The Next Chapter

“ You don’t need anyone to take that step. You’re already there, you can do it, alone! “

Momentarily filled with fear, like air in a balloon waiting to pop… Here I stand amidst one of my greatest lessons of all.

I CAN DO IT ALONE!

We read this, we see it, we tell ourselves it’s compute, yet here we all sit petrified to take that little leap of faith. Why? 

Fear.

So what is the next chapter?

It’s being bold enough to take that step into the atmosphere you’ve always desired, juicing out a ridiculously large amount of courage. More often than not it’s the path they all told you not to take, the route with a broken bridge, the idea that you never thought would become a reality. Yet these turning points are more often than not the light at the end of the tunnel, the loophole into the realm your younger self dreamt upon. And the best part is realising no one can get there for you, only YOU can make your next chapter as exciting and experimental as possible. You’re the one in control, you’re driving the car and deciding which road to take next… YOU design it all.

Yes, things will happen out of your control and you’ll have to adapt and step up, yet you still decide how the picture looks and how you get there.

It’s all up to you.

Simple Reminders

I was about to start this sentence with the word ‘goals’ and instantly had to stop myself, because fuck goals, they aren’t “I have a goal lets get it done”, they are and always should be “I will start here”.

So where am I starting?

It’s 7:05pm on a Monday evening. I’m officially calling myself a true adult as I find myself sitting at one of my local wine bars, alone, writing. Yeap, that’s me! A true fucking adult embracing all forms of adulting even on a Monday after work. You see, going to the wine bar alone is certainly not foreign ground to me, it’s surprisingly something I do all the time, (When I say “all the time” I’m referring to strictly the last 5 months of my adolescence, still counts right?) Call me an alcoholic but I was raised with a Spanish mother who said she would die without her ‘tipple of red wine’, the same way she word for word would announce “Darling Tessa I cannot physically open my bloody eyeballs without my first sip of coffee, do NOT interrupt me right now, only POST COFFEE!” Yes, it sounds scarily familiar I know… I am my mothers daughter what can I say!

Back to the

goal.

I will

I’ve promised myself that kicking off this year with a nice sense of productivity, would mean applying myself to achieve at least one task towards one of my passions each and everyday. Now this seems fundamentally challenging right? But no, it’s actually rather fucking simple.

Do what you WANT to do before doing what you don’t. Yeap, that easy.

Now I know what you’re thinking ‘I WANT to sit in bed and eat pizza NOT go for the 5km run I said I’d do because’ i’m trying to make my passion running… You see what i did there? Yea, thats a mother fucking goal, which is a far cry away from what I’d call a passion.

So what exactly are we classifying as a passion here?

I’m talking about the real electric stuff!

The juice that makes your tongue pop!

The colours that make your eyes smile!

The seeds you planted that you always forget to fucking water!

THAT STUFF!

Imagine if you applied one short moment of time, each and everyday to pick up your laptop and start to write over mindlessly watching a show. If you opened the cook book staring at you in the kitchen instead of ordering takeaways. The list is endless…

That’s the simplicity, right there, in that moment!

You find yourself doing what you actually want to be doing, happily as hours escape you and bam, you’ve made progress on a passion, that builds the blocks of who you are.

Yeap, I know.. thank me later.

From the day a little girl was told to grow up, for that she did. Constitution one, first hour in office, The mind is numb.

“It was such a foreign experience to me that my first question was quite literally ‘how do I use the mouse’. After so long of resisting the reality of adulting, here I sat, in the very seat I once promised myself I would never. dare. sit.”

As I took to my desk, I could feel sweat beads gathering across my body. Mainly from the frantic rush to make it through the door before 8am, after an hour too long rolling around in bed resisting the day I had ahead… Yet also to my dismay from the anxiety and nerves I unsuccessfully attempted to shrink.

Luckily, I managed to collect myself after the first hour and find comfort in staying as silent as a mouse, hoping it would lead to their lack of context for personal judgement. Yet to conclude if that was a success, as it was such a foreign experience to me that my first question was quite literally “how do I use the mouse”…

Powering through my introduction tasks, painfully navigating my way through the company apps like a fish out of water, I was left with a spare hour before the day came to rest. Multitasking my acting skills of being interested in office chat, I pondered on why this unknown ache weighed down my vocabulary… In the realisation that after so long of resisting adulting, here I sat, in the very seat I once promised myself I would never. dare. sit. That the ache so numbing making me loose my words, was due to the sheer realisation that on this day I had broken my childhood promise, on this day I had accepted and entered the corporate hierarchy, the 9-5 doom, the reality my parents forever told me I would never escape. 

To be continued.