The Idea Behind The Blog

A Quarter-Life Crisis, or How I’m Learning to Appreciate the Little Things

 

It is a solid 15 days since the clock struck 24 in my life and I have  a lot to think about. Mostly, how my life is really not impressing me lately. I found myself stuck in a crisis – wondering why my life isn’t already perfect by 24 and why I don’t have a million dollars to match my perfectly posh, adventurous life that is working out wonderfully as planned. I thought by now I’d have a much better grip on the situation. I wish someone would have told me that my life probably wouldn’t work out the way I planned it at 13 and that it probably wasn’t going to be as easy or as glamorous as I was hoping.

Okay so maybe somebody told me that at some point but I’m sure when they did they were probably at least 10 years older than me and to a 13 year-old that’s practically ancient and everyone knows you can’t listen to old people because they’re all just crazy and they could never understand what I was feeling at that moment because they had obviously never been 13 before and had, unfortunately, always been an old person giving cockamamie advice no one would listen to.

But here I am. At 24. Living in what is probably one of the top five worst apartments in this city that is probably one of the top five worst cities within one hundred miles, barely making ends meet and wishing I had stayed in school for theatre because I might be a rich and famous actress by now – the kind that is invited to Oprah’s birthday parties.

I find it to be a daily battle – deciding whether or not I want to listen to my optimistic side or my cynical side. Most of the time they have a lot of fun together and really liven up a party but it seems that recently my cynical side has been kind of a bitch. She’s been really hard on me and she needs to cut me some slack. So this blog is my adventure in continuing to appreciate what is good in my world even on a day when it takes me 3 hours just to get to work late, get yelled at by my boss, fall off the treadmill, get in a fight with my boyfriend, realize there’s nothing in our apartment to eat, and watch a cockroach the size of small mouse crawl out of my shower drain when I’m just trying to calm down.

My photo blog – complete with the awesomest (back off spell check) photos you have ever seen – is going to be 365 days (in a row) of finding something great about every day. I wasn’t guaranteed any day on this earth and it’s time to make the active effort to remember that and to appreciate it more. Sometimes life is hard. Sometimes life sucks. And not only is that okay, it’s to be expected. But rising through it all and finding something to smile about is a much better quality than whining all the damn time.

Oh, while I’m at it, who doesn’t love a good ol’ inspirational quote while they’re trying to think positive? I think this blog could use some of those too.

“What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful.” – Tenzin Gyatso (14th Dalai Lama)

Okay Dalai… Mr. Lama… Dude… This year I’ll work on being happy. I don’t have time to get to useful but I’ll definitely put that on my to-do list.