The Last 10 Years

18 Jan The Last 10 Years

Hey y’all,

It’s Sunday, and like so many Sundays I find myself in this state of self-reflection. Typically these moments of reflection lead to the planning of the week ahead, but as of late, my mind wanders to the life ahead. A little over a month ago I celebrated the 10 year anniversary of my graduation from college.  It blows me away really. Here I am having recently turned 30…ok 31…ok 32 whatever, but I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface. I don’t know what it was, something clicked on my most recent birthday, like somehow I woke up from a long sleep. Time is flying by and I can’t figure out how I became a spectator of my own life. I had to ask myself, what have I done with these last 10 years?

Since graduation from college it feels like I’ve been everywhere and nowhere. I’ve worked odd jobs and tried my best to figure out a path that suited me.  I took a position at a call center and taught dance part-time at a studio.  I hated the call center and hated the fact that while I enjoyed teaching dance I struggled to support myself with it. After being hired as a full time dance instructor twice and having both jobs taken back because of budget cuts I have to admit it, I gave up hoping to find something more practical. I didn’t realize it then but I could feel myself being pulled in a different direction. Dance was who I thought I was and when your identity is placed in what you do instead of who you are it is dangerously easy to become lost.

And I had been lost, for years. Through my parade of odd jobs my resume began to reflect the journey of a girl who was struggling to find her way. When I was finally able to stop, to breathe, I realized that I wasn’t pursuing the life I wanted. I was giving in to what was easy-safe. Fear is a funny thing. It will have you making decisions based on plain old insecurity. I had an idea of the things that I wanted but I did not believe that I could achieve it.

I floated from job to job hoping to find the perfect fit. I wanted more than to just feel content. I wanted to be inspired. I understand that contentment isn’t a bad place to be, but knowing that you are made for something more makes feeling content fleeting. With dance, no matter how frustrating the situation, the love I felt every time my feet brushed the floor motivated me like nothing else. Once you experience that type of passion settling feels like death. The crazy part God had revealed that my gifting was in my hands, not my feet. So I had to find a way to express myself differently.

So here I am now wondering why am I still not quite satisfied? I finally learned I’ve got to be true to myself. Your purpose will sit on you, making it hard to breathe until you start moving in the right direction. It keeps me up at night the desire to write, to be creative, to live in truth-God just won’t let me settle. For that I am so grateful. It’s finally time to allow the woman of dreams to become the woman of my reality. I owe it to myself. I am on an intentional journey to live a life I chose rather than watch it happen around me. My focus now is to venture beyond anything I have ever done and take the limits off of what I believed I could be.

This blog is the beginning of that journey. What I write, what I create, is the culmination of what I have learned in the last 10 years and what I plan to do with the next 50.