D Day or should I say B Day

Well my birthday has come and gone. At first I was looking forward to the day and then it arrived. I woke up that morning and couldn't get the thought of failure out of my head. Every time I turned around I heard myself yelling at myself about what a failure I was. In the past week or so I definitely had experienced some set backs and disappointments but I did not expect myself to beat me up as much as I did. I think that many of my friends that were around for my semi meltdown thought that it had to do with marriage and relationships and such but honestly it had little to nothing to do with it. It had more to do with all the dreams and goals that I have worked so hard to accomplish and experienced only failure from them. I am the person who gives 110% of myself to my dreams but many times things just don't work out according to plan and that can be rather frustrating. For me I begin to question or doubt my abilities in that area, the whole "well it didn't work out so I must not be good at it" attitude. Why do I beat myself up so much? Why do I doubt my abilities and gifts? Why must the road have so many boulders in the way? Why can't I have a smooth, easy path? So many questions of things I just don't understand. In life I see and hear of so many people that have easy, "this person never went to school, picked up a camera, and instantly opened a business. I am not that lucky, I have to work hard at everything I do and those people that do I am jealous of. I did have a good day but it was somewhat tainted with my own self hate. This morning as I was looking for my inspirational quote of the day that I post on facebook (which honestly is something I need for my own encouragement during this time) I came across one that was perfect for the feelings I have been having, " Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing." That couldn't have come at a better time. It's hard to see through the failure of a dream but it doesn't mean that we should just give up. Everything is okay in the end, if it's not okay then it's not the end. Theses are things that I need to imprint on my brain every time I feel like a failure. I am not a defeated, I am just delayed.

The Passing of Time

It's unbelievable to me but in less than a week I will be 27. Time has flown by. Last night I had the hardest time sleeping, I couldn't stop thinking about my life. So far I have had mixed reviews about how my life has turned out thus far. I can remember 10 years thinking about college and what I had planned for my life. As far back as I can remember I have been a planner, I laid my life out, set deadlines, and had a timeline that I intended to follow. The only thing on that checklist that I have follow was college. Everything else has not gone according to plan. Don't get me wrong I am not 100% upset with that. I have grown up so much during that time and my view points have changed dramatically about many of those things on my timeline. For instance marriage, I had this plan to find my soulmate and be married by 21 or so. 6 years later not married and no soulmate in sight my focus on that has changed. I would love to find my soulmate but it is no longer a priority in my life and it doesn't determine my happiness. I wanted to be set in a great career and completely independent. Well at one point I was pretty well independent of my parents then some poor decisions occurred that brought me back home. Needless to say, I got sidetracked from my timeline and plan. You see I have never been a great multi-tasker.  I am good a committing and giving 110%, at one thing. I find it very challenging to give a 110% at multiple things at the same time, something always falls by the wayside. During college I was good at focusing at school and got into a relationship and focused a lot of energy into that too but once out of college I focused more energy than ever on that relationship that everything else got put on the shelf. I was so focused on my deadline to get married that it became a "by whatever means necessary" situation. I put everything important to me aside for that one goal, everything I valued was set on the shelf collecting dusk. After checking my priorities and some life changing events I came back to the storage unit of my life. Now I sit here a year later finally coming to terms with the past that I have created for myself. I have face the pain and hurt and I am ready to be propelled into my future and destiny. From a young age I knew that I had a strong purpose and destiny on my life, as the years have passed I have filled it with many distractions and diversions. Now almost 27 I am ready to stop stalling and ready to jump on that path. I am fully committed to this purpose whether I fully understand it or not, I'm taking a leap. Last night I sat there thinking about all the things I have learned, especially over the past year. As much disappointment as I have faced I am still pretty proud of myself and the minor to you but significant accomplishments I have made. I have faced many fears and overcome many obstacles, there were many times I felt like giving up, I pressed through. I am no longer the same person that I was; I am a greater, better, more awesome version of me, the real me!

Back to it!

I am back from Italy and finally getting settle back into my normal life again. What an amazing, life changing experience. If home is where the heart is, my home is in Italy. This trip was more amazing than I could have ever expected or dreamed of. I accomplished a few fears on the way. Now this isn't my first time out of the country by any means but it is the first time as an adult that I have flown by myself to a random country with no person holding my hand the whole way. Needless to say, I was slightly panicked and that's an understatement. I had to go from Atlanta to Paris, navigate Charles De Gaulle airport by myself and dig up my middle school French classes to communicate with the locals. As my plane got into Paris airspace I shed a few tears of joy. There are a few pictures of Paris on my wall the my late Uncle took many years ago and it has been a long time dream/goal to go to Paris and here I was doing it. Even though I wasn't going to travel through Paris, I was still there. Well, I got a slight culture shock. I found most of the French people I met to be so rude. They had a total disregard and lack of respect for the people around them. After Paris it was time to head off to Florence. Got there and had to get from the airport to the train station. I got a great taxi driver, who got me where I needed to go. Got to the train station and had to get a ticket. Well that was a challenge, I had no clue what the machine was saying, unlike Paris the people in Italy are so sweet. A nice woman saw the desperation on my face and asked if she could help me. I got my ticket then had to find my train, another person saw me standing there trying to figure out my platform and guided me to the right spot for me to board my train. Finally got on the train and had to figure out which station to get off on. I asked an older man, who was so sweet, when it was my stop he came and helped me get all my luggage off and made sure my friends were there to pick me up. the kindness of strangers continued the entire trip and there will be many stories to come about it. People in America don't do these things. You may get help every once in a while but these people went out of their way to help all the time, for no reason. From this I decided to open my eyes to others, instead of focusing on my individual needs everyday.
I experience so much love and generosity. Never have I met people that were so welcoming and inviting for me to truly get the best experience ever. I went with my best friend and her family, from the time I stepped off the train to the time I left they welcomed me to their family. Never in my life have I met people so kind to someone that they had never met before.
I learned so much from the Italians that I wanted to take back with me. I live life so focused on my goals that I forget to relax and just enjoy life and every moment of it. The people there have a motto that will stick with me forever, "We have time for everything." Ever though here in America we do value time, it's almost as though we put too much importance on time. We spend so much time determining how we are going to spend that time that we loss so much time that could be spent with what's truly important in life. Which led me to reevaluating my values in life, what is important to me.
For so long technology has played an important role in my life, it allows me to "stay connected" but to who. I waste a lot of time trying to stay "connected" and for what, to hear that this person is sitting in traffic, that it's stormy outside. Now I am not saying that I am going rogue and completely abandoning said technology but my value of it's true importance has shifted. I will still update my friends and use this technology as a medium to display my art to more people but I will not spend my days wasted at staring a screen that is not going to talk back. I want real conversations with the people that are important to me. I have decided that instead of hiding behind my screen that maybe I should get out there and hang out with these people that I call my friends.
There are 3 things that I feel that have lost there value in my life: Friends, Family, and Food. I just covered the friends part. Family, now I love my family I do, but I definitely don't commit to spending ample amounts of time with them. I see them on holidays and a few more times a year but lets be honest typically it's for some special occasion. During my trip I noticed a trend amongst these people, family is always at heart of everything. They don't dread seeing certain members of their family, if there is something about them that we would consider annoying, it's taken in humor to them. They love to laugh and believe in taking life less seriously. They live life with gusto, something that we are unfamiliar with. During my trip I lost a foundational member of my family, my grandmother. She was the glue that held my family together. If it wasn't for her my family would not gather as much. The only reason why we had so many people gathered together at Easter, Thanksgiving, or Christmas was because of her. I love my family but never craved seeing them, sad but true. But the combination of my grandmother's death and the experience I was having made me really want to be with them.
We as a society have become so focused on what's not important that we have lost sight of the things that are. We have more of a relationship with our computer than the people that we should hold close to us. I included. I have let so many great moments pass me by to hang out with my computer, and I know I am not alone in this.
Lastly, food. Many of us have a love/hate relationship with food. Why? Food is there for our health, it's not designed for us to fear it. It's there to help us, survive.  Why do we hate the thing that allows us to live? Makes no sense. Italy is the perfect place to gain a new appreciation of food. You go there and you don't think about if that food is going to make you gain weight, you just want to enjoy it with everyone else that is around you enjoying it. And believe me, one bite and you don't care about the calories in it. They don't think about portion control or diet food, it's full of cream, cheese, and everything "unhealthy" but it's natural. If whole milk wasn't good for you then God would have made a cow that produced a less fattening milk. If God made it, it's got to be okay for me, now if man made it I can't say the same thing. No longer will I hate food, I have to eat it I might as well enjoy it while I'm doing it.
There are so many more experiences that I want to share but I guess you will have to wait until I write the book, :)