THE NEXT JEN

Hi fam, it’s been a while.

Please, I ask that you don’t judge me too harshly on the use of the word ‘fam’. I’m just hanging around with too many youths these days… (actually, I’m not, my grown adult friends use that word.) But I’m feeling conversational, so here we go.

Life has changed. A lot. I recently did a blog dump – my equivalent to a brain dump – going through pages upon pages of content that I wrote when I was 18, 19, 20 years old. Though some of it was brilliant, some of it made me cringe… it was an experience, to say the least. But it got me thinking.

I sit here now as a 24-year old woman with more responsibility than I have ever had at any other point in my life, and I feel less in control than ever. And weirdly… I feel okay with that.

For the first time in my life, I feel okay with not being in control.

I’ve written posts about it, I waxed poetry and complained and ‘preached’ about it, but the plague of perfectionism haunted me for years. You’ll always be disappointed if you can’t learn to be flexible about the methods you’re using to achieve your end goals. After a while, the disappointment can become too much. So many of us find ourselves giving up on what we really want … because we’re tired. I admit that is what I became.

Over time, I became an extremely private person – I still stand by keeping privacy sacred – but the problem was that it began to affect my relationships.  I made an effort to keep my cards close, tensing up whenever I was asked a basic question about my personal life, and hesitating when the people closest to me ask me questions that involve my *gulp*… feelings.

So, let’s get real – in the past twelve months, I:

• bought a house & sold a house
• moved twice
• got promoted to upper-level management
• graduated college
• began to avoid having my photo taken
• forced me to point out the things I liked about my appearance every morning
• became more assertive
• removed individuals from my inner circle who depressed me
• stopped working out regularly and felt the repercussions of that almost immediately
• started working out regularly again and began to feel the benefits almost immediately

A lot of what’s above must seem inconsequential to anyone reading this, but the details aren’t what matters in this case. The point I’m trying to make is, life changed so much, so fast. And maybe it wouldn’t have been so overwhelming if I just had any sort of direction at all.

I just didn’t have any direction.

A turning point for me was when I went to visit one of my dearest friends in the world. We talked about ‘seasons of life and it struck a chord with me. Have I just been having a… season?

It wasn’t like my life was particularly difficult… in fact, my life is and was the furthest thing from it! Although I work extremely hard for so much of what I have, I would be foolish to be blind to all the privileges I’ve been blessed with. But even with more money in my pocket, a more structured schedule of my week, and clear day-to-day… I felt more robotic than ever. I sidelined everything in my life that tugged at my heartstrings and most of my hobbies fell to the wayside. The passion that once overflowed for writing, for dancing, for singing… it all faded to the depths of my mind,  shrouded in darkness and lying dormant.

My best hope was to force it to wake up. It wouldn’t do it all on its own.

So, I didn’t go into this expecting to have a great one-liner or a moral of the story to share. This post was just to share how I’m feeling and how committed I am to changing my own status quo. I don’t want my life to be boring – I want to be excited about the future. I hope you do too 🙂

The enemy of a great life is a good life. And I want a great life.

Hope you have a great weekend xo

Jenni

P.S. – Blog re-launch in the works – details coming soon ❤️😁

Photo by Andrew Dong on Unsplash