It's hard to remember why I've kept my distance from my adopted mom and brother when they've always been supportive, caring, kind, patient, and understanding with me. That's the danger and damage with fear. There's this abstract darkness that influences your behavior to do what you don't want to do cuz it keeps you in a false sense of comfort zone. I guess I should just be grateful that I'm finally beginning to reconnect with the only people I consider family.
It's not fair to my adopted mom, but I think having such a negative relationship with my biological mom made me more hesitant to bond with her. Irrational fear. There's nothing more to it. All I ever used to hear from my biological parents is what a disappointment I am. Isolating myself from them made me forget about them, but I guess their thoughts continued to reside within me.
Since I've recognized their presence, I've began to let them go. I still have A LOT of work to do, but it's a start. I've also been talking to my mom and brother a lot more. Writing has always been the one constant in my life, and it's a real passion of mine. I'm good at it, and I'm always persistent. Virtually everyone has suggested I should make a career out of it, and while the idea appeals to me, nothing has resulted from it. So I'm forced to re-examine my priorities and take an honest look at what I truly want out of life. This has been an ongoing dilemma if you've followed my blog, but I'm FINALLY starting to feel like I'm taking it toward a positive direction. I'm so tired of saying I need to do something only for that insistence to highlight the emptiness.
My mother recommended I write 10 things I love to do and 10 things I'm good at. That approach is very logical and its purpose is very clear, and yet it's something I've never considered. I've put in the effort to do just that, though. Just like my mom anticipated, those two 10 things began to relate. Here's a list of what I wrote. If you're trying to decide what career you'd like to pursue, I'd suggest doing the same thing.
10 Things I Love to Do:
1. Writing for myself for emotional catharsis, perspective, epiphanies, and channeling that energy we’re all universally connected to (whatever it may be).
2. Having deep, meaningful conversations where I connect with people on a deep level
3. Eat food! Not just to be a pig but to really appreciate the quality of food and innovative ways it was used to prepare and make meals, discovering unique and unusual ways to re-transform something,
4. Have new experiences! I’ve always been diverse, dynamic, and open-minded. I like being stimulated and new experiences offer both an educational and emotional depth.
5. Help my friends, channel my emotions and intuitive nature in a conducive way. Everything has energy and I tend to be receptive to it. I feel my way around peoples’ energies or problems and can detect weak points, strong points, and then somehow gain insight on the best approach to help empower them in their goals and desires.
For example, I have a lot of creative friends and have been described as muses. I amplify what they already know but have suppressed in themselves, strengthen qualities in them they’ve neglected, and address concerns as a way to resolve them.
6. Discover new environmental solutions, multi-use from a single source, using something ordinary to make it extraordinary, re-transforming something plain and unsuspecting of something exceptional and making it exactly that. Basically I love developing ideas. I’m unconventional, untraditional, and rarely fit into any pretext of normality. So I have to individualize and personalize a lot of things to make it accommodating and appealing to me. I push the envelope a lot to see how far I can take something to the edge because that’s when things go alive. I want to see that spark give birth to something that would’ve never come to life if it weren’t for that extra little push. But I also like to do things differently, expand my mind, incorporate an unusual or uncommon practice to end up with something unexpected, and approach something with a popular and acceptable perspective but taking it a new direction, maybe with deviations or linear irregularities. Basically discovering ways to do things differently.
7. Study, practice, and incorporate holistic remedies. I like using mundane things for a powerful effect that’s unsuspecting. It connects and relates to my intuition, as well as my desire to separate myself from popular trends and façades. It’s timeless. It’s interesting, and as straightforward as it is, it’s profoundly educational and complex.
Pineapples become more than a tropical fruit but a pain reliever due to the enzyme bromelain. It gives things dimensions. You know how a girl or guy becomes more intriguing when they evolve beyond just eye candy but opens your eyes to a new world? It’s like that. You find ways to be constructively creative with things that ordinarily serve a limited or familiar purpose. Common things become new to you. Things begin to develop a greater purpose, and that significance continues to spread. The more you learn about how simple things like lemons can be antibacterial, furniture polish, intestinal cleanser, mental stimulant, etc., you become more receptive, intuitive, and conscientious in your actions, choices, purchases, etc.
8. Constructive creativity – this type of creativity I identify with the most because I’m very analytical and precise which are qualities that can interfere with a creative flow. It doesn’t always allow for things to form organically, but it’s also true to my nature. So I’m able to create something that’s most authentic and natural to me.
9. Brainstorming and collaborations – Everything has energy, and I’m receptive to it. I channel people and able to solidify abstract concepts into concrete and usable ideas and solutions to make visions more tangible. It’s difficult for me to make my own art, but I can see the art others are trying to produce and can help expedite the process and/or bring it to life. I need something foreign basically outside of myself, in order to make this happen, though, and that’s why I love collaborations. It’s like I travel into the multiple minds present, and I take and combine each of their essences and tie it all together.
10. Empowering people – I have a strong presence and have the ability to influence people easily. It’s an empowering feeling, and I like giving others a taste of it. I can feel the energy around me, and tremendous amounts of people are uncertain about their lives and insecure about many things. It can become overwhelming. Self-empowerment, on the other hand, is both exhilarating and grounding. I like knowing and seeing that I made a difference in peoples’ lives.
11. Bonus: I like dimensions, dynamics, diversity, and stimulation. I want to be kept interested. I’m more drawn to a little bit of everything than a lot of one thing cuz it gets stale, stagnant, familiar, and eventually no matter how dense the material is, knowing that it’ll still revolve around a common theme, it’ll make me lose interest. I like different angles and dimensions to things.
12. Bonus: I love eclectic, artistic coffee shops filled with diversity in decorative collaborations. Little bits and hints of flea market finds, worldly objects, modern contemporary pieces, vintage contrasts, local artists’ works (not just because it supports local community but also cuz it isn’t manufactured art, it’s fresh, different). They’re more creative, aesthetics is a visual display of diversity, and it attracts more interesting people who want to lounge and converse, rather than rush in to get their joe to go to their 9-5 jobs.
10 Things I’m Good At
1. I’m good at writing. I can express myself easily and clearly. It comes naturally, and it just flows out of me.
2. I’m good at helping people with their emotional problems, inner struggles, difficulty believing themselves, facing their fears, changing their perspective into a more conducive one, or in some way empowering them. My intuition highlights or brings to surface some sort of imbalance, and I’m able to offer some insight or perspective. I provide emotional comfort, clarity in perspective, and leave people feeling empowered.
3. Food related stuff! I can cook, I can eat, I can identify flavors and determine what compliments what, determine which foods are healthiest for various ailments and what foods should be eaten during specific seasons, and I’m also familiar with how certain foods are grown, raised, chemically-altered, and things of that nature. I’m knowledgeable in food from a thorough understanding of where it comes from, how it’s made, and how it impacts our bodies. I take holistic approaches to eating because I food the very simple but necessary, frequent task to be an empowering approach to managing our health. I’ve helped friends start their own catering company, create a menu specifically for people with food allergies, critique their dishes before they launch it at Costco, another major supermarket, or before presenting it to a reputable chef for a job at an upscale restaurant, etc. I’m very precise, direct, and provide constructive criticism. So my insights are often sought after.
4. Being open and receptive to new experiences. While I can be a homebody, I’m not afraid to try new things and, in fact, the idea of it very much appeals to me. That’s how I evolve, grow, and find inspiration in ordinary things like a simple hike. The newer and more foreign an experience is, the more it resonates and stirs a passion in me. Those are the things that give my writing an essence. That’s why I feel I naturally attract and gravitate towards worldly people who travel and have had an innumerable amount of experiences they can share with me.
5. Talking! I’m good at talking. I’m great at public speaking, and I have an influential and inspiring presence. My words and energy has power over people and carries the ability to captivate an audience. I can talk about a variety of topics confidently and articulately as long as I’m familiar with it. I can be interactive and people consider me to be interesting. I’m also very animated. I feel that I’d be good at voice-overs. I prefer long, meaningful conversations about philosophical and abstract concepts that are universally relatable to all of us. I love when I uncover or sense what’s significant in a person and drawing that out of them to somehow make it more vivid and stronger than it was before. In group situations, I prefer public speaking. I’ve done it before and found the audience to be receptive to me. In conversational situations, I prefer one on one because I’m able to focus more on a person intuitively.
6. I love experimenting with ideas and exploring my mind for possibilities of various things. It’s difficult for me to bring it to life, though, but when I collaborate with others, I do exceptionally well. I’ve had people who were planning to start a coffee shop or lounging area that has a focus of attracting a health-conscientious demographic share their ideas with me to ask for my insights and contributions of my own ideas.
7. I’m good at educating people. I write well, and I’m a good editor. I help people understand their mistakes but more importantly I give insights into how their writing can improve by making them understand their demographic audience. In some ways, I make them more intelligent and conscientious, so their quality of writing improves because of who they’re writing for. They evolve beyond proper grammar and fulfilling an assignment but demonstrate an ability to understand truly the purpose of the task. Why am I supposed to write this? Who am I supposed to impress? What kind of a reaction do I want readers to have? What impact do I want to make on readers? They look more deeply within themselves and project that depth onto the outside world. The more connected you become to something, the more powerful your work can become. I also educate people by informing them on the best foods to eat and other health related information. My friends have described me as 4/11. Even when I help people, I do it by empowering and educating them. I may just relay what they already know, but that knowledge is strengthened within them and becomes a more powerful presence.
8. I’m an excellent researcher, and that’s why I’m so knowledgeable. I study things I’m interested in. They tend to center around nutrition, holistic approaches, health, emotional balance, spirituality, environmental solutions, and finances (but in relation to how to live within your budget to be a healthy and balanced person).
9. I can make friends easily and quickly. I’m able to find ways to connect with people and strengthen that bond.
10. I’m photogenic. J I like the idea of modeling.
