Hey y’all! How you doing?
I’m in Florida right now and let me tell you…the amount of animals I’ve come in contact with is actually insane. There are lizards everywhere, I walked past a dead squirrel this morning and I almost lost it, it was so bad—my high school students would’ve called what I was experiencing a ‘crash out’. I’m shuddering just recalling the memory. Also, the stray cats are everywherrreeeee. The weather is intense and the sun is forcing me to get all my walking done before 10am. If you didn’t know, I need my 10,000 steps everyday or I’ll be walking/running around the house at 9pm just to get all my steps in. Florida is hawt but I love being on vacation and seeing Kota, my brother’s husky, going shopping with my mom and pretending my 24 year old baby-brother is still a baby.
It’s so strange being a late 20-something. It feels a lot different than being an early 20-something. In addition to the creaking knees when I sit and stand, it feels as though I’m a completely different person. As a young girl I would’ve never imagined that life would be filled with continuous seasons of evolution. One of my favorite quotes is “the more you know, the more you reason how little you actually know” (I’m paraphrasing of course). The most important phases of my life have all been marked by realizing that I know absolutely nothing.
I’ve found that being on the cusp of celebrating another decade on this planet, is actually grounding. As I look back over my life, I’m realizing that I actually feel more like myself today than I did in my early 20’s. Somehow I feel deeply connected to the 8 year old girl who would rush to the swings on the playground just for moments of silence in-between the sound of wind rushing past her ears, and the 12 year old who wanted to grow up to be—and I quote—“a triple-threat, an actress, singer and dancer”. As a late 20-something, I feel immense peace. I’m actually able step back from societal expectations and truly just be myself. I will note though, that this is very likely assisted by the fact that I haven’t used instagram or twitter since sometime in 2022.
Over the last year or so, I spent a lot of time reflecting on who am I, where I am, and how I show up in relationships and I found myself feeling more open to receiving love and showing love to others.
In my teenage years, I had a few difficult experiences that made me put up walls around trusting people, creating new relationships and being open to truly sharing who I am with people and it has taken me a long time to unlearn beliefs about myself that I created as a response to the difficult experiences. Unconsciously, as a way to cope with those experiences, I told myself “I’m not good enough” and “I don’t deserve to love and be loved”—and I never realized I’d internalized those beliefs until I was in therapy a few years ago. However, after a lot of healing and growth, I’m finally learning to open myself up to others again.
With that being said, I’m realizing that there is a distinct difference between being open to new relationships and actually putting force effort to establish those new relationships and I know I can do a better job of putting myself out there and just being open to human interactions in general. As an introvert who loves her alone time, I go on a lot of solo dates where I rarely meet people, but on the off chance that I do meet someone new, all of those experiences have been great.
This post is my first step to opening myself up more to the beauty all around me. Below is a bucket list of things I’d like to do to make sure I expose myself to this summer. The purpose of this list is to push myself to have new experiences and reinforce the truth that I deserve to love and be loved outside of my tiny fortified circle of people I love and trust.
I know establishing new relationships is not always easy and truthfully that’s not ultimately my goal. My goal is simply to expose myself to new people and experiences as a reminder that there are amazing people who exist outside of my tiny little circle.
This summer I will:
- Go to 5 run club runs
- Walk one of my dogs somewhere new to me and say hello to all the strangers I pass
- Compliment more people
- Smile more
- Make better eye contact
- Try a drink recommended by a stranger
- Read a book recommended by a stranger
- Say yes to more things that make me anxious
This list is not exhaustive nor is it super specific. I wanted to give myself the space to engage in meaningful and intentional interactions without feeling as though I was constantly trying to check off boxes. One of the things I hate most about “social experiments” is the aspect of falsifying human interactions. I don’t like the idea of approaching someone with an agenda and pre-conceived ideas of how they should or would react.
This summer my goal is to simply be more open, so specifying how many run club runs I should attend was essential because knowing myself, I’d likely attend one, absolute hate it and never go again. Attending 5 runs forces me to push past my initial thoughts on the experience while making it part of my weekly schedule. Complimenting more people will allow me to say the things I’m thinking but am often too afraid to share. Today I literally said “I love your face” to someone I was meeting for the first time like the absolute weirdo I am. I have no idea what would possess me to say that to someone but it was what I was thinking and it was true—her face was lovely.
Anywhooo, if you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading my words. I appreciate you much more than you’ll probably ever know.
Xoxo, see ya tomorrow
The Introvert's Escape Maneuver 