That’s So Shifty – Paradise Found

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This is a continuation of That Twenty-Something Vibe: That’s so Shifty – Paradise Lost.

I Don’t Actually Have to Figure it All Out

In That’s So Shifty – Paradise Lost, I described how I started moving into my mysterious life so I could finally embrace what I want. What I have learned is that life is paradoxical. It’s super scary to face a life full of contradictions, but it is so exciting, too. The big paradox that I am accepting is that time is on my side but it is also ticking away. So, I have to find the courage to pursue what I want because time won’t wait for me. 

Life doesn’t have to make sense yet or ever make sense to be well lived. The courage I’m finding helps me to be curious, a little bit bold, and to dance on the stage instead of watching from the cheap seats. I’m leaning into the shift. Feeling my twenty-something vibe.

I don’t have time to be just a spectator, but I do have time to learn. A whole life of learning. For me, learning isn’t in the expected places like a classroom. [Check out That’s An Education]. So, where can I learn? The answer, I know now, is wherever I am. I can learn from anywhere and at any time. 

When life is right here and spread out in front of me, the learning will never end. A life where I’m always learning means regret is just part of being human, but it isn’t in control. I’ll never wish for a do over. And, I’ll have a chance to turn time my way. I get to learn how to find deeper connections, discover my own unique joy, and seek a life full of love and compassion.

I accept that I may never figure even some big things out. I still have no idea what kind of career I want and wonder if I even want one. Never landing on one doesn’t scare me anymore. It’s actually kind of exciting. I don’t want to pursue things I’m not curious about. This includes 90% of the classes offered in college. All I know is that accomplishing something for its own sake or to please others isn’t an accomplishment. If I haven’t learned anything I haven’t really accomplished anything. 

When will I ever live up to all of it, anyway? My life was an illusion of other people’s expectations. What about mine? I have already lived up to the most important one. I’m being honest with myself about what I want and feel worthy to pursue it. School and relationships should enrich my life, not fill it. Recently, I said to my Mom when she asked about dating, “It’s all good. Dudes are a bonus”.  Why shouldn’t they be? My life isn’t won or lost based on whether someone chooses me. It’s so awesome to be confident enough to reach for bonus points because I’ve already won. My life is beautifully full.

I’m on a path without a complete map. I’m good with that. I’m free to get lost and find my way again. The freedom to change my mind and the freedom to fail. I may never make up my mind, and that works, too. I won’t figure it all out and I don’t need to. I’m free to learn, change, and move in this great big world. The rest really is a bonus. 

This is the Shift

I know that so many of you have been in this situation, too. Facing guilt and fear when we choose ourselves. All of these serious and socially acceptable decisions that twenty-somethings are expected to make not being chosen. We can’t forget that people invest their opinions, time, and money to direct those serious decisions, right?. I mean, someone has already figured it out for me. Why can’t I just follow their map? This is adulting, Callie! Is it, though? 

I want a life filled with a serious amount of K-Pop, culture, dancing, traveling, and learning other languages. I don’t care if people think these pursuits are not worthwhile. The joy is worth the judgment and the journey is up to me. I’m not going to ignore how awesome it feels to do the things I love. 

No more dwelling on how to live up to someone else’s idea of how to spend my one life. Please understand. This isn’t me rejecting people. It is me rejecting the belief that I had to do what others expected to be successful and become a whole person. I’m not dwelling anymore on how to make what other people think I should want happen.

So, what’s the catch? There is one. This isn’t all sunshine and lollipops. The catch is that a shifting life comes with new and vulnerable emotions. I had somehow absorbed the idea that it’s okay to feel things, but not okay to lean too heavily into those feelings. I bought into the idea that feelings aren’t supposed to guide me in making hard decisions. 

I had been living believing I was supposed to be rational and logical. This idea is absolute bullshit. Emotions don’t make me weak. They guide with both confirmations and alarms when I need them. Even anger. Anger tells me something is off. When I ignore it, I’m not acknowledging the part of my vibe that tells me to face the pain. When I faced the bullshit I thought was working and started letting my emotions ride along, it surprisingly changed everything I thought my life would be. 

I want to feel joy, and I don’t want to avoid feeling pain. I want to feel it and get through it. I can’t conquer it. Life is imperfect. There will be pain if I really want to live. Just like happiness, I want to feel pain and learn from it. I don’t want to dwell in it. How can I really expect happiness if I deny that pain is its necessary companion? Regardless of how much I plan, solve, or stop to test the waters, life will always have the potential to throw me off a cliff. If I don’t have some acceptance of this, my courage will not last.

Allowing myself to feel the pain life brings is how I got here in this shift. My harsh reality now meant facing the resentment that I had allowed to build. I was angry at myself for letting some people in my life take parts of me for what they needed without any regard for my feelings. It felt awful. This was absolutely my fault, but because I held myself accountable for this, my feelings became real and necessary to shifting my life.

When I allowed myself to face this anger, I knew that what I needed was completely under my control all along. What amazing collateral beauty this realization showed me. Through the awful, I found strength. The revelation that no one gets to take pieces of me without my permission. I’m the only one who gets a vote.

In our 20’s, we face confusing choices in a mysterious paradoxical world. Choosing joy is often a painful decision. Suffering will always be a part of life, and it is easy to live in it. It can be strangely comfortable. Sitting and staying in suffering, though, is also a choice. I’m choosing not to waste energy prepping for the next disappointment. Instead, I’m focusing my energy on seeing the awesomeness in the world knowing it comes with the awful.  

I’ve been so afraid that I would mess it all up if I chose “poorly”. I stayed stuck in infinite browsing mode waiting for the next best thing. Spoiler Alert- the next best thing won’t find you. It is you. Waiting for it is suffocating. Choosing myself has been and will be painful. It takes courage to reject beliefs I held on to for so long. There is no doubt, though, that I’m the best choice I will ever make. This is true for all of us. We can all be the ultimate choice.

Shifting Into My Dreams

I won’t ignore my passions and goals anymore. My new goals are made up of my dreams. Dreams that are part of the paradox. Setting goals that start with me sets me free. No more pull to be only accountable to others. I’m giving the gift of accountability to myself. Yes, accountability is a gift. I’m impressing myself and dreaming bigger. I’m not shifting because something or someone made me unhappy. No one can actually do that. I’m allowing unhappiness to tell me this isn’t what I want. And then I’ll let it through. It isn’t fate. It’s my life. 

I’ve heard many times that I should be careful with passions and dreams. That I should never make them my job. If I do, eventually they won’t be passions or dreams anymore. I disagree. Really living life requires work. So, I want to work with my passions so that work can be worthy of me. Separating my job from the rest of my life seems to prove that my job belongs to someone else. I no longer believe that I don’t have a choice. How I survive, and more importantly, how I thrive is not up to anyone but me.

I don’t strive for the day I will be beautiful enough, know enough, or earn enough to be [insert whoever is trending here]. I’m already enough. My dreams are all of the things I want to discover and learn more about. They will never again be all of the things that everyone tells me I haven’t become yet. I will no longer work for the day that I will be enough for them. 

My passions and dreams need to be tangled up in whatever my chosen work is. Without this entanglement, they really aren’t passions or dreams. They are only wishes. Wishes are either an attempt to erase regret, or they are granted by someone else, and that just doesn’t work for me. 

Does that mean I don’t have hope? Isn’t that what wishing is for? Maybe, but I think hope and wishes are different. Hope is wrapped up in my courage to keep moving toward what I want. Wishing is just waiting for courage to find me, and like I have said, I’m not waiting anymore.

Paradise Found: Now for Some Real Connections

This isn’t a manifesto on defiance, a condemnation of society, or a “me first” proclamation. It’s actually the opposite. I’m passionate about wanting to have deeply satisfying relationships in the one life I get. I believe that the only way to truly connect with others is by understanding myself and respecting and accepting my choices. Then, I can have that same respect for them.

I have so much appreciation for the people in my life. I will work to be faithful to my choices and theirs within the framework of our relationships. I’m choosing to spend time and energy building lasting relationships that will fill the pages of all the chapters of my life [Learn more about those chapters in That’s My Disappearing Life]. I will learn from others and try to contribute to their lives along the way.  

Before life shifted, I was just waiting. Now, I realize that my place in the world was waiting for me. It’s where I learn and grow. I can belong anywhere I choose. If I’m not accepted there, at least I didn’t decide I couldn’t belong before I tried. I don’t think relationships work unless I meet people where they are in life and bring respect with me. I want the same for myself. I want to belong as I am. I don’t want to have to fit in. If I feel forced to fit in to expectations, I’m back where I started before the shift. Trust me, I’m not going back. This is my paradise. I found it.

Although I realized pretty early that the restless feeling I had in the Fall of 2021 was making me move, I didn’t name “the shift” until a few months later. I had to experience for a while the awesome changes that were happening before I fully understood that my life was shifting. I had to make several more tough decisions. 

I had been ignoring my true vibe for so long. I needed to be still and listen so closely to feel and hear it. I am accepting that I am flawed, that I will always have so much to learn, and that I will not always be in touch with what makes me worthy. That’s okay, though. I’ve accepted myself as I am. I’m not afraid to mess it all up anymore.  

Is your life shifting? Can you feel your vibe? I am positive that I’m not alone. Part of choosing a different way of life for myself is finding the courage to put my thoughts out for all of you to see and inviting you in. It’s one of the ways I am learning about myself and my connection to this mysterious world. Thanks for being here with me even if it is just for a little while.  

So much more to come!

Find “Vast” on the Poems page