A New Journey

It’s been a while since I’ve sat down to write a blog about my everyday life. With the resurgence of my website I thought now was just as good as any to start blogging again.

The last time I wrote about life as I was living it was in 2020. A lot has happened for me and to me since 2020. A lot has happened for me and to me since the beginning of this year. To catch you up would be a lot, so I’ll try to just hit on the major stuff. Jacob and I moved from Wichita to the Kansas City area. We’ve been working on fixing up his aunt’s house in Olathe and we just moved in. It’s starting to feel more like home with each and every day. Every project brings us a step closer to our dream home. We also got married last year on September 23rd and just celebrated our first wedding anniversary. A few months ago we also added a new member to our family. Our golden retriever puppy, Gert, has been a wild and incredibly fun addition to our growing family. We love her endlessly already, and Onyx has been enjoying her company as well. We weren’t sure how he was going to react to her, but he seems to love her and is very protective of her.

Those are the big things that have been happening in my life; there have been some hardships and disappointments along the way, but with time comes a lot of peace about my everyday life. I’m not quite as worried about the future as I once was. This has taken a lot of work and I still worry quite frequently about things, but the overwhelming feeling of dread has been less prevalent than it has been in the past.

I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself in the past year. Throughout the winter, I was incredibly depressed to the point I thought I might hurt myself if I didn’t start making changes. During that time I felt horrible; I felt like I was letting Jacob down because I didn’t feel happy or good. I felt useless and hopeless, but I knew I didn’t want to feel that way. I owed it to Jacob to be the best version of myself and I knew I wasn’t being that.

There were some fundamental things I needed to change about myself. The first thing was how I thought about myself and my life. I had a pretty low opinion of myself and often wondered why anyone bothered being around me. I had convinced myself that I was a horrible person who was going to hurt my husband and ruin his life. But I also knew that if I were to give in to my dark thoughts, that would ruin his life too. If we were going to build our family and start our lives together, then I was going to need to get my shit together.

I started by changing the way I thought of myself in my own head. That’s not necessarily an easy thing to do and it takes a lot of giving yourself compliments. At first I thought it sounded a little narcissistic, but I tried to keep those thoughts out of my head. I told myself that I am nice, I am smart, and I’m a good person. I would wake up and tell myself that every morning and I would do it whenever I caught myself thinking bad thoughts as well. I would be more considerate about the things I said out loud about myself. When I made a mistake, instead of saying “God, I’m so fucking stupid” I tried saying “That’s my bad, how can I fix it?”. I was not always good about doing that, but I tried to catch myself in the moment. Jacob was very encouraging in this process and would acknowledge when I didn’t say mean things about myself. I was happy that he saw I was trying.

Another tip I received when going through this process was from a friend I work with. He’s a total gym bro and likes Andrew Tate probably more than any decent young man should, but he told me that it’s good to set goals. He said setting at least three minor, accomplishable goals each day gives you some kind of sense of accomplishment. So I did that for a while as well, and it did make me feel more accomplished. This tip is something I’ve been using a lot lately to stay ahead of my seasonal depression and also to stay motivated in my writing.

Writing was a big reason I was so depressed earlier in the year. I had finished writing my book, but I was still reading through it and editing constantly. I decided to take a break from my book for a while; I had spent three years writing about the worst things that have ever happened to me and it was starting to feel like I was wallowing in my trauma. I was just sitting in the sadness and not moving on from it or growing. That’s something I didn’t want to be doing or feeling, so I quit working on my book and started writing other things. I want a career in writing and I have my degree in writing, but I’ve never taken the time to try and launch my career. That’s something I wanted to do, which led me back to this blog.

This page has been a great place for me to share my thoughts and feelings with my friends and family. I hope it will become a great place to share the stories I’m working on, movie reviews of films I’ve been watching, and a place to share my feelings. More than that, I hope it encourages me to write more and helps me feel fulfilled in my writing. I also hope it is entertaining for readers.

Ultimately, for me, it was time to take steps toward a better me. I am getting too old to be angry all the time and to be taking that anger out on myself and those closest to me. I’ve also been thinking a lot about starting a family and I don’t want my kids to know the person I have been; I want them to know the best version of me. I want them to know their mom has ambitions and hobbies. I don’t want my kids to think I hate myself. I don’t want my husband to think I hate myself. It’s been a hard couple of months and it’s not always easy to retain a positive outlook, but I’m trying. Some days that’s all a person can do.

In summary, life has been good. Not always easy, but good. If I’ve learned anything over the past year, or even the past few months, it’s that people are always growing and changing. Some days making small and slow improvements are all we can manage. I’m not the same person I was last year, I can guarantee that. I hope as the winter months set back in that the temptation to fall back into bad habits subsides and I can keep improving on myself. If not, then I guess I’ll just pick up the pieces and start again.