A Year Of Reflection: Boosting My Confidence, Making Connections, Dealing With A New City, & much more

Growing up I had a grandmother-like figure who owned a liquor store next to my home. She was Chinese which meant that every Chinese New Year she'd make my brother and I celebrate, handing us our red envelopes, making us wear red to manifest a year of luck & appreciating our ancestors. Though we were obviously not Chinese, she shaped a tradition in our lives that continues to live on today, even when she is no longer with us to celebrate. The reason why I am bringing this up is because this year was the year of the wooden dragon, which for us symbolizes strength, courage & good fortune, all that I believe I attained this year.

Besides giving you a little bit of history context of my childhood, I want to talk about how I changed my own perspective in life, adapting to healthier habits & ways of thinking. I think that my online persona often makes others interpret me as a girl who has it all, and in some ways, I can selfishly say that I do but that is not my main source of happiness. I grew up carrying the weight of handling my mother's illnesses, always focusing on her needs before mine, which tends to make me a selfless person in general. That selflessness is a beautiful trait to acquire, but throughout the years did a lot of damage to myself in friendships, including the worst one I was ever in a year ago. Ever since that experience I learned that although selflessness is something great to have, it is easy for me to be taken for granted which made me shut down a lot in the beginning of this year.

Now you might be asking: but Val, how did you over come that? Well see what I do not let a lot of people know is the inner problems I keep inside my mind. I know I am my own critique and due to the past derogatory friendship experience I had, I became a very difficult person to befriend if I did not already know you. I wanted to keep to myself majority of them time which led to me finding comfort in my alone time or being only with my two other friends, Jenn and Cecilia. I thought that I was in the right for doing this because I deserved to be alone and even pushed away a person who now is someone insanely significant in my life (if you're reading this & think it is you, then you're probably right). Not to say that I was never happy in this period of time, because I was, but it definitely took a lot for me to talk to newer people who shown interest in my life. I overcame this knot in my mind when I realized I was close to moving to Santa Barbara. I had ended in great terms with my job but within the weeks of awaiting to move I made myself aware that my whole life was about to change.

What Santa Barbara brought to me was a feeling of starting over again, to no longer feel afraid to go out and beware of the girls who brought my self confidence down and to make new friends, which is exactly what I did! I met a lot of people who again, at first, I feared a bit but they taught me I should not act that way. I learned that being afraid won't get me further into life especially with the career I want and even though the same people who did me wrong are basically in the same field as me, to learn to forgive and move on from a situation that won't matter in the span of 5 or 10 years. I think the moment that mindset was implemented on me, it was much easier for me to communicate with others and step out of my comfort zone to make newer connections once again. Ever since I was a little girl, it had always been a dream of mine to pursue school and belong to a big campus where I could learn the unknown. I knew that out of everything I wanted to do in life, whether it was being a designer at nine years old, an aerospace engineer at sixteen, or a groupie at nineteen, I knew I wanted to prove to myself that I could do so much more to my life. I knew that the terror I had in life was going to keep me sitting down in the same couch I sat in while bands did soundcheck and I saw the women in music business working the jobs I wanted. That negative mentality I started the year with would've made me nothing but a muse to the teenage girl tunes Twitter loves.

The fears in my brain diminished when I learned that I am more than just what those girls who self-loathed themselves thought of me. I know that I had strength and courage to move on from those situations and become enlightened. The good fortune now are the people who are currently in my life, people who do not mean any harmful acts but will act upon when something does not seem right on their end. At the end of it, friendships are what bring happiness to my life, not the idea of having it all or depending on my online persona to make me feel satisfied. I do not know how much you can grasp from this but one thing I am sure of is this: Do not allow a group of people to stop you from accomplishing the dreams you have for yourself. In fear of looking crazy or insane for reaching so high, if there is anyone who can believe in you, it is yourself. Act on it and the right people will surround you the moment that mindset switches. Cheers to the New Year!

In moments of feeling a knife on the throat, all I could do is is write