Greetings and Salutations, Blog Readers

I don’t know when this blog will go up, probably the Friday before my birthday, but, today it is ten days from my birthday, and it is perfectly respectable to start counting down and contemplating all the things that have changed since last year.

As you may recall, I like to use my birthday as my own personal new year’s, and set my intentions for the new year. I get a jump start on any of my goals for the official new year, having a month and ten days of a jump on the rest of the world, but also because my birthday is MY new year, birthdays become your own personal time to set your intentions for yourself, the things that are personal for you.

So, let’s start with this past year. What a year it has been for me.

So many changes, so many lessons, some pain, and so, so, so much growth. I actually went back through the blog to see what intentions I had set, what my thoughts had been…

I didn’t even blog it. I was lost in so much stuff I wasn’t prioritizing myself AT ALL.

But now I have been in therapy for a year, and we have been WORKING on some shit, including putting me and my needs first. I have put myself first in most cases, and while I fail in some ways, I am getting better at it every day, and I keep growing and improving.

So, for the past year I have worked on actually achieving all the things I needed, and I know I did journal about wanting to work on improving things, and, I actually managed to succeed in my goals.

I put myself first, and while I did manage to fall off my path here and there, the universe set me straight, got me back on my journey. I made mistakes, I lost myself, or very nearly fell into old habits that would lead to me losing myself and came out of it stronger. I rode my depression waves, I learned how to better handle my mental health, I got cozy with those thoughts that hurt me, and came out the other side with strong mental fortitude.

I cut people from my life who needed to be cut, and I welcomed and encouraged relationships that were good for me, that made me a better person. I grew closer with people I knew, and I met people who I couldn’t imagine not having in my life now. Overall, my life has changed in a million ways, and the person I was a year ago feels so far away, it’s actually hard to think it was only a year ago.

I was thinking a year ago what my approaching birthday looked like a year ago, and I am nearly embarrassed to admit what it looked like. Praying for attention from people who refused to make me a priority, not having any sort of matching energy. My romantic prospects didn’t treat me with respect and care, and treated me as some sort of last resort, despite me pouring positive energy into situations.

I take responsibility for my own efforts being wasting because I should have stopped and not insisted on trying and making that effort, but I hadn’t learned how to value myself more and to put boundaries in place. It has only been a more recent thing, a more recent lesson to really enforce that if my energy isn’t being matched the person needs to go.

It was actually a friend of mine, Joey, who told me about a lady friend who he was talking to, he had been saying “Good Morning Beautiful” and such messages every day, and then he didn’t add the fun adjective, and she immediately commented and said “Hey, Joseph, keep the same energy.”

GOALS. Imagine standing up for yourself!!

Travis told me of a girl he canceled on for a date (second cancellation) and she dead ass cut him off.

Women who want what they want insisting on having their energy matched, and I love it.

For me, that is wonderful. I want to make sure I have the space to be myself and grow and chase my goals and dreams and have someone who will hold me accountable for my own goals.

But this isn’t about what I want romantically, or what I don’t want, but it is more about the matching energy in general. I want matched energies in my job, in my friend circle, everywhere, and, over the past few months it has been slowly falling into place.

Making all the work on myself and the hard lessons I have been learning, finally pay off.

But I have also gotten better about knowing myself and knowing what I need.

Not only knowing what I need but honoring my needs. Knowing I need water, knowing I need sleep, knowing I need to write, I need to game, I need to honor my nerdy self, I need to be okay with the things I like and need and to hell with what others say. To think of all the time, our most precious commodity, I have wasted hating myself, or the things I like, more so because OTHER PEOPLE didn’t like it…

WHY?

It’s dumb. It’s moronic.

The person I am, the things I like, make me who I am. The journey I am on is one of many things, including self-love. I have been learning more and more how to honor myself and who I am, to respect and honor myself, and to put myself first. It sounds cheesy, but it has been hard, but honestly, in the last year I have worked so hard to get to where I am.

And that makes me excited for the next year. I have done so much work to be my best self, and now, I am truly seeing results. Like when you work out for a long time and then all of sudden start really, truly seeing major results, just in time for you to really double down on your work out efforts.

I have also gotten better with knowing my faults and then assessing and fixing those faults or embracing them. I am better at embracing that which I cannot change, but also at changing what I can change, and of course, a major part of that, is knowing the difference. It sounds cheesy maybe, but it’s true, you have to know what you can change and what you can’t, and you have to be willing to do the hard work to change what you can and embrace what you can’t.

Also, a major part of this is knowing what is both. For example, my mental health can be improved and made better with lots of work, which I have done, but, I have also learned some things you can’t change, and somethings you must embrace. My mental health journey has been a long one, my entire life, but, in the last year I have really learned a lot about myself and my mental unwellness, and I have, as you may have seen and noticed on the blog, gotten more vocal about it. My mental health is greatly improving in part thanks to therapy and the work I am doing, and now I try to pass on whatever I can to whoever wants it, because I know how hard it is to do the work, I know how hard it is to suffer, and I know how hard it is to be alone in those struggles. I also try to take lessons I learned before this last year, like how much certain kinds of advice can be good, but presented poorly, and adapted that to how I offer my advice, to ensure I am not being a part of someone else’s problem.

Anyways, I plan on writing more later, as this is a longer blog post about my past year and also my goals, looking forward, but, in the meantime: I am gonna go talk my walk.

More later.

We are now a mere two days away from my birthday, today is the 18^th of November, and I am ready to finish this blog off and get ready for the amazing next year in my life.

Fresh from a therapy session, I might add, where we discussed the changes I have gone through, and the changes I want to continue to make. This year I am focusing on more changing and more improvements, but all while honoring myself and working hard to not lose myself in anything.

As I continue to work on time balancing with everything I do, I want to make sure I am honoring my work. This year I want to read more, a habit I developed in the later half of the year, reading more often, but not just fiction, the dreaded non fiction, even so much as reading self help and improvement books.

I am currently reading “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” as my non fiction, day time read, and reading “Severence” a millinial apocalyptic fiction book, as my evening wind down read. This method of reading a fiction and non fiction, is something I want to continue into 34. Walking every day, or doing some sort of work out, is something I also want to continue doing, as I go into my new year, for physical and mental health.

Drinking water, taking vitamins, and sleeping properly, are habits I want to hone and improve on. Shout out to Travis for my early birthday present of a replacement Fitbit, a notable improvement from my last one, which gives a ton more information on my health, allowing me to take better control of my health and daily habits.

Moving forward, I want to write even more than I have in the past, making sure I work on not only my blog but also my creative writing. Additionally, I want to find ways to encourage multiple streams of income, including making KDP books, both low content books like coloring books and journals, and higher content books like journals with prompts, or even my own fiction and creative writing.

I want to create my podcast, and speaking of audio content, I want to make audio books for my creative writing. I deserve to do these things, because even if I see no commercial success, all of my creative outlets are meant to be for me.

Just like my YouTube Channel, which I can finally start working on content for once again since I now have my macbook working, I just have to redownload things and update it, but it once again works, but I know that content isn’t for other people, it’s for me. It’s because I like playing video games like Left 4 Dead and World of Warcraft, and I like to create and listen to Lo Fi, so I make videos with Lo Fi and video games.

It’s for me. It isn’t for monetization.

Things like KDP, low content, is also meant for me, but I think I started it with the idea of making money, and now I am thinking about it as more of another creative outlet to use the things I like to make fun projects for other people who may be into it. Like the coloring books, It is well and good to make things for people, but it is better to make coloring books for people like me.

So on and so forth. I don’t need to make everything I do profitable. I think being unemployed for so long made me think nothing was worth doing unless it had the option of bringing me money or making me more employable, this is something I discussed in therapy today. And while this is a human response, I am getting better at navigating that response, in part because I am employed and so much of my thoughts aren’t being wrapped up in surviving.

All in all I look forward to a year of good. A great year of positive thinking, of good steps that promote not only healthy emotional and physical states of being, but also that better serve my higher needs. I am looking forward to a year of being around good people with good intentions making things happen for myself.

I am looking forward to another year on this blog, another year releasing content to you all, another year of getting my creative content out there.

I am looking forward to 34. I thank you all for being here with me.

Thanks for reading,

Abbi