Editing Myself

I'm on a new journey. Up to this point, my life mission has been pretty much the same as my peers': Stay out of trouble. Get good grades. Get into college. Keep your scholarships. Graduate. Get a job. Well, now all of that is done, so what is there to do?

I'm finding that this is the fun part. This is the part where I get to explore–myself, my interests, my world–and figure out who I am on a whole different level. In my soul-searching so far, I've found that there's one thing I really want to do in this time: I want to become the best version of myself.

You see, I feel like my senior year of college resulted in a lot of changes for me, both positive and negative. I would not go back and change any of these, because I learned and grew from these experiences. However, I feel that this has given me a chance to build upon myself and become the person that I want to be. I am not changing who I am; I'm amplifying the good things about myself.

I have a little plan of how I'm going to do this. First, I want to get back on track with my healthy lifestyle. Two years ago, I started paying extra attention to what I was putting into my body and focused on exercising. I felt great about myself from the inside out. Then summer with my friends came, and my focus shifted from my personal wellness to my personal entertainment. Having a full-time job and paying for a gym membership and my own food, I am going to revert back to my healthier ways to center myself once again.

Next, I want to take advantage of my free time to do something positive for myself. I'm a positive person, but I want to continue to output my optimism in other ways. Being a student in creative studies, I would come up with projects I would love to do, but never had the time to do it. Without homework and the distractions necessary to get through studying, I want to be able to create and bring these ideas to life as I've hoped to do for so long. One of these goals is a maintaining a blog where I can post my work and my ideas. So far, so good.

I want to explore my surroundings. I've lived in Peoria for four years now, and I still get stumped any time anyone asks me for recommendations of what to do or where to eat. My goal is to try something new and local once a week. This could be visiting a boutique, trying a new coffee shop, or going to a festival. I'm tired of passively living in my area, and I want to take advantage of the things that central Illinois offers.

Finally, I want to do one good deed a day. Every action has a rippling effect, spreading good or bad outcomes to the world. I'm also a big believer in karma. Together, I think that spreading positive vibes will not only return good things to me, but also bring happiness to others.

With all this together, I hope this will lead me to being the best version of myself that I desire to be. I'm aware that I will mess up, and I may slip off the track. They say that writing it down makes you so much more likely to achieve your goals, though, and once I hit "Publish," I've now written it and made it public.

Here's to the future and what life brings. Let's hope it's nothing but positive for us all.