creating a beautiful life

i realized a few things today. its time to take a hard look at my self, my life and my choices and decide if i am living a life that is truly authentic to who i am, and to my personality. i need to stop doing things just because they are expected of me, or meet someone else's idea of me. i notice that i make these types of decisions a lot, and ignore my own inner voice in the process. i need to wake up each day and ask myself, what do i really want to do today? what would excite me and make me happy to be alive right now in this time and place? is this a day i can choose to change my routine? make a new friend? listen to a different song? choose not to conform to expectations or society? choose a new path? i tend to forget that all these things are possible. and that i am the only one responsible for my life.

there is a great big world out there that i have hardly explored, even though i've been living in it for 30 years. and that is sad really. i don't want to get to the end of my life and fear that i was too afraid to live, to risk and to try new things. there is no sense in putting off living until later. so i need to ask myself what i really want to be eating, doing, watching, consuming, spending my time on. what speaks directly to me as a person? and that's the only way to get a sense of myself back, and to realize that happiness and contentment are in my own hands.

would i really be ok if i chose to give up on myself? chose not to socialize or gave up on my fitness goals? i don't think there's a reason to give in to those things and take the easy way out, when i have the choice not to. i can't grow if i don't push myself. if i stick to the same routines, places, and people, how will i ever explore who i am as an individual? and all those interesting things that life has to offer to someone like me? i'm too young to give up on myself, to give in to some sadness that i don't have to pay attention to. i can choose differently.

i love this quote from the book i'm currently reading called 'Callings' by Gregg Levoy-

"You are ceremonially free," says Stephen Foster in The Book of the Vision Quest, "to bury, burn, smash, change your name, bathe, vow, draw blood, cut your hair, heap stones, chant, rattle, dance, sing, tie knots, light a candle, go nude, make gifts, use incense, pray, kneel, meditate, nightwalk, paint yourself, or behave in any other way that is meaningful to you."

i've been obsessed with this song lately, listening to it over and over: