Change

I'm not actually sure what I'm writing about. I've had this urge to write for the last couple of days yet I haven't really done anything worth writing about. It got stronger after a conversation I had with Haz and Ainsley on Friday. We were talking about why Haz still draws in University and she mentioned that it was a way for her to be creative while studying Maths. That got me thinking about why I still blog, even though I don't have many readers (especially since starting anew) and it doesn't really give any rewards. I do it because it's a chance for me to write and to be creative. Growing up, I loved to read and if I wasn't making my toys act out various different stories, I was writing them all down. I wrote my first poem when I was 10 years old (I printed it off and stuck it on my door. It was extremely similar to a hymn we used to sing in school and it was surprisingly depressing for a 10 year old) and some of my proudest memories from school involved English.

I think I forgot that. How important writing is to me. How much effort I used to put into it. Words have always been powerful to me; if I wasn't writing them down I was reading them. I used to read books all the time. I grew up not knowing anything about Pokemon or play stations or gameboys because my head was constantly buried in a book. However, since the start of my A Levels, the amount I've read has decreased to the point that I am currently only one third of the way through a book I started more than two weeks ago. I have a bookshelf full of books I haven't read and it doesn't look like I'll be reading them any time soon. 

I feel like I've lost something about myself. Something important, that I considered a huge part of who I am. If someone asked me what I love to do, the first thing I would reply with was "reading". I even wrote about my love for reading in my University application. Yet now... It doesn't exactly feel like a lie when I say it but I am painfully aware of how little reading I actually do. Since being in University, I have learnt more about myself than ever before and part of that has involved learning what I consider important. Reading is a part of that. 

Have you ever had a moment where you look at something or read something or even hear something that seems to embody the person you wish you could be? I experienced that a couple of days ago. It was a picture and as pictures go, it wasn't particularly special. The girl in the photo only takes up a third of the whole thing and there seems to be more focus on the book she's holding in her hand, the hat on her knee and her half open bag revealing a purse and a notebook than her. She's sat in a car and the sunshine is only obviously because it lights up the end of her curls. I don't really know what it is about this photo that made it so important. I found it on tumblr which, for anyone that uses that site, shows just how ordinary it is. There are hundreds of photos like it.

Yet when I saw that photograph, I had a strangely clarifying moment. I looked at this photo of a complete stranger and made a judgement about what kind of person I thought she was. I gave her a personality, I pictured who I thought was with her, what she was saying, doing, reading. I imagined all of this about her and realised I was imagining exactly who I wanted to be. 

I didn't imagine her smarter or funnier and I didn't even look at how attractive she was/wasn't. What I focused on was strange. Like her hat. I love hats like that but I don't wear clothes that suit them. I wish I did but I never put enough effort into buying clothes or putting outfits together. I looked at the notebook in her bag and wondered if she wrote her thoughts in it or if she used it to organise her time. She was laughing and looked so happy. I looked at the book she's holding and quite simply, I felt jealous. Jealous that she was holding that book and she had the time to read or that her habit of reading hadn't been dampened by three years of exams and studying. I looked at the picture and instantly knew that I needed to change. To reevaluate my life. 

I had an unsettling moment late last year when I found myself acting in a way I thought I would never act. There have been moments this year when I've realised that I've let people in to my life that ordinarily, I would have run in the opposite direction from. I don't like the fact that I feel as though I'm losing myself to stresses and to pressures. I don't want to end up as someone I don't like, doing things that aren't important to me. I want to be proud of who I am, to like who I am and to spend time doing things that I find worthwhile. 

It's strange that a drunken conversation and an insignificant picture sparked all of this but I hope this motivation to change and become better doesn't disappear. I think it's something I need to do.