Okay — Today I was inspired to share a side of me that I don’t particularly wear on my sleeve. Some of my closest friends don’t even know that I have been “unemployed” the past 8 months. This was by choice. And no, my fiancé does not support me 100%. He supports me by paying for my food and halving groceries but I have always paid my portion of rent and everything else these past 8 months. So I did not have any kind of “free ticket” let me tell you…
If you’ve read my past posts, you already know that I hated school and struggled in college. I wanted to drop out and just do what I loved. But, I pushed through and finished strong. A month after getting that glorious degree, Sean proposed. Then, the best thing that could have ever happened to me happened. The job I had at the time couldn’t afford to pay me anymore. I had spent months prior to this staring out the window and thinking about all the beauty in the world that I was missing out on while sitting at a little desk in an empty office. I would scroll through popular instagrammers profiles and just be in disbelief that they were traveling so much and spending so much time on magnificent vacations! I wondered how it was possible. So, when I was told the company couldn’t afford to pay me, I had to hide the smile I felt tugging at the corner of my lips. Yes, I was a little bit worried about the money aspect, but more than anything I was happy to be free.
Luckily, I had a job before that allowed me to have a pretty decent savings. I was a Sales Representative for Wyndham. It was good money, but I do not recommend working there. So although I was “let go” in a sense, I had no immediate need for money. This was when I decided I was going to throw caution to the wind (not completely though haha) and live a little! Before I knew it, we had two trips to Miami planned and one to the DR which was SO exciting because I had never been out of the country before. I funneled a portion of my savings into equipment I had been meaning to get and got the Adobe Creative Cloud (which is amazing.) I was good to go! I began to learn the Adobe programs and quickly fell in love with them and I suddenly had all this time to edit and do my photography and videography like I had always dreamed. I suddenly had all this time for MYSELF. This made such a huge difference and 8 months later, I have so much more peace in my life. I had never fully had the chance to be unapologetically me until then. I learned what my passions were and what made me excited to wake up each and everyday. Everyone deserves to feel this in their lives.
When I started running low on the dough, some freelance graphic design projects came my way and that helped me out a lot. I learned that I could make logos and promotional content for brands too! I felt invincible. I felt like I really could be anything that I wanted to be. Oh, and I forgot to mention that all this time I was living in a BEAUTIFUL apartment that overlooked all of Stone Oak. Some days I would be amazed that I was making it work. It can be so scary to try and quit that job you hate to pursue your dreams, and honestly, I would have never done it had I not been let go.
I’ve since been able to really reconnect with myself and where I come from and what makes me so different from others. I realized that I don’t share that enough. In fact, I even try to “fit in” most days… but the truth is I don’t. I have always known that… I just forgot due to all these distractions like college and a job and just the stress of being unhappy. It sounds silly, but I almost feel like a child again. Like I’m experiencing the world for the first time again. I can hear the music again and see the beauty that surrounds me every second of the day. There is so much to see that we don’t even realize is there because we aren’t paying attention. There is beauty in this world and in our souls that can reunite us with the innocence we all had when we first came into this life. Sean said something to me on a camping trip once and it always stuck with me. In response to me talking about how I had felt distant from the deeper part of me he said, “I think we’re all trying to find our way back to our innocence, and maybe that’s what this life is all about — finding our way back to where we started.”
So LIVE your life. Do what you’ve always wanted to do. Stop making excuses and stop letting distractions keep you from your dreams. We are all infinite. We just need to remember that.
