I met someone. Words that are often overused, but words that mean something. I didn’t meet a crush, or a lover, or some sort of romantic connection. I’m spoken for, and happily so. But I met someone nevertheless. Someone who will help me on my journey. Someone who will help me accomplish my dreams. I met a friend, and a collaborator, and a partner. 

My life the last few years has been a bit of an adventure (at least for my standards). Since December 2019, I’ve quit two toxic workplaces. You may wonder why I quit one, just to join another, especially when my focus has been on maintaining my mental health. It was simple. I needed a job, but I had my eyes set on something else—something greater—so I didn’t mind it. It was only ever going to be temporary. The job kinda found me, and it was super convenient. It was low stress and not super taxing for a time, which freed up the brainpower that I needed to be able to write. I could come home fresh and ready to get my creative juices flowing. Something that I hadn’t been able to do in the six years prior. 

Truth be told, I’ve wanted to try my hand at writing for a while. But something always held me back. Usually it was fear and anxiety, often times it was excuse making. It was something that I was good at, letting fear control my life, believing the misconceptions. When you’re mentally and emotionally drained for long stretches at a time it’s easy to allow outside circumstances to dictate your life. It’s easy to hold yourself back and to let yourself be held back. When you’ve self-deprecated for over two decades, and your self-esteem has been running on fumes for as long as you can remember, making excuses feels natural. Underestimating your competence, understating your abilities, convincing yourself that you’re not capable of more, believing that you’re destined for mediocrity. All these things are lies that we tell ourselves. Lies that prevent us from becoming the best version of ourselves that we can be.

For the longest time, I was plagued by a nihilistic mindset. I didn’t know what I wanted from life. I didn’t know what I could contribute. I didn’t know what I was passionate about. I didn’t know what fulfillment felt like. I didn’t know what satisfaction was. I believed that I was destined to live an uninspired existence. To work laboriously because that was all we were put on this earth to do. To grow up, work, recreate, and die. In that fucked-up brain of mine, I thought that my life was out of my control. That I was subject to the whims of whatever uncaring god was out there. I found myself stuck at a dead-end job, but what proved more detrimental was that I was stuck in my mindset. I had stopped dreaming a long time before that. I had forgotten what it felt like to strive for something better. I had never known what my self-worth actually was. I had convinced myself that I had already peaked, that it would only go downhill from there. The risk taker in me had been overcome by my fear. 

It was easy to keep being mediocre, to maintain the status quo. Growing up, I had been taught to seek comfort. To find something stable. Not to take too many risks. This led me to the false belief that settling was acceptable. That just okay was good enough. I didn’t know what it meant to dream big, or to seek greatness, or to have ambition. The anxiety and depression that I suffered through in my teenage years and early twenties was crippling. They prevented me from becoming the best version of myself that I could be. In truth, I didn’t think I was capable of goodness, let alone greatness. My demons had robbed me of all of my ambition. There are many things that I could blame, but I’m not going to do so. One of the first steps in transitioning to adulthood is taking responsibility for your actions and holding yourself accountable. Shit happens that may or may not be within your control. That doesn’t matter. What does is how you react to such circumstances. What’s important is that you learn from any and all experiences—good or bad. It doesn’t matter how they came to be. 

Everyone goes through shit. That’s a fact of life. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has their own demons and vices. How you speak, how you think, how you act matters. All of this stems from having a healthy mind. I say this time and time again, but I will continue to do so until I go blue in the face. Get your mind right and everything falls into place. Of course, it’s easier said than done, but you have to keep at it. I didn’t accomplish anything meaningful in the first twenty-seven years of my life. That’s because I had a bad attitude and an overly pessimistic mindset. At some point in time, a small voice needled its way into my brain, telling me that I couldn’t do shit, that I wasn’t capable, that I was useless, that I was trash. As disappointments stacked, I started to believe this voice. I gave it room to grow. To fester. To corrupt. The more I fed the voice, the more I believed the lies.

Unfortunately, this isn’t unique to me. As millennials, we were conditioned to run from our problems. To hide them in a lesser traveled area of our brain. Our parents’ generation didn’t really understand mental health, therefore not much focus was put into fixing the issues. We were told to suck it up. Be happy. Don’t worry about it. But as we got older, as we shifted from early-twenties to late-twenties we started to realize how detrimental this was to our well-being. Ignoring the trauma only made things worse. Numbing the pain was only a temporary fix. Pretending to be strong only sapped our energy. We were left broken and we didn’t know what came next. Some of us have found our healing. Some of us have addressed issues we’ve been ignoring for twenty years. Unfortunately, many more of us are either still broken or are trying to figure things out.

I’m blessed to be a part of the former group, but it didn’t come without growing pains. Of course, I had good days and I had bad days. Mostly bad. Figuring things out on my own didn’t quite work out as I had expected. For a while I was too stubborn to seek out the help that I needed. I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t have the answers, because that would mean admitting that I was consistently failing to meet expectations. But these weren’t expectations that others had of me, but rather expectations that I had projected onto them. I was supposed to be such and such a person, because that was what was trendy. I was supposed to study this, because it was a respectable career path. I was supposed to do that, because it would make me less of a loner. I worried so much about what others thought of me that I had lost sight of what I thought of myself. At the end of the day, it’s the thing that matters the most. If you don’t love yourself, why would someone else love you? If you don’t respect yourself, why would you be deserving of respect? If you don’t think that you’re capable, why would others give you more responsibility?

I couldn’t find happiness because I felt none of these things. I didn’t love myself, I didn’t respect myself, I didn’t think myself capable. Life wasn’t fulfilling because I had no purpose. I had no purpose because I had stopped dreaming. I had stopped dreaming because I could no longer find the goodness in me. I was worth something, but I couldn’t see it. I had spent too many years downplaying my self-worth. Too many years living in fear. Too many years trying to please everyone but myself. Life was meaningless because I had lost all passion. And that was a dangerous spot to be in. I had gotten too comfortable with my mediocre life. But it wasn’t worth living, because I was just going through the motions. I wasn’t looking to make an impact on those around me. I wasn’t looking to seek greatness. I wasn’t willing to take any risks. I had asked myself, “is this it? Is there more to life?” and had resigned myself to it. 

But there is more to life than that. There’s more to life than being fine with okay. Okay isn’t good enough. Seeking greatness is the goal. You have to be willing to step out of your comfort zone to do so. I didn’t learn that until I turned twenty-seven, but it wasn’t too late. There isn’t really such a thing as too late. There’s always room for growth. There’s always time to change. You can always strive for better. There’s always more to learn. You aren’t confined to a box. You can step out, you can step up. Change is something that you need to seek. It won’t just happen, bad habits don’t go away on their own. You need to work at it until you break it down. Change has more to do with determination than it does with doing the right things. In order to change, you need to start with your mindset. The first step is to stop making excuses.

That was the biggest thing that held me back. It wasn’t my lack of self-confidence. It wasn’t my lack of drive. It wasn’t my fear. Yes, all of those played a factor in my average existence, but nothing played a bigger role than my excuse making. I didn’t write because I gave myself reasons not to. That was the easy way out, and I took it because I didn’t know how to deal with adversity and I didn’t want to. But anything worth doing takes effort. It takes determination. And it takes self-control. If you don’t force yourself to do things, chances are you won’t do it. I think I know that better than most. 

Writing for me happened in spurts. Inspiration came and went. Without any determination, that left me not doing what I do best for long stretches at a time. I always had a way with written word, but I needed refinement and I needed direction. But most importantly I needed encouragement. I needed someone to remind me that I was good at something. I needed someone to help me realize that I had talent and that I was worthy of praise. I’ve mentioned many times that I wrote poems and lyrics as a kid. Somewhere down the line that changed, and removing my creative outlet left me feeling empty. Writing is what I was meant to do. I was put on this planet for a reason: to help others using my words. It took me more than two and a half decades to realize that, but I will run with it and never look back.

In the autumn of 2019, things began to change. By that point I had been seeing a therapist for over a year. I had finished breaking down and I had finished healing. So what came next? I didn’t really know, until she asked me if I was happy with my career. No surprise that I said that I wasn’t. I had spent my whole life chasing something that I didn’t actually want. It wasn’t my dream, it was someone else’s. It was time for me to start chasing the thing that had eluded me for so long. It was time to stop making excuses, and start writing. It was time to turn my idea for a novel into something tangible. I’ve had my ups and downs, but I’ve stuck with it this whole time. I’ve figured stuff out on my own, I’ve had to look things up. 

After I quit my job, I started writing in isolation. For several months it bore fruit. I could see progress. I could see improvement. But I didn’t have any external affirmation. No one saw my work but me. Which was fine for a time. I hadn’t yet grown confident in my ability. However, even the loneliest hermit needs affirmation. Even the biggest introvert needs people to care. Everyone needs to know if they’re on the right track. I thought I was, but I didn’t know for certain. Which brought me back to therapy. I needed new answers. I needed to know what came next.

I needed writer friends. I needed peers. I found that in October through an online writing community. It led to some growth. It was scary, putting my work out there, but it helped me to learn and improve. I had some positive, helpful feedback. I had some not so helpful feedback. Assholes exist everywhere. For a few months I fell back into old habits. Every hater, everyone who told me that my writing wasn’t good put me in a rut. I took each and every criticism personally. Every negative comment felt like a dagger to the heart. The voices that told me that I wasn’t good enough began to rear their ugly heads again. The feelings of doubt started to reemerge. I started asking myself if I was built for this. If I had enough talent. I began spiraling back into this rabbit hole of insecurity. But an angel came and rescued me. In January I met my ideal reader—he is mine and I am his. Someone who understands the story the way that I understand it. A writer whose strengths and weaknesses complement mine. We are symbiotic. A friendship, a partnership, a collaboration that will go a long way. 

The going may be tough at first, but your hard work will pay off in the end. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t do something. Don’t believe the voices that tell you that you aren’t worth shit. You are capable of so much. You can do good. You can be good. You can be great. But in order to do so, you have to keep on keeping on. Push yourself higher and higher. Dream big; never stop dreaming. Everything is within reach. Nothing is too ambitious if your eye is set on it. You just have to force yourself to do it. Eventually the habit will stick. Your hobby will become your passion. You are meant to make an impact on those around you. You are capable of great things. Goals are within reach, but life doesn’t end there. They are only milestones, not end points. Life is a neverending journey. Keep reaching higher. Aim for perfection though perfection can’t be attained. When the time comes, you will show the world that you are worthy.