Beautiful People

So I happen to be listening to Ed Sheeran's Beautiful People song a lot recently - and by recently did I ever stop listening to it since it came out? Although I know a lot of people who don't like Ed Sheeran, he is a favorite of mine to listen to. When I heard the song, it really started to make me think of kind of just life.

Whenever we start something new, whether that be blogging, running, baking etc., we always look for inspiration in the form of Pinterest, Instagram and maybe even Twitter. In terms of blogging, I think there's a general-idea of what content you know will get a lot of views vs content that won't attract half as many - you know what I'm talking about, the gamble-idea-of-a-post.

When looking for inspiration - which, you're talking to the same person who sees cotton candy and decides to research the inventors and goes for a history joy ride - a lot of what I see on Pinterest or even on my Instagram is practically everyone looking as if copy and paste took in-person form with minor lighting differences. Individuality can at times be squashed away in favor for 'what's popular' and that's where I think a lot of creators are finding themselves at the crossroads of.

And it often comes with the choice of do I imitate what I see or do I stay in the lane that was created just for me?

right, I'm not sure what's happening in this photo but we're rolling with it

I've had a lot of thoughts on the direction of my blog. I've been writing for 3 years and the route I take to writing is quite literally whatever floats my boat - whatever I feel like. And as a result of not having a niche, my growth compared to what one person who recently started blogging six months ago with a niche is fairly low. It was brought up to me by my sister that my growth - although I've been doing this for 3 years - is quite literally crumbs. 

And at the time that hurt to hear the truth. But at the same time? I chose the direction of my blog and through the years my blog has evolved in the form of my blogging voice rather than in reach. I used to write in such a way that was similar to english papers, as I grew comfortable with my little space on the internet, my blogging voice came alive. My actual voice. 

I may not be growing like everyone else, but I am evolving in my own way.

Do I want my blog to grow? Yes of course I'd love to grow my blog! I recently made a pact with myself that if I post once a week on my blog for September then I will be getting a domain. My blogging schedule has been a bit in shambles to put it simply, which is accurate because my life is in shambles. 

My life is what I call organized chaos. It's organized to me and the synonym for disorganized for everyone else. For starters, I've applying for full time roles and finding freelance work in the long journey to full time for about a year now. Everyone I know has secured full-time roles. I'm the only one left without one, and it gets me down a lot.

happy sahara even though life is in shambles - as long as I still have a smile on my face, it can't be THAT bad of a shamble did i even make sense oh well

You may have noticed my weekly blog posts turned into monthly. (I'm changing that to get back into weekly, I promise.) That would be because I was drowning in rejections, doing certifications on top of my degree, doing freelance work, and being told I wasn't good enough for a full time role all at the same time. That spread into every area of my life from my track life to my blogging life - which is why I stopped writing. I didn't stop going to the track, but rather than being excited to go,  I'd just worry about where my life is going on my way to the track.

When I was at the track, it's almost as if well why aren't you applying to jobs? You're wasting time! You're not working hard enough to get a job! 

So like I said, my life is organized chaos, or what probably makes more sense: in shambles. 

When I was listening to Beautiful People, something it made me think of was the direction everyone is going in - from blogging to university friends. In blogging, I see a lot of similar photos by different people glossed over on my Instagram. In my university friends, everyone is riding a wave of full time employment while I'm out here wave-finding.

I wonder how long it's going to take me to find a wave. To find my thing.

Recently, I commented on Team USA's 400M Hurdler World Champion Olympian Georganne Moline instagram post. She followed me a few months ago - and I swear I still remember that day, I screamed so loud like my favorite Olympian knows of my existence and actually looked at my Instagram where I literally have 300 followers and thought hey I'm going to follow her! 

Anyways, let's move past my fangirling for a second, she recently went through a surgery and was so positive about the whole thing and I was just in awe. I commented how much I loved her positivity and that I was excited to follow along with her journey to Tokyo 2020. She replied to me.

She said that she could say the same thing about me [regarding positivity] and that she loved my work ethic and the smile I always have on my face.

She loved MY work ethic when I was sitting here wondering am I doing everything right? Where is my life actually going? What's my 5K time looking like? Is it even worth dreaming this big for an Olympic dream when I am constantly told to get back to reality?

And that was my answer to a lot of things.

I'm generally a very optimistic person - me and pessimism don't know each other unless we're discussing the probability of me landing a full time role. I question a lot of what I do and if I'm doing anything right. Everyone is progressing in their career, and everyone I follow on Instagram seems to have it all figured out.

It's kind of like I'm Waldo because I'm easily noticeable as doing my own thing across my platforms and in life.

I don't follow a trend, I don't have picture-perfect photos; I'm just sort of chilling in my own lane. But I also understand in terms of growth, as is clear by a few friends of mine who recently took up blogging and pretty much surpassed me in viewership and following in a few months, that following what's on trend, what's popular, and going with the flow rather than diverging away from it is one way that leads to growth almost instantly - but that's not me.

I don't plan to be anyone else but me on my platforms or in my life. I'm happy with my running selfies, my ramblings about history in the form of crash courses, balancing my phone on a bench post-run to take a running video, attempting to figure out poses when I have my tripod because I have precisely 0 poses except smiling at the camera because that's me. All of it is me. My life isn't a glossy magazine of instagram photos, there's sweaty me after a run and there's me narrating the history of sidewalks.

The other way that leads to growth is being your genuine self (cliche, yes I know, stay with me now) because you may not be everyone's cup of tea but what's important is that you are your own cup of tea.

What Georganne Moline made me realize is this: I may not have a fancy job with a 6 figure salary, and I may not have a coach/trainer but there is one thing I do have: My work ethic.

I'm studying for an additional certification and I practice coding problems during the day to get that much closer to a full time role.  I train 6 times a week - I show up at the track for every workout I assign myself. It's just me out here.

Even if I'm the only one at the track, I run. I wasn't great at hill sprints - I trained and got better. My core wasn't always strong, so I trained for a month specifically on core and I have a faint outline of abs now. I didn't know how to do the boxing skip with my jumprope - I learned. Now, I do it every other day without thinking and add some new jump rope tricks.

I used to do terrible on coding challenges I was sent (more on this in a future post). Now, I finish at least one of the two impossible problems I'm given. I used to panic every time I did a coding problem from a specific book - now I solve questions from there in 10 minutes.

I feel like I'm floating in a limbo most days but my work ethic is what defines me, not my employment - it just took me a year and 4 months to realize that.

I may have 300 followers on Instagram, amassed a small blog audience in my 3 years of blogging, and I may only have 625 Twitter Followers but I don't plan on changing the person I am to fit the mould of what's deemed to be popular or what's deemed to be the perfect software engineer - I'll make my own mold.

In the words of Ed Sheeran's Beautiful People:

We don't fit in well 

'Cause we are just ourselves

I may not fit in well with my lack of a niche in blogging or with my university friends who have full time jobs while I'm out here holding binoculars to my email wondering if in the distance I see a rejection email on its way or a job offer but I'm not giving up what makes me me to become one of the Beautiful People*.

If there's one advice I can give, as Chari Hawkins - Team USA Heptathlete - said over on her Instagram Story:  Work hard and stay patient.

Your work ethic is yours. How much you stick to your work ethic to see the results you want to see depends on how patient you are in the process. Work hard, and stay patient, and you're golden.

* = listen to Beautiful People and then come back to understand this ending line ok thank u!

So now I turn it over to you: Are you a go with the flow type of person, or I'm going to plant myself like a tree and do my own thing type of person? Let's get this conversation going!

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