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LIVING BY THE RULES
Most of my life, I have been living by a specific set of rules. It wasn’t something that I felt like I had to do, or something which was imposed to me, but rather something to help me keep myself grounded and give me a sense of purpose. The more confused my life got, the more I held onto my rules in order to make sense of what was happening, reassure myself that everything was under control.
Because although I am often a messy, un-organised and spontaneous person, I always need to have a master plan. Whatever happens and however unorganised I get, I need to have a wider picture to place the mess into, so that I can retain my control over the situation. It might sound strange, but it works for me.
All my life, I have convinced myself that a new year is a new me. Not in the way that I’m going to start going to the gym from the first Monday of the year, that I will stop eating sugar, that I will reinvent my life and somehow become a better version of me, because I don’t believe in that. But I always saw the year as the ideal timeframe to set out a series of goals, lay out my life in a 12-month scheme and make a mission out of it, in order to get my shit done. In short, it’s what people would usually do with a daily or weekly to-do list, except I did it annually.
Now this year started a bit strangely, as I was moving around quite a lot, got the flu and generally had a pretty stressful time from November onwards. Although I did say that October is my unlucky month, the rest of the year proved to be none the easier and it definitely took a toll on me. The last weeks of 2017 I kept thinking about what I wanted to achieve for the next year, what direction I was going to take, where I wanted to end up a year from now. With the end of University looming on me, this became even more difficult than when I left High School, as the post-uni life stared at me darkly from afar in a way that I couldn’t even fathom when I was 18. This is the moment I actually decide how I want to proceed with my life, whether I want to do what’s expected of me and continue my studies, get a job in the field, or follow my heart and take a break.
All these thoughts kept circling around my head and it made it almost impossible to even see straight, so much so that I turned back to myself and just stared, trying to understand what was going inside of me and yet never finding a concrete answer. When NYE came round, I was more lost than ever and had no clue what I wanted to do. Although I had some ideas in mind, they were so blurry in the grand scheme of things that I could barely make sense of them, unsure about which path to take and no one to ask to. This made it difficult to even write new blog posts, because my mind was so lost I didn’t even know where to start. All my certainties were crumbling down and there was nothing I could do except to wait, in the hopes they would eventually stop and I could rebuild them in new ways.
Because of this, I couldn’t set my goals for this year. My life has been so uncertain that I am scared to even attempt at doing that, afraid it will bind me to something I might not want to do in the end. And I realised recently that this is not a problem of simply writing down a resolutions list, but it stems from my absolute fear of commitment. Be it in relationships, in work or in life, I slowly got to the realisation that this fear can get the best of me in most cases, forcing me to retreat in my corner as I sit and watch reality unfold. It might sound stupid to some of you, but the idea of actually having to be bound to something, unable to step back, scares me more than ever because although I do put my heart and soul in most things I do, I still need the constant reassurance that I can opt out whenever I like. I know it’s not good for me nor for the people around me, but I gradually realised it is something that has always been with me and I guess it also matches my indecisiveness in any situation, be it choosing a career path or choosing which type of bread I would like for my toast.
When I started writing this blog post, my initial idea was to just get it over with and write the goddamn resolutions list for this year. But as I sit in front of my laptop and look for inspiration, it’s actually more difficult than ever, because I am scared of writing down things that I might not be able to achieve. But you know what? If the new year does mean a new me, my resolution is to give up this sense of fear attached to any decision I make. To dare a bit more. To commit myself to things, no matter where they take me. Because while it’s true that life is short and we should make the most of it, I need to also accept the fact that not everything can always go the right way and we are entitled to make mistakes, because as cliché as that sounds, they help us grow (and of course, they make for very good stories!).
Although my brain is currently screaming “delete this blog post. You are not doing this”, I know in my heart this is the right path for me. I could have told you my goal is to visit 5 countries, or to spend 6 months abroad, or to graduate or even to apply for a Master. Those are the kind of things I would have written down and the things that you would expect. And if I did have to say that, I am proudly gonna say that my plan is to graduate, spend time with my friends and family and set off on an adventure, fuck knows where. And these goals might be real and they might not, and I realise the reason I was so scared to lay them out is that I didn’t know if I could actually reach them. So my challenge to myself for this year is to believe in myself more, to stop worrying about making the right decisions and, most importantly, to fucking commit to things even if it looks scary as fuck to do so.
In short, after all this rambling my conclusion is actually easier than I thought: just live it and don’t be afraid. I have always said this and yet my spontaneity was surrounded by a halo of uncertainties and fear, which made me doubt myself, overthink and silently implode while the world carried on in the background. Therefore, my final solution to these problems is to think about the problems a bit less, follow my instinct and stop trying to make everything fit in a grand scheme of things. Rather than creating pressure for myself to reach the goals, why not start looking back at the past year instead and ponder on what I have achieved?
To finish off, as always I turn the question back to you. Do you have any resolutions for 2018? Do you, like me, have serious fear of commitment? Do you still not know what you want to do (just like most of us)? Do you just not care at all?
I hope you could somehow relate to this blog post and that I didn’t bore you all to death with my morbidity. I swear it wasn’t intentional – it just came out as word vomit.
Hope you’re all having a great day!
Elena
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Hi! My nickname is Nana. You can call me Nina. The real one is neither of those two.
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