually loathe my hometown and the memories that accompany it. I didn’t have a super traumatic childhood, but instead the normal anxieties that are accompanied by feeling like an outsider. It was a small almost all white town where everyone had the same opinion. I was a quarter Puerto Rican, very talkative, opinionated and loudly proclaimed that I hated living around here. See to get to any real culture, I have to drive the hour in either direction to Pittsburgh or Cleveland. In all honesty, it is not that bad but bad enough. Even though from all accounts, Breckenridge was a small rural mountain town, there was always more to do there than in my hometown.
Now at 28 and living with my parents, I feel so stuck. Like most people my age, the rising price of living is suffocating us out of any real future. Take that paired with my love for shopping and that leaves me with very little money to escape my own personal hell. The thing is, when you know what you have wanted your whole life, but have to pave the path for yourself it is incredibly hard and exhausting. It isn’t exactly that I don’t have support and I am very fortunate for it, but I have no one to look up to and say “how do I do this?”. I feel like I am running as fast as I can in quicksand. Always stuck.
Writing has always brought me to life which is ironic for how much I love to talk. (Let’s not forget the failed podcast project I embarked on two years ago). But no one has ever encouraged me to write. My family has projected their fears onto me by saying this could never be how I make money. While money is important it is not my sole motivator. Those who talk about writing are doing very little of it, and if you’re me, then you’re neither talking about it nor doing it. Instead, story concepts flood my mind all day,but I do nothing about them. Maybe my issue is that I feel like I will fail and what is the point of failing. This is also the attitude I have towards my fitness journey. I love to workout and move my body, but I spend most days laying horizontal.
I must find the drive to go after what I want in life, and if you’re reading this and doubting yourself, you must find it too. Life is too short to have regrets about what we didn’t do. I very much so admire my pap for living life to the fullest. At nearly 84, he has done everything he has set his mind to, and I often feel that I should try to embrace him just a little more.
The Daily Ciara 