My birthday and what this year taught me…

Hey, guys! As most of you know, if you follow me on my social media, my birthday was this past Saturday (December 20)! I turned 33 years old young. Believe me, that wasn’t easy to say/write. As one gets older, sharing/admitting our age gets a little harder, especially for us women. Also as we get older, we come to the realization of some things or we learn things as we go along. In this post I want to share some of the lessons this year taught me. People tend to do these kinds of posts at the end of the year, but since my birthday is towards the end of the year, I decided to just do it now. Please feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments.

1. I learned to trust the timing of my life because everything happens when it’s supposed to.

This is something I had struggled with understanding for a few years now. As we are growing up, we envision what we want to accomplish in life and by what ages. For example, as I was growing up, I set a timeline for my life. I wanted to be working in my dream job (police officer and then criminal investigator), married by age 27 (thinking that was old by then!) and have my first child by 30. Here I am at 33, working as a fraud investigator, single with no children but enjoying every single minute of it. Life doesn’t -actually rarely- turn out the way we want it to, and sometimes I’ve even asked myself, what the point is in planning if it’s most likely not going to happen as planned. This year I’ve learned that there really is a timing to our life and that we need to stop comparing our lives with other people’s time frames. Not all of us are ready for the same things in life at the same time other people are so we must learn to trust that everything will happen when it’s supposed to. Things that happened to me personally and professionally this year, came at a perfect time and I know that whatever else my heart desires will also come at the perfect time. It’ll come or happen when I’m ready and when it’s supposed to.

2. I learned who my real friends are. 

It might sound like a cliché, but it really is true that you know who your friends are when you’re going through good and bad times. I’ve always been very selective with the people I call my friends for the same reason. I ventured into the world of blogging a little over a year ago and very few of my friends have actually been supportive of it and of me. This, along with other events that happened this year showed me who my true friends really are and who are simply my acquaintances.

3. I learned that some things just aren’t meant to be.

We’ve all come across certain situations in life in which we want something specific to happen and when they don’t, we tend to question ourselves why it didn’t come out that way. At the moment, we fail to understand why, but as time progresses, we slowly but surely learn that it just wasn’t meant to be. There was something I kept going back and forth to wondering why it hadn’t happened and I finally came to the realization that it just simply wasn’t meant to be.

4. I learned not to be so hard on myself.

I’m a perfectionist. I can’t help it. I just am. Because of that, I’m very hard on myself when it comes to my blogging. Ideally, I would love to post more frequently as well as venture into vlogs and tutorials, but I can’t. I work a full-time job and I simply don’t have the amount of time I wish I did, because believe it or not, this takes time (because I’m a perfectionist!). I realized and learned that I’m doing the best I can and people will understand that and will still love what I do. Right?! LOL. This doesn’t mean that I won’t vlog or do tutorials. I most definitely will, but when I am able to.

5. I learned that social media isn’t real life and that people will only show you what they want.

Social media has taken us by storm these last few years and it’s easy to get caught up in the whirlwind “perfect” world that social media is. People aren’t perfect and neither are their lives. People will only showcase the positive in their lives because most of them think they need to keep their “perfect” image intact. The truth is that everyone goes through ups and downs in life and just because it seems like some people are always vacationing and never working doesn’t mean they don’t go through tough times in their lives. For example, some of them are dealing with illnesses in their families and their traveling life won’t substitute that person’s health. I recently came across another example, a blogger that I’ve been following for awhile now and her life seemed perfect…at least to us her followers. She recently shared with her readers that she had been raped earlier this year. It was a truly touching story and a great lesson about forgiveness. If you’d like to read her personal post, you can do so here. We must always remember that people will only show us what they want us to see.

6. I learned not to compare myself to other bloggers.

It’s easy to compare yourself to other bloggers when the majority of the people you follow on social media are bloggers. I used to get frustrated when I would see other bloggers with more followers (although the recent Instagram update took care of most of these ghost followers) and wondered how they got there. A blogger friend of mine made me realize that I just need to do my own thing, stay true to myself, and eventually I will develop my own followers. Social media is all about followers and it places a great amount of importance on how many followers a person has. Contrary to what they make you believe, followers don’t validate you as a person or as a blogger. I realized that I can’t compare my blogging and my blog to someone who’s been doing it for over 3 years. It’s just not possible. The person has worked for it and I will do the same. This also ties in with #1 on this list. Everything will come in due time.

What did this year teach you? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

Stay tuned for another post recapping my birthday weekend!