2017: Turns out I'm not ready for "Boring"

I’ve been recapping my years in writing for ten years now. Essentially, this is how my blogging started. At first, I just talked about a year, and I was ridiculously negative so you could say I just ranted. Over the years, the writing, and especially the attitude, got better, and we are now at the end of 2017 and the rhetoric has changed mucho. It’s not just the improved grammar or the fact I realize that nobody really enjoys reading about how much I hate everything; it’s the life that changed. I got a new job and moved to a new country. But, when did I not? Now I don’t sound negative anymore, I sound big headed. But, at the end of this year, all I really see looking back is a year full of things I’d either done before or thought I never would.

Isn’t life amazing sometimes? I try to see this every day. For decades, I dreamed of being the person that could find happiness in the little things. I wanted to stop being the person that complains. I was over being called the drama queen. I truly hoped my whole life would change…again! And then all that happened. Once again, I relocated, found new friends, started a new life and made poor decisions. But this year, all the misery and bullshit that happened didn’t have the effect it had the other years. It never made me unhappy. And after 365 very challenging days, I’m happy, and I don’t know why.

This year, something pretty drastic happened. I always knew I was a pretty tough chick, and that I could do anything, yet I always thought that at least some of that supposed attitude was an attempt to fool myself. When it’s crunch time, I thought, I would fade like all the others. Sometimes things in life happen that most people can’t handle alone; they turn to family, friends, a loved one. Something along this line happened to me this year, and I was proven wrong: I wasn’t lying to myself, I really was tough as nails. Sure, even I want to feel supported or even weak, but it simply wasn’t possible. Nobody could help, so I didn’t ask; I knew I could do it by myself. I learned this lesson quickly and under unlucky circumstances but knowing that even rough challenges didn’t manage to break me feels pretty good.

So, the vast majority of the summer I spent in awe of the challenges I was facing. At no point, I felt bad. At no point, I felt desperate. It was the knowledge from previous years, I believe, that helped me through it because no other year than 2017 taught me more that failures and challenges have a way of just pointing you to the right direction. All these tear-filled nights in 2016 led me to the life I live now, riding my bike to work smiling almost every morning. I have a job I like, I’m surrounded by people I like there, I live in a house with enough love for a whole city and most of my problems are ridiculous. Like, my biggest “problem” is that most of the men I saw this year are mental but hey, it’s not a problem when it seems like I deliberately choose men who are not great… I just choose badly.

I always looked back on failed relationships and what I learned from them. This year, that doesn’t really work. The relationships I had never failed, they’re just… different. And so, I have arrived at the biggest silver lining of my year: there’s more than one way to do something. Relationships are just one example. Conventions, in all aspects of life, are not my forte; in fact, I reject them. I had to challenge some truths I considered unalienable: you must marry around 30, you can only love one person at a time, you belong in a certain country, you would never do certain things (that I did this year). Many, many of the things that shaped my life this year were things I never thought I would do. And for once, since I blog only occasionally, I stayed mum about them; I never had more secrets than now. Voices are loud telling me my decisions are bad, are controversial, are too risky, but I simply don’t regret them. So, my confusion is: are they really wrong then?

Its all great and all, but for 30 years? I doubt it...

Really, the only thing that changed this year, is my job. I started a pretty big shot job and got caught up in the life that comes with it. I live the most normal version of my life I ever have, so the excitement I am apparently addicted to had to come from other places. As a result, I tried to make a reasonably boring life in a small English city an episode of a soap opera. In short: I did a lot of really weird things to excite myself, some of them actions I referenced earlier I didn't even know I had in me. But that's where the learning came in: I just lived a pretty exciting life so far and thought I was tired. I believed, much like everyone else, I was ready for "this": settling down, Monday through Friday routines, a dog, no travel and, like, one man, maybe. Truth is, I'm not ready; and contrary to other years, I'm now considering the possibility I will never be ready.

At this point, I would like to talk about how exciting it was to relocate, to move somewhere new and meet new people, but I’d simply be lying. My head has gotten THAT big, yes. My relocation to England was a desire and I am overly grateful that it happened, but it just did not excite me as much as that would have done years ago. Altogether, this year was definitely the most boring year of my life but -  and here comes the big head again -  I just lived a pretty exciting life. 2017 was when I consciously decided to tone it down a bit, only to find out that it’s not time yet. So now I head into 2018 without a resolution or a plan because if there’s one thing I learned, it’s the knowledge that as long as I’m moving, I’ll get closer to where I need to be. But where that is, I couldn’t care less…