A letter to myself (and my readers):

Well, it’s been seven months since you’ve written a blog article. Ouch. Time flies when you’re having fun… Or when you’re making excuses to avoid writing because you’re feeling a total lack of creativity, commitment, and motivation. And you’re telling yourself that you don’t have time for blog articles because you’re “just too busy.” Plus, you’ve shifted your focus to a writing project that you’re super excited to work on with your best friend, and that’s going to be your priority.

Several months go by, and you realize that your goal of wrapping up the writing project within 6 months is completely laughable. You naively thought it would be easy to come up with the perfect content. After all, you love writing, and you’re never at a loss for words. But, as excited as you are about this project, it’s proving to be more difficult than you thought. You’ve trashed more pages than you’ve kept, and lately you’re not making much headway at all. Frankly, you’re getting annoyed and tired of staring at a blank Word document for hours at a time, waiting for inspiration to strike. So, your excitement turns into frustration, and you start to seriously doubt yourself and your abilities. You start to believe that maybe writing isn’t your forte after all. Maybe you should just say “fuck it” and give up.

It wouldn’t be the first time. You’ve given up on several other projects, business ideas, educational courses, and career directions that you convinced yourself you “really wanted” or “needed” over the past few years. And even when you’ve followed through with some of these things, the outcomes have been disappointing and less than fulfilling. Maybe it’s time to just let go of your stupid, stupid dreams.

Because at this point, you don’t even know what your dreams are anymore. Everything you thought you wanted three years ago – or even 10 months ago – it’s mostly shit you could care less about now. The only thing you’ve stayed committed to and consistent with is your podcast. It’s been over two years and 300+ episodes now, and you’re still passionate about being “Unapologetically Outspoken.” And despite everything you just complained about less than a minute ago, you’re also still fully committed to the writing project with your bestie. You’ve just realized that it’s going to take a little more time than you thought, and that’s okay. But aside from these two labors of love, the rest of your interests and desires have completely shifted.

And that would be fine, except that you feel extraordinarily guilty because you’ve poured a lot of money and a lot of time into taking classes and getting certifications in things that no longer interest you. If you’re being totally honest with yourself, you weren’t truly interested in most of them to begin with. You were just grasping at straws to find some kind of concrete direction to take your life in. But nothing you’ve planned or hoped for has worked out the way you thought it would. And ever since you left your law enforcement career four years ago, you’ve been floundering and feeling directionless. Who knew that so much of your identity was wrapped up in being a cop? You never thought you’d be one of “those people.” But, without “the job,” you have no idea who you are or who you’re supposed to be.

You’ve taken countless self-development and mindset courses. You’ve joined the entrepreneurial groups. You’ve tried the mindfulness practices. You’ve said the daily affirmations. You’ve read the books. You’ve watched the YouTube videos. You’ve listened to the podcasts. You feel like you’ve been doing all the “right” things to stay positive and maintain a mindset of success.

You tell yourself to be patient and not allow yourself to succumb to the ever-present feelings of anxiety, worry, stress, panic, and fear about not having a clear direction and not being where you think you should be in life. You know you aren’t a lazy person. You’ve always been incredibly focused and driven, and you’ve accomplished pretty much everything you’ve ever set your mind to. But with nothing significant to show for the past few years, it’s starting to feel like your best days are behind you.

And the truly frustrating part is that in your heart and soul, you know that you are destined to do something special. Something great. There is a pull inside of you that won’t allow you to quit striving for your goals and desires, even if you can’t fully articulate what they are anymore or how they fit into the puzzle of your life. You just have this gut instinct that you are meant for more, so you constantly berate yourself for not knowing what that “something” is. And the more time passes, the more you start to wonder if you ever will.  

You feel like the Universe has abandoned you and left you high and dry because all the roads you’ve been trying to force yourself down have become dead ends. And since you don’t know what other direction to take, you cling to the idea of your unrealized goals even tighter because you feel that if you let go of them, you’ll have nothing left. Meanwhile, the Universe keeps putting up more roadblocks, trying to shift your attention to the side streets and detours.

And the craziest part is that you actually love the adventure of taking side streets and detours! Straying off the main road is how you’ve had some of the best experiences of your life. You’ve just been so stubbornly focused on chasing goals lately that you haven’t stopped to take a look around and enjoy where you are instead of stressing out about not knowing where you want to go.  

So, you give in and start to explore some of these unfamiliar paths. You’re still not ready to give up on everything you’ve been working towards, but you’re open to some new distractions to take your mind off the fact that you’ve been feeling like a failure. And when you finally open your eyes and start seeing your world from a different perspective, you start to discover some incredible people and opportunities that you never dreamed would come into your life.

Over time, the more you become involved with these people and opportunities, the more you realize they aren’t distractions – they were brought into your life to lead you in a new direction. You start to realize that you are falling in love with the experience of living in the Czech Republic, and it’s changing your perspectives, your interests, your desires, and your dreams in ways you never expected. You have no idea where it’s all heading, but you’re feeling hopeful, excited, and energized for the first time in years.

But what about all the open-ended tasks and projects that you’ve been trying to force yourself to accomplish? Even though you’re enjoying this new path you’ve decided to take, in the back of your mind, the lingering feelings of guilt, worthlessness, and self-doubt remain. You feel like you’re dragging around a heavy weight of obligation to stay committed to stale dreams and goals.

And then one day, you read an award-winning essay from one of the other bloggers you follow, and it resonates with you in a way that’s like an unexpected, yet entirely needed, slap in the face. She writes about aging, expectations, and forgiveness; specifically, forgiving her future self for things she didn’t do or accomplish, for decisions she abandoned, and for choices that she made. Her writing is raw and authentic and self-critical, but in the most beautiful, chaotic, and relatable way. And it makes you realize that you have been wildly and detrimentally critical of yourself, and maybe you need to forgive yourself, too. Not in the future, but now.

For the past few years, you’ve mistakenly believed that you need to do something huge, significant, and groundbreaking to feel accomplished in fulfilling your purpose of making a difference in people’s lives. Over the past year, specifically, you’ve been operating under the assumption that not having the responsibility of a full-time job meant that you had to double down and push harder in your commitment to the projects and ventures you had already started because you felt obligated to turn them into some kind of success story. You were determined that this temporary reprieve of moving overseas for a year a half was destined to be the time for you to get your shit together so that you could be established in a lucrative and viable career by the time you return to the states next year.

And in this singular, narrow-minded focus, you haven’t been paying attention to the fact that you’re already doing some incredible and meaningful things in alignment with your overall vision and purpose. You may not be impacting millions of people the way you wanted to, but in your own unique way, you are changing lives in your community, doing things that make a difference, and being a positive force for good in the world. And isn’t that what you’ve wanted all along? Your best friend tries to tell you this all the time, but you’ve been so hard on yourself for not living up to your own expectations that you haven’t been noticing the beauty and the magic that’s been unfolding in the bigger picture of your life. You haven’t been looking at your successes and accomplishments from the right perspective.

So, you decide to forgive yourself for the past few years of beating yourself up about not knowing what career path to take. You decide to forgive yourself for not following through on using the certifications you’ve received from completing the expensive courses and programs that you signed up for. You decide to forgive yourself for not having written the book already. You decide to forgive yourself for the time and energy you’ve spent on shit you don’t really care about. Most importantly, you decide to forgive yourself for not being the version of success that you thought you “should” be by now.

And in this act of forgiveness, you finally show yourself some grace and stop feeling guilty, worthless, and overly critical of yourself. You stop panicking about the future and the unknown. You understand that it’s okay to stop pursuing dreams that no longer hold the same value and importance that they once did. Because the actual purpose and vision behind your dreams hasn’t changed. The dreams themselves are just evolving and growing into something different.

So, you decide to hold onto the idea of having stupid, stupid dreams because you know that dreams really aren’t stupid at all. The only thing stupid is your own self-doubt and lack of trust in yourself and the Universe to show you the way in divine timing. You just need to let go of trying to force shit that you’re not truly passionate about and be open to the signs and opportunities that are guiding you in a new direction.

And when you finally come to this realization and truly accept that you are meant to be exactly where you are right now, even if you don’t know where you’re going, you embrace it as a gift and decide to be fully present in the experience. In doing so, you develop a sense of calm, contentment, and peacefulness that you haven’t felt in a very long time. And it feels good. Really fucking good.  

In fact, it feels so good that you get inspired to start the blog back up and share some of your “expat life” experiences. Who cares that this wasn’t the original intention of your platform? The podcast has shifted and grown into something different than it was when you first started it a couple of years ago, so what’s stopping you from taking a different direction with the blog too? You’ve had some cool life-changing experiences over the past few months. Write the shit you want to write, and tell the stories you want to tell. People will either be interested and entertained, or they won’t. Either way it’s okay. You’re okay. In fact, you’re better than okay. You’re doing pretty great right now.

Keep moving forward with this new perspective. You got this.

Unapologetically Outspoken,

Tara