Shout out to nightcore, anime, vocaloid, the old creepypasta from like 2012, crappy no-grammar online roleplays, my emo phase, writing fanfiction, binging cheesy shojou romance manga, and every other thing that was considered awkward, cringy, or otherwise annoying by outsiders while I was growing up.
Because even though there’s even some stuff that I personally cringe at now, at some point it kept me alive when I was at my lowest. Even though they made me seem weird because most of it was more niche stuff, they made me smile (some still do) and that’s what matters.
My message for my fellow chaotics today: if you love something, then love it. If you like how a certain style of clothes look, wear them. If you make a mistake, learn from it and laugh about it later.
Life is WAY too short to waste regretting the more misfortunate events that have happened. And yes, everyone has events like that, memories that they want to forget and pain that hasn’t quite healed. So if you’ve ever loved something that makes you go red in embarrassment now, however many years later, own that shit. Because at one point it made you smile, and that’s good enough.
We’ve all dreamed about what our “perfect future” would look like, but did you realize just how much that actually tells you about yourself?
Each and every dream or goal you have for yourself can teach you a lot about your own personal values and desires. As such, it can also tell you what you truly need to focus on to get where you want to be!
Start by answering the following question: How do I want to live?
There’s no deadline of “…in five years” or anything like that. It’s just- what does your ideal life look like? In the form of bullet points, jot down any and everything you think of that you think is important to the ideal.
Then go back and answer a different question: What does my dream lifestyle say about me?
There are typically two categories of information you can glean from this exercise. The first is what you value.
At the very core, the center, of who you are, what is the absolute most important to you? For example, I noticed that a lot of my “ideals” that came to mind involved having the discipline to eat well or having more time and funds to throw into self-care and beauty routines. This tells me that I value my own health and physical appearance and it is important to me that I view myself in a positive light, even if no one else does.
For me, that is something I have struggled with for a long time, feeling confident in my own body. At some point, it became one of my fears and a weakness to me. However, what we fear about ourselves or the world around us can often tell us exactly what we value so deeply. The reason we fear certain things is because we have something to protect there, something we love and cherish, and we desperately want to prevent it from being taken from us. By focusing on those areas in our self-reflection, we can help strengthen those values and desires that are hidden there so that we can wear them more confidently.
The second category of information you can learn about from this exercise is what you desire.
While your values are your needs, your desires are your wants. Could you survive without them? Probably, but that doesn’t make them any less important to you. Your values are things that have always been a part of you, but have weakened over time and need to be given strength. A desire, on the other hand, are things that haven’t come to pass yet but are essential to your continued growth as a person. They can show you what pieces of yourself you have outgrown or the best building blocks to help you strengthen, or develop new, core values.
For example, when looking at my “ideals”, I can see that the words “confidence” and “discipline” and “self-control” pop up a lot, always in the context that they are something I lack. That’s not a negative way to write about myself, it’s simply that at my current stage in life, I have noticed this and now I am expressing the desire to change that. Due to my personal context, this tells me that I desire the confidence to speak when needed, to stay silent when it isn’t, and say precisely what needs to be said, instead of rambling anxiously and feeling uncomfortable in my own silence. If there is something about yourself that really bothers you, it’s your brain telling you that whatever is on your nerves is no longer necessary to you, that you’ve outgrown it and need something else now. In my case, I feel out-of-control in social situations and after looking at what my “ideals” actually are, can safely say that the issue is rooted in low, or a lack of, self-confidence.
Every time winter rolls around I start getting super sleepy…but the second the snow comes then I almost immediately drop into full-feral-solarpunk-activist mode and begin mass scheming for the coming spring and following growing season. There’s just something about everything outside looking like a big empty canvas that throws my brain into “must fill this expanse with life and positivity even if it kills me” ya know?
quite recently my aesthetic and life in general has got a lot softer and all im saying is whether that’s due to very recent psychological trauma or a slight change of heart is up for interpretation
did i waste useful time that couldve been spent doing maths homework making a froggy google slide theme? yes of course i absolutely did and i only have 2 regrets so im saying this one is a win
