Accepting the Challenge

When I feel like my life isn't going the way that I would like it to, yet can't see any ways to make immediate changes, it is very easy for me to fall into a pattern of blegh. Where I just keep doing the same unhappy things every unhappy day, over, and Over, and OVER....... It can feel so hopeless that is seems, in that moment, that making myself smaller, and just learning to accept the things that I do not like is the best way to survive. However, what ends up happening, is that I pull my head out of the sand one day and realize that an entire year (or three) has gone by, and I have nothing to show for it but disappointment and regret. Since I have been in my current job, that is what I seem to do. I get to a point where I can no longer take the stress and anxiety of my current situation, and instead of taking the proactive approach and making moves to change things, I tend to take the reactive approach, and just buckle down within my mind and brace for impact. It's a pattern that I truly wish that I could break, but it is one that I need to first be willing to admit to myself. As I've said before, my response to a challenge is hardly ever fight or flight, it tends to fall under the "except defeat before the challenge even begins and brace for impact" category. 

SO, I think that the first step to making these changes is to start challenging myself more. I need to start making more of a conscious effort to shake myself out of my boredom. Eleanor Roosevelt once said 

"Do one thing everyday that scares you." 

I want to get that rush of learning something new. I want to feel that high from having a new experience. And does that mean that I have to run with the bulls or go skydiving necessarily, no. It means to just do something out of your ordinary pattern. Someone once said that the definition of insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different result. I don't want to keep living like an insane person. I want to go out and do. Another quote that I like to recall (I am having a very quote-heavy post today. Oh well....) is one by Neale Donald Walsch that reads

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone." 

So, in 2014 I am going to try to do something new and different, at least one thing a month. I have been reading all of these new articles and blog posts about things to change, and one of them was to start looking at those Groupons and Living Social deals, and actually take advantage of them. So, I am going to look to experience something new each month, and I can chronicle them in here. And, if there is something that I really enjoy that I haven't done in a while, I can revisit those too. From rollerblading on the National Mall to hiking part of the Appalachian Mountains, to inner-tubing down a river in West Virginia, going to HoliFestival, or just going for a bike ride through my neighborhood. Whatever the experience is, I want to start adding more of it to my life. I mean, fuck, I will never be as young as I am right now ever again. How trippy of a thought is that?? Pretty trippy for a Friday Night on half a bottle of Norton Red, but I digress.... Either way, I am ready to get started. Let's do this. 

This video is from an Ad campaign for students to travel to Australia. There was one called MOVE (which has been copied SO MANY times since it came out, one called EAT which I couldn't even watch right now because I am so starving, and this one. I just love the idea of traveling the world and taking on a new challenge everywhere you go.

(photo above from the Holi Festival of Colors, where you get colored powdered thrown on you as a blessing of joy. Such a great, new experience)