Welp, tomorrow is my birthday, which (for me at least) brings up a myriad of emotions. I will be turning 24 tomorrow, and I have managed to put together a small get together with some of my closest friends, who have all actually been able to clear their schedules to come and join me in a celebration of my birth. This is HUGE. I hardly get to see any of my good friends, let alone all together. This is probably the most exciting part of my actual birthDAY. I’m getting all antsy in my pantsy just thinking about it… WOOH! The other part of turning 24, which is where the rest of the myriad comes into play is where I’ve found myself in this stage of my life. I am slowly plugging away at what I think are the most important and valuable things and concepts in this infinitesimal little life of mine. Although I did feel the pull of society upon my graduation last year to return to school, create a career, have children, and toil my whole life away in order to achieve, acquire, gain, have children, and acquire more things for these children all the whilst teaching them to achieve, acquire, and gain, something just didn’t feel right about this at the very time. Since then, I have traveled to Costa Rica, made new friends, let go of old ones, let go of love, learned a lot of Spanish, learned how to make cheesecake, discovered that I like sushi (although I feel guilty about the number of fish I consume in the contrast to the depleting ecosystem of the ocean, YIKES!), and learned a ridiculous amount about what it means to love myself as well as who/what I consider to be family… and that’s just a quick overview. Trust me… I could go on. Although I do have prospective plans for my future self, I am trying to maintain very loose ties to these ideas and goals. I have discovered that you really truly never know where life can take you. If you are so inevitably stuck to one idea, you might truly miss the mark on something that could have really fueled your inner fire and passion and made you truly, truly great.
It’s pretty easy to feel like a huge loser when you’re turning 24, you aren’t enrolled in school, and you’re serving tables for a living… but I am extremely determined to look at my situation with a different perspective. This year, for me, will be about personal growth and discovery of who I am without all the extra ‘stuff’. A good friend of mine recently prompted me to buy a book entitled ‘Everything That Remains’, written by a couple of ex-executives who like to call themselves The Minimalists. I am a huge sucker for any book that has to do with philosophy or psychology, but I think this book came to me at just the right time. These two middle-aged men who used to have everything find happiness in living simply with only the basic essentials. They are just two proponents of Minimalism, a growing philosophy that starkly contrasts consumerism, and the overarching concept of this easy-to-read book. The idea is that the more stuff you own, the more your stuff owns you. It makes sense if you think about it. The more stuff you have, the more you have to buy stuff for your stuff, the more you have to put money into fixing and replacing your stuff, the more time you spend organizing your stuff, and the more your true self is buried in all of these little details about your stuff that end up amassing to quite a large bunch of details about your stuff in the end. So with this cumpleaños of mine, I am going to start by getting rid of quite a large bit of my stuff. I will, no doubt, be starting slow as I imagine myself to have quite a bit of attachment issues to certain things. A huge part of this process, too, will be scanning all important documents, getting rid of the file cabinet, scanning photos, looking at buying a kindle to get rid of masses and masses of books, and so on and so forth. As I haven’t started the process yet, I will try to keep my blog updated with little details of my journey here and there (although we’re all aware of what a terrible job I do at keeping things updated). The point of my post is, however, that I do recommend the book. It’s quite an easy read, and it really gets your gears grinding. And to anyone who may be having a birthday soon and is feeling a little uneasy about their situation in life, don’t be. This is yet another year that you get to learn about you, and what could be more wonderful than that? Cheers to 24, yawl!
PS. Hey, would ya look at that?! I made it through an entire post without using the F bomb! My step-dad would be so proud! 😉
A Mind Unrefined 