Who are you part 2

Who am I? 

This question seems to haunt me.

I used to think this was the most important question. Then, I didn’t. I thought it was great to not know who you are. It leaves your life free, boundless. 

Now, I want to be anything but. 

I don’t know what my identity is and I don’t know how to even describe who I am. 

It was easier to just say free. 

Or so I thought. 

I want direction, I need a foundation 

I need to be more than I understand I am but that’s the problem, I don’t understand me. 

How does one describe who they are? 

Their title within family, friends, spouse? Their career? Adjectives that I embody most times and often times? Things that I am good at? When I don’t even know how to define what is good or bad.

One thing I do know about myself is I am the biggest critic and I mostly define hobbies/activities as being “bad” at them. I truthfully would never want to sound boastful, nor blind to the truth that I truly may not be in fact good. I used to think writing was my thing. But what do I have to lean on? I barely read, my writing follows no sort of code or flow. 

Is my fixation on perfection limiting me in life? 

Absolutely. 

This isn’t perfection like ironing my clothes or making sure everything is put away properly. 

It’s in internal perfection of specific things I care about for my character. 

How I appeal to someone else. 

How intellectual I sound. 

How kind I am. 

Was I too spacey when talking to someone? 

Does this or that make sense? 

Am I smart enough to deliver this message in a way that’s clear and concise? 

Are you mad at me? 

I’m internally focused on all the wrong things. I have learned to become these thoughts but it is not WHO I am. 

Who am I ? 

I am fiercely compassionate and feel so deeply. 

I am a master at nothing and I’m learning to be okay with that. 

I am always digging deeper in my faith and my identity to become a better version of myself. 

I am learning to be patient with myself as I am with others. 

I am a strong woman and I’ve overcome a lot to get where I am at today. 

I am street smart. 

I am magnetic, people share stories with me and trust me fairly quickly. 

I am comforting and safe to be around. 

I am funny. 

Best of all. I am a child of God and He is my biggest fan.

Sleepy gal, toxic positivity, and Jesus

It’s been a while. I’ve been busy with work and the move as well as being chronically tired. I don’t know if I’m using that correctly or being dramatic. But the shoe fits. I’m a tired Nana. My naps usually last 2-3 hours and then I can go to bed perfectly fine. I got my blood tested and they said I was fine so. I guess I’m good. I convince myself it’s just winter time hibernation and I’ll have more energy in the summer. But I’m not sure if that’s even true because the sun also makes me woozy. Oh well. Can’t beat it, nap!!!

Long intro to say I’m back. I hope if you’re reading this, you’ve been well and happy. And if you haven’t been happy, that’s okay too. We would be crazy people to be happy all the time. I used to be someone who truly believed in what is now called “toxic positivity” when I first heard about it I was like oh shit, I do that. To myself and others. Try to think or talk about the good when even though there is good, sometimes things just suck. And that’s life! Things fricken suck sometimes. Don’t get this confused with staying there though. Do as you will but I do not allow myself to stay in that mindset.

So I’ve grown in this department. I used to shove everything down and say oh I’m good everything’s great I’ll be fine. But I was really just avoiding the good ol processing step. I found myself in a constant circle of “I’m fine” talk until I was like wait a minute silly goose. Maybe you’re not fine! Maybe you’re actually going through something. Imagine that! But now when I’m feeling this way, I actually look at my situation and acknowledge it. Then I give myself 2 hours max to bitch and feel sorry for myself and if it’s extra bad I take a nap.

But I do not stay there. I am serving no purpose by staying there. Acknowledgment is one thing, living in that space is another and it’s just torture to yourself. Of course this is all situational and I am no expert on anyone but myself.

I mentioned before I liked psychology, even though my grade was jusstttt enough to pass. But I went through many stages of how to process my emotions and I found stoicism to be helpful for me at the time. It gave me the “well fuck it” energy. “Stoicism is an ancient Greek and Roman philosophy that encourages a simple life by setting aside strong emotions and passions.” This started off good but became difficult for me because I have strong emotions. I cried watching How to Train Your Dragon … Toothless and Hiccups bond is so beautiful.

Stoicism is very interesting and can be beneficial to many people. There are a few things I enjoy and can take from stoicism.

But my life and my mindset really changed for the best once I rediscovered my relationship with Jesus Christ. I will get into my love and passion for Jesus another time because I have a lot to say about him. But for now, I will just say, he loves me, he calms me, hears me, gives me strength, speaks for me when I can’t, adores me, guides me, protects me, lifts me up, and so so so much more. I pray every night before I go to sleep and throughout the day when I need him. He is always there for me. He has always been.

Unfortunately the topic of religion can make people uncomfortable when I find religion to be a beautiful thing. A religion that lifts you up and motivates you to be better for yourself and treat others kindly with respect and love. Jesus has done that and more for me. He makes me want to be like him. One of my favorite parts about his story were his disciples. They were not perfect nor holy people what so ever. But he chose them. He chose people who had little to no faith to follow him .. and they did.

Love always, Hannah.

Life is sooo silly

Sometimes, often times, serious topics crack me up. I don’t mean sad serious topics, it’s more so every day life.

The other day, this man had his head out his window on the fourth floor yelling to these people on the street. My first reaction was to laugh because how unserious this conversation had to be. I just picture them as a bunch of toddlers when they were saying they are going to beat each other up. My next thought was that they all need Jesus. The conversation went on for another 10 minutes and it’s more sad than funny after the first few seconds because I can’t imagine arguing with a baby.

Other times, I’ll be at work in a meeting and I just want to laugh so hard because I picture how tiny we are in this world and how unserious the conversations truly are. My boss would disagree, and I don’t mean entirely unserious because it’s a business, but to a certain degree it is so funny to me. Life is just too serious sometimes and I like to remember how small I am. Like here we are, just a bunch of blobs filling our day with busy tasks then life goes by.

One time I was on a zoom call with a financial advisor that a friend recommended. It was free, so, if it’s free it’s for me. But he was kinda cute and I had to keep apologizing because I got a serious case of the giggles. Soon after he told me he had a girlfriend. It’s safe to say he knew I couldn’t stop laughing because I wanted to talk about something else and not my freaking finances. He did not laugh at all. Laughing is super contagious to me. I won’t even know what’s going on but if people laugh, I am in there, I am chucking out a few ha-ha’s.

Maybe I am immature. Probably. But life is more fun this way. Next time you’re in a serious conversation, picture yourself and everyone around you as microscopic. I hope you laugh or smile.

Love always, Hannah.

Whole bunch of somethings

I posted my blog info on my Instagram today and I feel like I just released a part of my brain to people I know now. Oh well. Naaa not oh well. It makes me nervous as heck to be honest. But this is what I am working on. I swear I have imposter syndrome. I just write for fun so who am I, ya know?

I realize I sound a little self-deprecating but it’s just the truth. I am a perfectionist when it comes to writing, which a blogger friend told me that “perfection is where creativity goes to die.”… so I keep that quote in my back pocket, I should move it to my front pocket. Thank you, Justin. But it’s also a reminder that I am human really. I tend to forget that I am human sometimes. Beep bop boop. I expect greatness from myself right off the bat. When starting this blog, all I could think about was, “I need a direction to go in. I need consistent topics to write about.” But I guess this is just another form of a diary because currently, I am writing about what comes to my brain first. I will find a directions. I just need to write first then I will discover what may be hidden or right under my nose.

Today is a silly day. I am so hyper and just want to laugh so hard. I get in these moods where I get bursts of energy and I need to be saying something or annoying someone. I can’t help it, it fuels me. I am the third child of four. I had to get attention somehow. Annoyance and making my family laugh always worked.

I didn’t pay much attention in school, but I really liked psychology because I learned about human behaviors. You wouldn’t be able to tell because I got a D in the class but I loved to just listen. No notes. Just soak it all in and forget everything when the test comes around. Taking notes took away from me being present. I really paint myself as a bad student, but I was only half bad.

I could be undiagnosed with adhd or something. It wasn’t enough to have my parents intervene and think it was a problem, which you can easily judge and say it is a bad thing but in hind sight, I liked it. Not in the moment though, I’ll tell you that. I was in low groups at a young age and I knew it and I felt so stupid. To this day, my family and I joke around about third grade when all my friends in the, what I called the “smarter group” were reading a book called “Bannicula” and I don’t even remember what book I was reading. My entire focus was on the fact I wasn’t reading Bannicula. One more school story, in eighth grade, I won the superlative of “most absent minded” HAHAH YES that was a superlative. What the heck is that about? No wonder my confidence was shot at such a young age, not only did I think I was dumb, but then I won a superlative calling me such. Hahaha BRUTAl!

But, I had to learn about how I learned, to learn. It definitely took more effort, but over all I am happy that they didn’t look at me as having some sort of learning issues. Speaking of learning issues, HAHA I found out about 6 months ago I have auditory processing disorder. I went in for a hearing test because my most used word is “what?” so I assumed I was going deaf or something. Turns out, my hearing is extremely impressive but when other noises and conversations are being held, my brain freaks out and is like what should be process?! Not going to lie, I cried.. When I got in my car of course. But in front of the doctor I laughed. I started thinking about what therapies I could have done as a child to improve this and dreamed about the life stolen from me. I probably could have been a doctor or the next Einstein.

In all seriousness, I couldn’t have been a doctor. When people even mention injuries it makes me physically ill. But next Einstein? No brainer. But we can’t focus on the could have beens.

To wrap this up. We all were born differently. Thank God. The way we learn, process things, go about problem solving is all different. We are only as limited as we allow. You can be labeled as not having a brain amongst other things, but the only one who truly knows their limitations is yourself. Forget what anyone has to say about you, they’re usually wrong. If I stopped believing in myself I certainly would not be where I am today. Words are just words, do not let them hold weight. Picture cruel words as rocks you are holding in each hand, after a while they start to get heavy. Drop them and keep walking.

I did not make that up, I heard it somewhere. I wish I could give that person credit because that line is bangin’!

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” – Eleanor Roosevelt

All love, always. – Hannah

Pain Power Pleasure

I want to write about something more lighthearted. I get in this roll of getting all philosophical and I am out of philosophical stuff right now. It’s gone.

I wrote a poetry book in 2021. I wrote, published, edited, and designed the entire book. Pretty cool. Kinda. But what I sold was what I put into it. Some serious entrepreneur shit. The downside is, I had to put it out there and only sold it through a website I created but since deleted. I was spending a lot more money than making it, which is OK if you have the funds to give. It is called Pain, Power, Pleasure. Once I sold about 70 copies, I lost the effort in posting it down everyones throats until they bought it. That wasn’t my scene, nor my style of doing things. So now, I have about 100 copies left, collecting dust. No platform to sell it on at the moment. I don’t want to say I would change anything about how I went about it all because it was pretty cool to say I did this entirely on my own, but if I had help, I probably could have sold a whole lot more and be in a position for exposure. I will sell more, when it’s time.

For my next book, whether that’s poetry or a novel, I will definitely put my pride aside and allow someone to help me publish, edit, and put the final touches on the cover and whatever else.

The poetry book was full of short poems in the category of pain, power, and pleasure. Below, I am going to share a few.

“The story is always better when you can’t predict what’s next.”

“There is infinite room, take up s p a c e.”

“We grow the most when we have nothing to show for it.”

And this is one of my favorites..

“One with the flower that battled its way through pavement.”

Have a lovely day. Thank you for reading! ❤

Who are you?

It’s Friday! I hope you all have fun plans for the weekend! If you’re working this weekend, I’ve been there before. It’s not ideal. But it’s not forever.

Do you think it is important to know who you are? I find it to be such a vague question. Before, I thought it was so important to know who I was, and I thought that I did. But the older I’ve become; I really don’t know. I know my morals and understand how people should be treated because when people are really lost in self, they can become ignorant and dismissive towards others. But I don’t know if I necessarily know who I am. I am so many things and I think I change every day or at least try to. How does one decide who they are? What is it based on? Our exterior? I am a daughter, a sister, an aunt.. But when I think of who I am, my relationships, hobbies and skills do not come to mind. I want something deeper than that, obviously. If you couldn’t tell already, I am a beyond surface level kinda gal.

Maybe knowing yourself is more of a feeling than an explanation. And if that’s the case then yes, I know exactly who I am. But if I have to list and explain the whys on how I know, then I have no idea.

Make Your Heart Smile

I majored in theater in college. Before then, the only theater I had ever done was the good old Christmas plays in elementary school. I grew up playing sports like the rest of my family and cousins, no one in my family was in the arts so it was pretty random for me to peak interest in it.

As you can imagine, my professors were so unique and deep with life and it’s challenges. It was so refreshing to have teachers speak about life and death, which may sound morbid to you, but it was incredible to me. By trade, they were creators. Years of experience, discipline, and motivation. But the truest thing I loved most about my two professors, was the rawness. They quickly made me trust in them. I saw them so differently than other professors. Not in a bad way, I just felt so connected to them and so interested in their words and stories. I loved theater so much and to this day, I laugh about how I was able to major in it, because it didn’t seem real to enjoy learning that much. Especially as a historically unmotivated and disinterested student.

Long before I graduated, they both would talk about the importance of not losing yourself in the real world when you’re on your own. People who lose interests, hobbies, activities that make their heart beat, can become cold, angry, and function on auto pilot for the majority of their remaining days. Wake up, work, eat, tv, dinner, more tv, sleep. On repeat for the rest of their lives.

“Most men die at 25, but aren’t buried until they’re 75.” -Benjamin Franklin.

When I first heard that quote, it really blew my mind. What makes these people stop living? Then, I learned by experience. It doesn’t just sneak up on you one day like, gotcha! It’s far more secretive than that. It’s a silent killer, Benny didn’t mention that.

I am thirty years old. I FINALLY landed a great job with the best pay I’ve ever earned. Life is so good. So grateful. It’s an entirely new field, so there’s some growing pains, but I accomplished my goal. After a few months of being there, I realized I was digging my grave slowly. Nothing bad was happening at work, it was more so thoughts of, “is this it?”. Is this what my life is going to be like forever? Not that it was bad but I started to question a lot asking myself, what did God put me here for?

What I understood later is that life expands out far more than your work and pay. It’s like I expected eternal happiness because I got a great job. I fell into the trap of my work title and my paycheck defining me. But honestly, it was more so to impress other people that I finally a good job title. To make them think “Oh wow! That’s great!”

But, I wasn’t doing anything for the most important version of me, and that’s the me when I’m not at work. I wasn’t fueling my flame. No wonder I questioned “is this it?” because the only “it” I was referring to was my career. It was nothing about me outside my job. So, no that’s not “it”.

I came to blog. To rediscover my love for writing and I will tell you, these three days have truly made my heart happy and has done so much for me. Maybe this isn’t it either, maybe life isn’t about having it, it’s about doing it, doing something that truly makes your heart smile. Whether that’s, trying something new for the first time, dancing in the kitchen while making dinner, reading a book, swimming, singing even when your voice is not ideal for others ears, playing music, writing music, chatting with your friends, sitting with yourself ten minutes a day, cleaning your house, playing pool, making pottery, doing cool make up, putting together thrifted outfits, sewing, I could go on and on.

There are so many things we can do for our hearts and our identity outside of work. Make your heart happy and do something, anything.

I’m moving

I’ve been eager to write all day, feeling excited about simply writing. I hope you had a nice day and if you didn’t, I’m sorry. Things will get better for you, just keep going.

It’s supposed to snow tomorrow, enough to cancel all plans. Even though I had no plans to cancel, they are no longer happening. Besides work. Would be pretty cool to call the shots and cancel work. I would be a bad boss and be replaced immediately.

I am in the middle of moving to a new apartment and I’ll tell you, I highly do not recommend. It is a nice refresher to be faced with the many things you have. It puts life into perspective and I consider how lucky I am to have so much. Unfortunately, this also brings light to the strong and reliable consumer I am. I think to myself, how many things one can possess when I really do not need all that I own. A lot of us don’t, these surplus of clothing are unnecessary and it’s okay to wear things over again. That being said, I have four bags of clothing, shoes, and purses to donate. I do love fashion so I am not here to come across like I am solving any sort of problem, because that is far from the truth.

I am a bit of a procrastinator and need to be out of my current place by the end of this month, the shortest month, a true gift for someone who imagines they can get all things done in a day, maybe two. In procrastination terms, I never lose faith in myself. The reason for this is because I simply do not have a choice to back down, which is very easy thing to do when I have to complete tasks I dread. I plan to work on this about myself because life feels so much better when I am prepared. I feel like I save five years on my life or something else dramatic.

Two sentences ago, I mentioned I was planning to work on changing my procrastination habits. This change came so much faster than I wanted it to, I needed to say it out-loud for at least a few months before I act on it..

My boyfriend is making me go with him to get moving boxes at Home Depot.

Beginning of … something

I always pondered the idea of a starting a blog but have always been too scared to do it. I don’t have great traveling tips, I cook what fills me, I shop at Marshalls on a pay day, and a fifth grader knows more about make up than I do. But, it was about time I do this, for you.

I enjoy writing but I have robbed myself of the fun and creativity behind it all by trying to be so perfect all the time. Write the perfect poem, the perfect story, the perfect plot, use big and impressive words. Blah, blah, blahhhh. So much pressure for perfection, I figured this would be a great place to just start writing. Exposure therapy loves.

I remind myself that everyone yearns to accomplish a level of perfection (I think). I guess that makes us (me) human and keeps us motivated. Right? Whether it’s work related, relationship, self, etc. I am here to remind us how stupid we are. I was going to say silly to be nice but this is my blog and I can say stupid. We are stupid to believe in perfection. Moving forward, perfection will autocorrect in my mind to improvement.

When did writing peak my interest? It always has but..

My high school English teacher, Mr. L, would make us read a book of our choice on Fridays for the whole period. Unfortunately, Junie B. Jones was not an adequate pick. Reading bored me to my core and he knew it. One day, he told me I was a good writer and to become a stronger one, I needed to read more. He has no idea the impact he had on me when he said that. I definitely didn’t read more, but I certainly wrote a whole lot more.

What can you expect from this blog? Maybe some poems, short stories, wanna be Ted Talks, discoveries about hammer head sharks… I have no idea. But we will find out together, take my hand.