I started this year with one goal: self-development. To grow, to learn, to expand my comfort zone, to get comfortable in my own skin, and above all, to find happiness – just. being. alone.
To fortify myself.
To truly understand who I am, to accept that truth, and to let it become a core of steel inside of me. An immovable object; an unstoppable force. Something that in the future stands firm in the face of a storm.
A place where I can find shelter. Instead of looking to others, I want to be able to find that security within myself. To be my own rock.
And ultimately, I want to be a woman who walks into the room and demands respect, not out of fear, but because it is just so fucking obvious that I am in control of my own world.
Accomplishing the above is no easy feat and it is incredible to me how easily I wander away from the path I have set. Almost weekly, I have to mentally shake myself — ask myself for some reason or another, Em, is this the point of this year? Is this truly important? Is it really worth your time?
I think people tend to drift; we lose sight of our goals or they shift without us really understanding it, and suddenly the path we are on is not the one we set for ourselves. And if you do not pay attention, you wake up and years have passed and you look back at your life and think, fuck, I missed it. How did I get here? What is the point of this?
I had one of those moments last week; a good friend of mine and I were sitting around, having a beer and talking. And she asked me, “What does Chicago have for me? What the fuck is the point of it all?”
And I- the girl who much to the chagrin of my friends always has an opinion, lecture or life lesson on the ready- could not give her an answer. I thought about my life and realized that “meaning” had somehow evaporated.
Somehow 2016, my year of me, had become all about work and drinking and whether or not I looked hot enough to satisfy the internet in the pictures I took last weekend.
Bleak.
And not who I am. Or I guess, who I want to be. I do not want to be that girl – I do not want to give a fuck if you think I’m hot or not. I do not want to give a fuck if you think I’m scary because I love my job. I do not want to give a fuck if you get offended when I talk about politics.
“Demure” and “coy” are not my goals.
I refuse to be that girl.
It is funny how the world works though. Because the minute I made that decision – to just stop and realign my world with my goals – the universe dropped a gift in my lap.
“You want some meaning?” it said. “Here you go.”
And there was Barberque, a project a few friends and I had kicked around, played with the idea of, but that I never actually thought would happen. But there it was all the same – meaning, clarity, focus, and alignment.