Untitled #1
What I Learned from Truly Living on Your Own (1)
Life is interesting to say the very least. Things change faster than you can imagine and life tends to have this odd way of operating in a cyclical motion of events where all things come back to point A. Sometimes things go from A to E; sometimes it reaches A to Z. But things always find a way back.
Being the reflective, introspective person that I am I try and find a pattern that I can relate to and find within life. When will good things happen to me? When will bad things happen to me? When can I expect to find something interesting? Do bad things really happen in threes? Three what? Events, days, weeks, months. Is it spaced out or does it all happen at once?
This is where things get tricky for the pattern thinking mind that I inherit. Everything happens randomly whether you like it or not and it's all about how you deal with it within the moment that will define how you view the frequency of bad things happening to you.
Don't believe me? Well here let's further the perspective a bit.
Think about it.
You most likely live in a place where the closest family member to you is, on average, 30 minutes from where you live. Simple, right? And even if the person who wouldn't bail you out when you're in big trouble is 30 minutes away, you must have a network of friends that has taken your a large portion of your life to establish that would most likely swoop in and assist you even if it was for their personal gain and not yours. Regardless, assistance is assistance and receiving real life help is far greater than only being able to get help over the phone.
Whether you are at a college for the first time or you have moved out and still live in the same state as your family, there's a plethora of options that are typically free, or at least really inexpensive, to help you in your times of need, correct?
Well I live in a place where there's none of that. No one to help me when I'm down on my luck. No one to really turn to when things aren't going very well for me financially or personally.
Yea sure I've been lucky to have met a few people here and there who are willing to give me a helping hand, but most of the time it all feels like a burden more so than a carefully curated act of assistance where "I'll help you because I know you would help me" level of trust and reasoning that takes years to develop. And if there's anything that I have learned about myself is that I hate, and I mean absolutely loathe, feeling like being anything other than a prime asset to a person, company or community.
If I feel any ounce of my internal "give to receive" ratio isn't facing anything more than a 2:1 respectively, I become sick to my stomach and just shut down communication.
I'm sure where you can see how this goes wrong considering it's an area where I don't have a personal network to assist me, which I have come to learn was huge to my development as a child and adolescent.
I guess you could say what I've experienced in the past two years has been the classic "Coming of Age" tale.
Let's further this just a bit for this small segment as I plan on getting into more of these lessons in later publishings.
This past year plus of living on my own I've:
Life is interesting to say the very least. Things change faster than you can imagine and life tends to have this odd way of operating in a cyclical motion of events where all things come back to point A. Sometimes things go from A to E; sometimes it reaches A to Z. But things always find a way back.
Being the reflective, introspective person that I am I try and find a pattern that I can relate to and find within life. When will good things happen to me? When will bad things happen to me? When can I expect to find something interesting? Do bad things really happen in threes? Three what? Events, days, weeks, months. Is it spaced out or does it all happen at once?
This is where things get tricky for the pattern thinking mind that I inherit. Everything happens randomly whether you like it or not and it's all about how you deal with it within the moment that will define how you view the frequency of bad things happening to you.
Don't believe me? Well here let's further the perspective a bit.
Think about it.
You most likely live in a place where the closest family member to you is, on average, 30 minutes from where you live. Simple, right? And even if the person who wouldn't bail you out when you're in big trouble is 30 minutes away, you must have a network of friends that has taken your a large portion of your life to establish that would most likely swoop in and assist you even if it was for their personal gain and not yours. Regardless, assistance is assistance and receiving real life help is far greater than only being able to get help over the phone.
Whether you are at a college for the first time or you have moved out and still live in the same state as your family, there's a plethora of options that are typically free, or at least really inexpensive, to help you in your times of need, correct?
Well I live in a place where there's none of that. No one to help me when I'm down on my luck. No one to really turn to when things aren't going very well for me financially or personally.
Yea sure I've been lucky to have met a few people here and there who are willing to give me a helping hand, but most of the time it all feels like a burden more so than a carefully curated act of assistance where "I'll help you because I know you would help me" level of trust and reasoning that takes years to develop. And if there's anything that I have learned about myself is that I hate, and I mean absolutely loathe, feeling like being anything other than a prime asset to a person, company or community.
If I feel any ounce of my internal "give to receive" ratio isn't facing anything more than a 2:1 respectively, I become sick to my stomach and just shut down communication.
I'm sure where you can see how this goes wrong considering it's an area where I don't have a personal network to assist me, which I have come to learn was huge to my development as a child and adolescent.
I guess you could say what I've experienced in the past two years has been the classic "Coming of Age" tale.
Let's further this just a bit for this small segment as I plan on getting into more of these lessons in later publishings.
This past year plus of living on my own I've:
- Come to terms with who I am
- Learned how to balance a budget and slowly plan for a a future
- Come to terms with relationships that are forever
- Taken over a high school sports program
- Come to terms with relationships I've ruined
- Figured out realistic plans and accepted that long term goals need to be flexible
- Taken a sports program to a national competition
- Received and given closure to all frayed ends
- Turned 21 and barely celebrated it
- Celebrated every major holiday by myself or at work
- Directed a program
- Purchased a new car
- Come to terms with relationships I need to save
- Had a friend pass away
- Navigated 5 different airports
- Sat in the new car I bought as it was t-boned
And many, many more random, tumultuous things.
But, if I'm being completely honest, these were all things that were only possible because I had to do them and that I was able to. There was no way to gossip about all of those petty issues. There was no one to talk to about the life that I once lived. I'm a ghost here and I'm a new name, despite the easily obtainable paper trail that is the internet nowadays.
It's fascinating, and terrifying. This journey has come with so much plus side along with all of it's dark issues as well.
If this is something that fascinates the wide audience I'd love to share my experiences with you and hope to bring about a sense of direction in your world once again.
The writing is here with all of it's thought vomit, therapeutic alliteration and terrible, terrible puns.
Until next time,
The Perfect Cast.
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