March 2019 – Claudia Escobedo

Passion

My 10-year high school reunion is next year. Like… what?

I only know this because I recently got a DM from some guy I went to school with asking me if I would be interested in attending a 10-year high school reunion if there was one. I obviously said, of course! I would be down.

But am I? really?

I know on my last post I talked about how unsuccessful I feel and how I would be ashamed to show up to my reunion with really nothing to offer or talk about. Thankfully I did get DMs and messages back on the post of people who pretty much feel the same way as I do. It felt good to not feel alone and to understand that man, believe it or not, people might want my life. That’s just wow.

I did get a question from one of my followers as we talked about our struggles and that question was:

What is your passion?

And I couldn’t answer him. He was able to give me an amazing explanation as to what his passion was and I just kept thinking, what is my passion?

They say if you do something you love you’ll never work a day in your life, but what if you don’t know what it is you genuinely and unconditionally love. I mean I could tell you about things I like some being fashion, being able to have a creative outlet, traveling…. Honestly just making this list is probably taking longer than it should. This isn’t something that I’ve just recently realized it’s something I’ve always know. I love things for a certain amount of time and then once I do them, I realize, maybe I didn’t really like it that much. So how do you find your passion? How do you find that one thing you just can’t live without? That you will work day in and day out. Something that constantly brings you happiness? and hopefully money.

How did you guys find your passion? If you have?

My mom asked me the other day, what is the goal with your blog? And I told her I didn’t know; it is an outlet for me to talk about things in my life in hopes of finding people who feel the same way. Then I started to think maybe that is the problem with me. I do things without having a set goal or what I want the outcome to be. I pretty much just do it and see what happens. Maybe it’s an undercover fear of failure, who knows, the less importance I give it the less it’ll matter if it doesn’t happen. But the thing about passion is that it becomes an important factor in your life, I mean it may very well become your life. You live, sleep and breathe it and it makes you so happy. So how do you find it?

I want to be able to wake up every morning and love my life and what I do. I am scared of becoming the person who waits for weekends or 5pm to start my life and to feel happy. I don’t want to think that “dammit tomorrow is Monday” I want to think “Can’t wait for this week!”

Is this even real? Does a person like that even exist or am I asking for too much? at what point do people get the courage to say “Fuck this job, I’m going to go do something I really love” and how do they do it? how do I just go off and travel the world? or sell ice cream in a beach in Hawaii?

more importantly guys, how can we create a life we are in love with?

send me your answers and thoughts on all this crazy talk ❤

This is …. Life

I’ll get right to the point, yesterday I crashed my car… other than my front bumper who rolled down the intersection everyone else involved was okay. Which is just about the greatest outcome of a bad situation. Funny thing is that the car is a lease and I was supposed to give it back this weekend.

…. Life is just a big ol’ comedian.

This whole week I had planned to write about life and its uncertainty because I had been feeling very insecure as to where am I going and if there really is a moment when you feel like “dam, I made it.” I guess I planned to write about it so much the universe just decided “hey! I’ll give you something to write about! And bam I crash.

Get ready for a ride cause it’s going to get realllll deep…

It is so easy to compare your situation to others because everyone shares their life on social media, whether it be true or false. There are moments where I feel really secure about my journey and like I have it all together but then I’ll get on Instagram and see the people I graduated with buying their first home, getting married, having their second child and I start to panic and think:

What the fuck have I done?

What do I have to show for myself, in the event that I see these people and they actually remember me I’m not sure I would be able to match their level of… success? I don’t have a house nor am I married, and I can’t even begin to express how I am not, in ANY way, ready for kids. I realize also that success may mean different things to different people, some people may measure it by how big their families are while other how great their career is going. I guess, for me, I measure it in the experiences I’ve had in life such as traveling and getting to know other places. Being in different environments is really what fuels me. I can tell you the only time I feel truly happy is on a plane (and I hate flying). But that is not the definition of many of my peers and more specifically not the one for my parents, whom are the greatest people in the world and have only wanted me to succeed but I’m not quite sure they feel like I have. And I’ll be honest with you guys I don’t feel like I have either, I still feel lost. The more I compare where I am in life to the definition of success other have, the less successful I feel.

I told ya’ll it was about to get deep.

Life? Right, what a good time. There’s this moment before something “bad” happens where life is just normal you feel like nothing could go wrong, I mean why would it? And then the second after you feel vulnerable and insanely human and all you want to know is why? Why did this happen? What is the purpose? What am I supposed to learn from this? Am I supposed to learn something? or was this just a random event and I was chosen.

I truly do believe that everything happens for a reason and it might take a while to realize what that reason is. When I am feeling all the anxiety of “where is my life going” I listen to this song called ‘This’ by Darius Rucker and it makes me feel like things really do have a purpose. All the experiences we have had have shaped us into the human we are today. Regret is something I try not to focus on because once something is done there’s no way to go back in time. But I do wonder how my life might be different if I had made different choices, would it have been better? Worse? Would the people I consider to be imperative in my life still be a part of my life? I remember my parents telling me to take advantage of all the opportunities you have when you’re young because things only get harder when you’re older and like most people I would just roll my eyes and thought I have soooo muchhh time. I can tell you this much, I don’t feel like I have that much time any more. It’s only when I hear about how some of these extremely great entrepreneurs becoming rich around my age that I feel like I’ve still got some more years in me.

I know I’ve gone back and forth a lot, but I guess, that’s life huh? Self-doubt is probably the greatest force stopping us from being successful and it happens to everyone, at least I like to think so. It’s easier to understand your process when you realize other feel the same way you do, you are not alone, none of us are. Everyone goes through shitty situations and I really hope it brings a little joy to your hearts to know, I completely understand, I am there with you and idk when or how, but we will be okay.

There are many things to be proud of and they don’t have to be big life changing decisions, it could be something as simple as ‘went on a yacht’ (which is actually one of my best friend’s accomplishments this year). Be happy about all the little things you have done that have made you truly happy. My best friend and I decided to keep little mason jars and write down on a small post-it everything we feel accomplished about and at the end of the year we’ll read them aloud. There are so many great things we do that we overlook, and we shouldn’t. Although I haven’t sat down and written many post-it because I’ve been a little down on myself I did write one: I started this blog and that is a small accomplishment yet one that brings me the most happiness.

Now go out there and enjoy shitty day. Make it the best shitty day you’ve ever had.

Claudia

Beating Procrastination

The first time I tried to write this blog post I attempted to dictate it onto my computer because I was feeling lazy and needless to say it did not work out. I kept saying Mac, yet my computer kept typing Matt, Charlie was barking which only caused more confusion and overall once I went back and tried to reread the post, I sat there thinking….. whaaaaat? (PS. the picture along with this post was the dictation -goodluck)

Second try at this blog post, here we go.

This past weekend I didn’t have much going on, not a lot of hw or work, it was actually pretty chill, and I did nothing productive, and it was awesome.

What isn’t awesome?

This week is actually a heavy work load week for me with work and my internship, having to do 2 papers for school and a presentation by Thursday but you know what I just realized? I want to redo my balcony setup and I also think it’s a great time to Marie Kondo all my drawers and I should probably clean the apartment and of course I must go visit every family member I haven’t seen in the past 3 weeks!

Doesn’t it happen to you that you want to do all these projects, that have probably never come to mind before, on the weeks or days you already have a lot going on? Why are we like this? Is like all of the sudden I want to play The Sims and I haven’t even played The Sims in probably a month! BUT NOW IS A GOOD TIME? C’MON

At the beginning of the semester my professor showed us this video about procrastination and about how there is this “monkey” in our brain who takes the wheel whenever we don’t want deal with all the things we have to do (I’ll add the video in case you guys want to watch it’s actually pretty great). Anyways, as I watched this video, I thought to myself, that will not be me, this monkey will not win, I will work on my papers ahead of time, so I am not scrambling last minute HA! Jokes on me, because we are 3 months into the semester, and I don’t even have a designated notebook to bring to class (we’re not allowed to use our laptops) and I just keep writing notes on receipts and whatever else I can find in my bag. Man did this monkey beat my ass.

Procrastination just feels sooo good until it feels sooo bad and when it starts to feel bad you really start to question the kind of person you are and make plans to become a better one. But what happens to all those plans? where do they go? Have any of you been able to conquer this epidemic? Please write to me if you have.

Last week I could’ve sat down and written this blog calmly, lovingly but no I am now writing it with major anxiety. Have you ever seen that meme about remembering you have HW and watching Netflix stressfully, that’s pretty much my life. Maybe that means I am good under pressure and it may just mean that is the only way for me to perform. Who knows?

Anyways, I’ll end this here because I MUST go watch the final two episodes of Shameless because I gotta know what happens to Fiona.

XOXO

GG (just kidding)

It’s just me

Claudia

This is the TED talk on procrastination: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU