2014, Bye bye teens

Well first of, Happy New Year!

This post is dedicated to the year that was, the teenage years and to my existence on planet Earth for two decades. Do I sound excited? Well I am and I am not. So let me give you a mini-feel into my sentiments at the moment. You remember how you were twelve and you simply couldn't hold your horses to be thirteen? Then you got to thirteen and their really wasn't anything to write home about, and you couldn't help but feel a little disappointed inside? Well that's the excitement I am not feeling right about now. Except when you turned thirteen, teenage hood started coming at you in bits and pieces you could handle, the good and the bad, rather than in the rush you anticipated. Then that's the excitement I am feeling.

So up next are a bunch of things that I learned in 2014 and while being a teen. (This should have been two posts, but my time management skills have failed me. Something I ought to work on in 2015.)

She believed she could, so she did.
Yes, you have probably heard this quote billions and billions of times and even I admit I kind of got sick of it. But these words just about accurately describe my trials, successes and failures. Despite all the voices of doubt and downright discouragement both internally and externally, I soldiered through with my biggest fans rooting for me. Remember you should always believe in yourself, then everyone else will follow suit soon enough. That doesn't mean I came out victorious through everything, hands clasped and saying 'Bravo! Bravo!' to an imaginary crowd. Most times and more times are coming where I felt beaten to a pulp and staying down was the preferred option but you know what they say:

What's the worst that could happen.
There was a point in time if I was told to describe myself in one word, "Failure". My grades were looking all sorts of bad, the school of my then dreams had oh so graciously rejected me and my pre-finals were looking all sorts of ugly and rumor had it, they accurately predicted your finals score. Well, I lived, through it all scoring grades that are not too shabby, if I do say so myself with a try-it-all attitude when I got to the other side. No matter how big it is and whatever it is, I feel like I have seen the worst so I validly ask myself whenever in doubt,'What's the worst that could happen?'


Failure is enlightening.
If anything it must be an ingredient to success. You probably like, "Say what, now?" Trust me I feel like that too and in all honesty I cannot explain what that means but simply said, to the successful, failure is the fuel that keeps you going, the flat tire that can be changed, the speed bump on the highway. Why I am using motor analogies I do not know, but one thing is for sure, failure does one of two things stops you altogether or stops for you to recollect yourself. The choice is yours.

Go for it.
The only thing between you and what you want is yourself. Enough said.

Find yourself.
Nobody ever wants to say they are in the process and those who do are looked at as though they are a bunch of sickos. I say if you won't do it now, while in your teens, you risk living an unnecessarily unsatisfying life for a while. Go ahead, do it, stumble, fall, make a fool out of yourself  in the end (the end could be anytime between now and a lifetime) you won't regret it. After all who doesn't like mysteries, you never now what you will find.

It's okay to be different.
My teens were marked with significant jealousy of all my friends who were allowed to go out for a night on the town. I probably wasn't let out because of using such phrases well into the millennium, but it doesn't change the fact that I was still jealous. See in my day, (there I go again) the popping events were, Black Rock, Extravadance, those New Year's Eve all night parties. It took me a couple of years to figure out that we do not all have the same idea of fun, for you it's getting your dancing shoes on and chasing the sun from an odd hour in the night, for me it's an 80s movie, Sundance movie or even a god Y.A book. It doesn't change the fact that we have both unwound, of course one of us more comfortable than the other.

I guess its time to say, Bye bye teens, Hello Twenties !!