Staying Present

Woke up when September ended and welcome to my first post!

I am not one to really believe in astrology (fun to read I'll say!), but to my understanding it is Libra season which symbolizes a balanced scale. My life does not feel balanced right now, and that is okay. I think it is important to have the highs and lows in order to train us in finding our footing. We are athletes of the sport called life.

The past can sometimes depress us, while the future can make us anxious.

I am an anxious dreamer.

Welcome to the roaring 20s! A lot of my friends and I are at the charming (and most confusing) age group of our early twenties. The possibilities are endless! It's exciting, terrifying, and everything in-between.

I graduated from university and am taking a year off from school to find balance. Balance in my health, balance in my career pursuits, and balance in my relationships with loved ones (this includes the relationship with myself). Before, I would tell you that our needs and wants are separate, and that we need to find a balance between the two. Now, after seeing a new perspective, the truth is, our needs and wants should be and can be under the same category. I have a dream that I WANT to achieve and hope for so much, and in order to achieve it, I have things I NEED to do. Need to do right now.

I am a daydreamer. I will be that person who will listen to romantic instrumentals while eating a baguette just so I can be in France... in my head. I'll see myself doing what I love or being where I want to be in the future... all in my head. I read romantic novels just so I can fall in love over and over again with fictional guys... in my head. My friends can tell you of the countless random ideas I'll have about, "Oh we should do this!" or "Yes, I could see this happening." etc. Except, where is the execution? Where is the doing part? HAVE I DONE ANY OF THESE IDEAS YET? (Actually, I have done a few, but not all!)

Don't get me wrong, I am 100% confident we need people like me who are dreaming, but I think that is why we also absolutely need the grounded people too to balance us and make the world go round. Plus, we can all learn a little from each other. I may claim to be the dreamer, but I have worked in groups where other people have the splendid ideas, and I have to be the "is that practical?" person. It's all about finding that balance.

Dreams are magical, because they give us a place to start envisioning what we want. We wouldn't have a dream if we didn't have a little hope that it could come true! Isn't that an attractive idea! However, the other step is to actually take steps to achieve the dream and that can be daunting. I would find myself frustrated, because I would get so caught up in my head about fitting my dream to the plan I made for myself... in my head. I found myself impatient, because I wanted to skip the journey and get to the destination as soon as possible.

I was trying to bring the future to the present.

I don't think it is wrong to be looking forward to the future, but it is when I forget the present that I am the most anxious. It is when I am washing the dishes or doing other menial tasks that I catch myself imagining the distant future. The danger of this, is that disappointment even when dreams come true can be inevitable when it "isn't exactly how you pictured it." Expectations vs. Reality. I think that is why, in order to counteract that, it is important for me to instead write down what I want and below it write down all the steps/options for me to take to get there. If I can work on breaking bad habits and finding happiness where I am now, it will help me build good habits to find that kind of joy wherever life takes me. It is not just about planning but also going with the flow. Besides, when has life ever gone exactly as planned?

In all of the cases, I have to focus on getting into a graduate program for what I want to do. I don't need to be worrying about which grad school or where I'll be in exactly a year or the next ten, but what I need to do between now and the next three to six months. My time cap for how far ahead I will think will be six months to have an idea of the coming year. I'll let you know how it's going then too, but that's a future me problem.

I don't know how long it will take me to get to my dream (I'll share more about that in the future perhaps), but I know each day is closer to getting me there. That is an encouraging thought. So here's to the fool's who dream, but also here's to finding balance between dreams and the present.

Thank you for reading, and please let me know if I have too many run-on sentences or grammatical errors. Let me know if you have thoughts about finding balance, or what your dreams are! Share in the comments or feel free to message me, so we can chat about it.

A bientôt!

#findingbalance #dreams #firstpost