I've always been bad at beginnings.

I didn't expect it would be this difficult to start something seemingly so simple, and yet here I am struggling to find a way to begin this.

I won't pretend that I know how to write well as I really don't. I'm overwhelmingly average at best and that certainly applies to many areas of my life. I enjoy writing though, I really do. Just don't expect any Stephen King. 

You see, the thing is, I don't share my feelings, not well anyway. I hide away a lot of the things I feel because I've always tried to be the happy person that people feel they can talk to, but I promised myself I would do this. Just for a year. I want to prove to myself that I can be the person I keep telling myself I will be. 

I've been lost for a year or so. I've not really been sure of a number of things in my life and I've gone through many a change. I've learned a whole lot about myself, and about the world around me. I've been convincing myself of so many things that were so far from the truth and found myself at a point where I just wanted to be as alone as possible. I didn't talk, I didn't socialise, I just worked, got home, sat on my compute, sleep and repeat.

god damnit writing is so hard what the f

I don't know what the point of this post is. I don't know what exactly I'm going to write about each week, but what I do know is that I need to do this. I need people to see that I know I haven't been completely myself, that I've changed and so on. I plan to keep changing, for the better anyway. I've met some wonderful people, found friends that I hadn't realised were right in front of me the whole time, and lost others that I truly thought I could never lose. 

The world is a strange place and my generation has had it rough. I read a great quote somewhere about how our generation was pretty much always going to be sad adults because we had a simple childhood without technology. We ran around knocking on our friends doors instead of texting them for example and the fun we had was simple; riding our bikes, playing tag, going to the park and eating ice cream. Now, technology replaces all of that. We've become reliant on technology to do everything for us and so we have the convenience of technology alongside the memories o our childhoods which contain pure, simple happiness that we'll never get back, not in the same way anyway.

To anyone reading this, I'm not who you think I am. I've not been myself for a long time and I plan to change that. I'm sorry if at any point you've felt that I've neglected you somehow. I know I've hurt many people and a large part of that comes from me being so uncomfortable with myself but this year I aim to change that entirely. I want to be open. I want people to see my thoughts laid bare and they can choose to interpret them how they like. I've hidden so much for so long. I don't know if there's some social behavioural something or other than states that people can't talk about the things that actually go through their head. The things that they think about at night that they just couldn't possibly consider mentioning to anyone in case they thought they were weird. Those thoughts, those fears, those hopes. Those are the most genuine parts of any person and we've been conditioned to think that they must be kept to ourselves. Why?

Anyway, a word for anyone that reads this: sonder. Though not a real word, the definition provided by the creator John Koenig is as follows: n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

Take a moment and remember that you are part of peoples lives that you didn't even know you were. You have no idea how many people have you seen you walking, laughing or performing some menial task that you think nothing of. But they notice you, they acknowledge your presence and take a small moment in their day to look at you and from that moment, you are part of their life. You may be known as "the girl with the red hair whose face I just couldn't stop watching" or "the boy who laughed with such genuine joy that I couldn't help but smile".

People have so much more to them that we even consider at face value. Any number of things could be going on in someone's life and we never consider it. We get so wrapped up in our own lives that we forget to take a step back and appreciate the moment we stand in. 

For as long as I remember, one of my favourite ways to justify something that I'm not sure of is to remember that somewhere in the world, at this very moment, there's at least one other person doing the exact same thing as me, and for all I know that could be true, and I find something so wonderful about that.

The world is more than I've ever even thought about. It holds so much beauty, so much exctiement, so much wonder and love, and for some reason I never took notice of any of it. So, I choose to make more of my life, to share more of my life and to enjoy more of my life. My life is by no means the most exciting, but I'll never stop thinking about 100 things at once, and I'll never stop wanting to express myself somehow. So here it is.

Me and my dumb blog.

Something like that anyway.

Yeah.