Reflection 1 year after the hardest summer (2025)
I have been single for almost a year now and I have learned so much about myself during this time. This will forever be a pivotal year in my life and I wanted to share some of the things I’ve learned about myself and how much life has forever changed since my last breakup and my sisters health issues.
Seeing a loved one come so close to becoming a memory has taught me to value my relationships with others extremely highly. My friends are the family I have chosen and I have learned that what I want is to put people above money and material things. Prior to 2025, I was chasing financial stability and my career growth at the cost of my health and it also took a significant toll on my relationships. That sacrifice has brought me to where I am today but I finally feel like I can afford to ease off of the gas a bit and take time to stop and smell the roses. I really have been chasing the next major milestone in my life for as long as I can remember and being able to step back and prioritize my own well being and the people in my life has been even more fulfilling. It’s hard to say how much of this perception is due to me being in my current situation that required years of sacrifice and whether I could have adopted this perspective if I hadn’t ended up here, but what is true is that for the first time I feel like I am stepping back and taking the time to examine the life I’m leading and decide what kind of life would be a life worth living.
My Sense of Self
The past year I have spent more time alone than I have during any other year of my life. I feel more deeply connected to my emotions and I’ve learned to sit in thought and process the flood of thoughts that I used to ignore. Prior to 2025, I now realize that I used to have constant stimulation in my life. I fell into a pattern of filling my calendar to the maximum and filling every minute of downtime with social media, YouTube videos, or conversations/text messages without leaving space for me to just sit. I used to think that my ideal life was optimized as much as possible and that my productivity would be off of the charts with every possible second filled with behaviors that moved me closer to my goals. I failed to realize that sometimes just sitting in silence to mentally walk through my day does help and that even if I achieved my goals at the time that my biggest problem was that my goals weren’t worth doing and weren’t worth the sacrifices I was making.