Mantra

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

You're going to get sick of reading/hearing that because I'm probably going to bring it up a lot. It's my current mantra. It's helping out with life. Keeping things exciting for sure. I've got somewhat of a Yes Man mentality going on. The movie starring Jim Carrey and Zooey Deschanel. Watch it. Or listen to me quote all of it. Either way. The idea is that he was living a sheltered, boring life, making excuses to just stay home and watch movies alone rather than spending time with people. So he becomes a "yes man" and says yes to anything he is asked to do and ends up doing all these fun things and meets all these fun people and falls in love and all that movie stuff. I'm not quite so extreme with my yesing, but I have made an effort to try to push myself to do things that might scare me so much and confuse the heck outta me because why not?

Why not?

It's actually a constant push for me to get out of my room, shut down Netflix, talk to people, do new things. I'm not great at it. Most of my life has been spent in my comfort zone. There were little risks here and there I would take just to feel adrenaline, but they don't count. I got a little better in college. It was bold of me to go to school in a new state, a new city where I knew no one. But then it took me a long while to do anything that required me to feel uncomfortable with other humans when I would have rather stayed home. One risk at a time though. And I got through college.

I've gradually, very gradually, started taking bigger risks. Moving to Chicago was obviously a huge one. And here I am, a year later, loving it. Maybe that's the big push I needed. I moved here and didn't die, so why not live a more unpredictable life? Right? So I did. And I have. And I'm scared a lot. And confused even more. But also loving every second.

Obviously, the downside of the unpredictability is more frequent sadness, or something like it. That's what happens when you put yourself out there. And I'm not even putting myself out there too far. I'm taking risks, but the emotions are, for the most part, still safe inside. Yeah. It's an issue. We've discussed this. I know. I get it. I need to open up more. I am working on it. Lay off me.

But the point is, I'm feeling things. A lot of things. And I'm accepting all of those feelings. Because when I stop thinking about how scared I am, I think about how good I feel. And how that feeling in my stomach could be nervousness, but it could also be excitement. They're out of my control, and that's terrifying but I've made the choice to star in all the stories, rather than just watching them on Netflix. I don't want Jim and Zooey to have all the fun. It's my turn. And then I'll bring it full circle and write a movie about everything. Brilliant.