Okay, I've been feeling pretty conflicted about my blog lately. It's titled "Good Vibes All the Time" and I've done my best to stick to that general motif. But the thing is that part of being alive means feeling things that aren't always good. But that doesn't mean that these things have to change your demeanor or your values. But on the same spectrum, wanting to be a "good" person doesn't mean suppressing your emotions and thoughts for the benefit of other people. That's fairly utilitarian thinking and I've never fully agreed with that philosophy.
I believe in doing what is best for you, what creates the least amount of harm to yourself, and doing what is necessary to be your best possible self. I can't say I'm the first to think this way, many of you have probably heard of Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche. But philosophy lesson aside, this is my renouncing of the title of Good Vibes All the Time, or at least what it connotes. The reason I haven't posted on this blog as much as I've wanted to is because I've felt limited by the title. I didn't want to be someone who was living under the facade of being always happy or content with everything. I want to bring about positive change in my life through the full exploration of all my thoughts and what they make me feel, whether they make you, the reader, feel good or not.
I had kind of lost sight of my writing for a while, mostly because it's not something I get to focus a lot of my attention on during the school year. But this is my long winded way of saying, that I'm done being scared of my public perception. When I post something, I never do it lightly, I know the weight that words have. But I don't want to walk on eggshells with my writing. It's not an appropriate time in history for me to be pretending that I am okay with everything. The small things I do in my life that genuinely do bring me happiness, aren't the only things I want to talk about. Honestly, I've been scared of being labeled as the angry minority, the naive liberal, the overhyped underclassman, and whatever else that could make me feel like my opinion wasn't valid.
But, coming from a small town and then moving to NYC has really given me the opportunity to find my own voice. I have found a lot of power within myself. Last year I would have easily let most people walk all over me, in fact I did.
When I think about all the times I was put in positions where I was belittled, constantly challenged, and in some ways controlled all due to my fear to just speak my mind... it makes me feel downright stupid. I feel like I spent all that time being a doormat. Those feelings came about when I let one person belittle me for a relatively short period of time in my life. I can't imagine years down the road, thinking about the time I could have spent in my young adult years actually making my thoughts heard.
I spent a long time being okay with my sentences being cut off, the topic being changed abruptly, trailing off because I thought that no one was interested in hearing me. But I grew up in a culture where the woman is generally less opinionated in the matters of politics, economics, and world affairs. But I am not that person. I thought I was and I played that role for a while. But someone recently has unknowingly encouraged me to be more headstrong, more confident in my assertions, and to not put myself down in order to lift other people up. So my blog is getting revamped. The content is changing (not completely, because I do still want to focus on this being a positive lifestyle blog, just in a different way), the writing style will most likely change, and the title might change too! But for now, good vibes stays. Expect some very different posts in the future! Consider it your fair warning.
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