Chapter 365: You Can't Stop The Beat

Here we are. 365 days have passed. I know that I have said it a million times but I am truly shocked that I have made it this far with this whole project. I have never followed through on anything like this in my life. I have never set a long-term goal for myself like this, that actually involved a good deal of work, and actually managed to make it all the way to the end. Yet, here we are. 365 days have passed. So, this is it. It's a little crazy to really sit and consider all that has gone on in the past year of my life. Things are so different now than they were 365 days ago. I suppose that could really be said of any year-long period in my life but I really do feel like the changes in the past year have been so considerable and I am really thrilled with so much of my life at this point. Let's discuss that a little further.

As I have discussed in this blog before, when I first came up with the idea to do this blog every day for a year I was feeling very dissatisfied with a lot of different things going on in my life. I was in the same job that I am in now but I had a much more negative view of it at the time. I kind of had a much more negative view of life, in general, at the time. Halloween having just passed, I was thinking a lot about Halloween last year, which was just before the beginning of this blog. I remember last Halloween was spent at The Dark Side Comics & Games, with a few friends of mine. These people are mainly still my friends but at the time, on that particular evening in fact, I was feeling very frustrated with those relationships. I was feeling very much like I was a part of a group that I was never actually a part of. I don't know how to explain that exactly. It was as if I was a part of this group of friends but I didn't actually fit in to the group in any real way. It was a big source of frustration at the time and kind of led to a lot of feelings of isolation and loneliness. I hated that feeling. I also, as I mentioned, had a considerably more negative view of the world at the time. I talked a lot at the beginning of this blog, and all throughout it, about how I had lived a very different life back in 2007. In 2007 I discovered the book "The Secret," which focuses on the power of our thoughts and how thinking about positive things will create positive things in our lives, and did a very good job of living my life by it, with some truly amazing results. That whole thing kind of fell apart in the middle of 2008 and I struggled for a really long time to get it back. One of the most important things that I learned in the past year, though, is that the life I was living in 2007 wasn't based in reality. It was a fantasy. It is quite possible for life to be mainly positives but this isn't actually an entirely positive thing. You see, it is not the positive things in life that prove our worth and show us who we truly are and what we truly want out of life. You have to go through negative experiences, as well, or else you will never progress or grow in life. After all, we don't really learn from the things that go really great in our lives. Sure, it is wonderful for things to go well and it is certainly preferable for our lives to consist mainly of happy, positive experiences but they cannot consist only of those types of experiences. If they do, we are simply going to stay in one spot for the rest of our lives. This is one of the greatest lessons I could ever have learned and one of the things that I am most grateful to have learned throughout the course of this blog.

Another thing that I learned in the past year, and have discussed a lot lately, is how to be open to the outside world. As I mentioned, when I first started this blog I harbored a lot of feelings of loneliness and isolation from the outside world and the people in my life. I realized throughout the course of writing this blog that the reason for this really had very little to do with the people in my life at the time. The issue was really with me, and the fact that I had placed myself living in a world separate from everyone else. Somewhere along the way I retreated into my own head, made myself very comfortable there and closed myself off from the rest of the world. I mean, I didn't isolate myself literally - I am a very social person and couldn't imagine ever living in isolation in that sense. I was simply not open with the people that I surrounded myself with. Not only was I not open WITH the people in my life, though. I was also not entirely open TO the people in my life. I was comfortable in my own little world, free from the pain that comes with making a genuine connection with others and the vulnerability that comes with it, and I refused to let anybody else inside. This was something that had gone on for years prior to the start of this blog. In fact, if I really think about it I could probably say that it had been going on throughout my entire life. I can't honestly say that it is 100% over now but it is something that I have finally become conscious of and am actively trying to stop myself from doing ever again. I feel like I have a really amazing group of people in my life right now, (which I have said, and has been the case, many times in the past,) but people who I am really giving myself to and who I am allowing to give to me of themselves, as well. Essentially, I have a group of people in my life right now who I am allowing myself to make an actual connection with. Sure, as I mentioned before, I am leaving myself vulnerable to being hurt by any of these people but I finally understand how much it is actually worth the risk of that. I really couldn't be more grateful for every single person in my life at this point. This includes a few really amazing new people, a couple of people I have known for years but had never really been open to before, a few of those friends who I mentioned from when I first started this blog and, of course, the people who know me the best, like my family. I am really extremely blessed in my life. I couldn't possibly feel more grateful for all of the people in my life at this point and am really excited to move forward with all of them.

Along with that change, I also have to make mention of the concept of love, in the romantic sense. At the start of this blog love was the last thing on my mind. It was truly at the very bottom of my list of priorities. I had this idea in my head at the time that it simply wasn't as important as most other things in life. As anyone who has followed this blog must know, my view on that has done a complete 180. Love, in the romantic sense, has become the very top of my list of priorities. I can't really explain what has brought on this change in me but I have somehow come to realize how immensely important it is to have somebody to share yourself and your life with. Actually, I really can tell you what has brought on the change in my view on this, I just wasn't sure that I wanted to because it is really... honest. You see, I have always been kind of closed off to the whole idea of romantic love until it, or something like it that I can fool myself with for a while, shows up at my door. I understand now that the reason for this is that I was always deathly afraid that it would never happen for me. I have lived my entire life up to this point with the fear that I would never find somebody in this world who would love and accept me in the way that one must in order to carry out the type of relationship that lasts. Even after the relationships I have been in I have always found myself thinking, "Well, that didn't work out because that type of thing is just not meant for me." That is an absolutely ridiculous concept looking back on it. Love is meant for everybody. We all can find it out there. Everybody has an equal opportunity for it and each and every person in this world is deserving of it. Even me. I don't know what it was exactly that made me see this but I couldn't possibly be more grateful for it. Sure, I have yet to find that love for myself but I know that it is coming for me. I have complete faith that it is going to happen. All I have to do is remain open to it. I have realized recently, through interactions with somebody who has come into my life in the past couple of months, that I am still completely capable of opening myself up to it and feeling the feelings of it. Sure, this particular situation with this particular person is probably not the one that I have been looking for but I can definitely say that it has served me extremely well. I don't know where it is actually going, if anywhere, but it has definitely helped me to realize that I am open to finding it at this point. That is also something that I am extremely grateful for.

So, we've covered the past and the present - let's discuss the future a little bit. As far as the future, on a grander scale, I really have no idea what is going to happen. For the first time in my entire life, my goals for the future are incredibly unclear. That is one of the biggest developments for me, personally, over the past year. I spent my entire life up to this point with only one major goal in my life. I always had an extremely clear vision of what my life was meant to be. I always knew, much more than anything else I could ever have known, that I was placed in this world to become a musician and be an inspiration to others through music. I never had a single doubt that this was what I was meant to do with my life and always had complete faith that somehow, some way, it would wind up happening. Through developing passions for other forms of art and really taking a step back to examine what was truly important to me in life, I have come to realize that this may not be what my life was meant for... at least, not exactly. What my goal really was all of this time really had nothing to do with music. Music was actually just the medium that I connected with most and felt the most passionate about. What I really wanted, and what I still know with absolute certainty is the purpose of my existence, is to be an inspiration to others. I have come to realize that music is not the only medium I could use to do that. In fact, I have come to realize that music isn't even the medium that I am best equipped to use to achieve that purpose. Music is something that I always have been, and always will be, extremely passionate about but I don't think it is actually what I am meant to do with my life at this point. I'm not sure what actually is but I know that I will figure it out somehow and I will fulfill the purpose of my life and be an inspiration to people all over the world. As far as the immediate future, I have already announced here that I have two new blogs coming up very soon, Messy Little Raindrops and Beauty In The Mirror, which I am very excited about. As far as when those blogs will begin - I am not 100% certain. I have kind of made the decision that I am going to take the remainder of the month of November off from blogging. This is only a tentative decision at this point, though. At least, it is only tentative for Messy Little Raindrops, which will serve as my new personal blog. It is really a matter of what goes on in my life this month. If there is anything major that happens in my life that I really feel the need to write about I will likely go ahead and start that blog early. After all, the point of that blog is to document the "messy little raindrops" that life can bring. So, basically, when that blog begins is really dependent upon the "weather." As far as Beauty In The Mirror, my fashion/beauty blog, I am shooting for a December 1st launch simply because I want to give myself a little time to do some further research and planning for that blog. I really just don't want to be some random kid on the internet who thinks they know what they are doing with makeup and that they can tell others what to do. I feel like, while I always have room to grow, I really know what I am doing with this stuff and have a lot of insight to offer to the world about it. Still, I feel the need to do further research and planning to make sure that I am fully equipped to start this thing at full speed and presenting my thoughts and ideas about beauty in a way that will come across in an interesting, insightful and professional manner. I just really want that blog to have much more of an editorial feel than any of the writing I have done before. I want it to be a real deal beauty resource for people. So, that will take some work.

Of course I also have to mention the fact that on this, the very last day of this blog, my computer decided to take a full-blown shit. It is dead. I don't know exactly what the issue is but it seems a little beyond repair. That computer has been on it's last leg for a long time now, anyway. So, my plan is to go next weekend, when I get paid again, and buy a brand new computer from Aaron's, the rent-to-own place where my Mom and I got the furniture for our apartment from. As much as it sucks that my computer has taken a shit and I have no clue how to recover all of the files on it, I am really excited by the prospect of getting a brand new computer. After all, computers are pretty essential to life nowadays, and especially my life. I can't really maintain the two new blogs without a proper computer to do it on. I do just find it really fascinating that the computer, which has been on it's way out for ages, finally bit the big one on the very last day of the blog. I have found myself thinking sometimes that I have kind of worked really hard over the past year with this blog and everything and have had moments where I kind of wanted to just shut down and not come back up but I never stopped to think about the fact that my computer has been through a lot over the past year, and the past 8 years that we have had it, and that it may need to shut down, as well. I am just really happy that it held off for as long as it did. That is a very good thing and I am really grateful for it.

So, this is it. The end. I do just want to take a moment to express my immeasurable amount of gratitude to everyone who has followed this blog over the past year, whether sporadically or every day. It really means more than you could ever imagine to know that there are people who care enough to follow my thoughts and feelings and the goings on of my life for an entire year. It is more than I could ever possibly express. Thanks so much to all of you. I also want to express my immeasurable gratitude to everybody who has been a part of my life over the past year because, more than any of you realize I'm sure, you have been the ones who have inspired so much of what I have done and what I have learned about life and about myself over the past year. You really have no idea how much you all mean to me - whether you are somebody who I speak with and spend time with every single day or somebody who has simply come in and out of my life on occasion, your part in my life is something that I am extremely grateful for. I couldn't possibly find enough words to truly express how much I appreciate you all. I love you. Thanks so much for following along with this story. Now, though, the story is over. The time has come for Raindrops to fall instead.

The end.