At the beginning of the month I celebrated my first birthday abroad. It was about as exciting as any Tuesday birthday can be. To give credit where credit is due, my parents did call me on my way to work, staying up past their bedtime to let me know they were thinking of me (because 8 hours is a bizarre time difference), I received a few gifts from friends, my flatmates surprised me with a cake, and I was properly teased at Gaelic football training.
Part of the post is about the amazing weekend I had in Dubai to celebrate my birthday. I signed up with a few friends from Gaelic to participate in the du Tough Mudder. If you've heard of a Spartan Race, this race is of similar format: running, crazy obstacles, teamwork. The name sake hints that there is quite a lot of mud and dirt, purposely put in your way so you are a literal mud cake of sore muscles by the end of your 10km journey. Trenches of mud, friends. Multiple trenches.
I will be the first to admit that I walked 9/10ths of that journey, because running on sand is hard. As miserable as I'm sure I looked in any photograph from this race, in the end, it truly was an awesome experience. It was about teamwork and pushing your limits, putting one foot in front of the other to reach the finish line together. As our warm up coach told us before we began our trek: you don't run this race alone, even if you came here by yourself. It was true, I helped strangers and friends and I was helped in return. No one wanted to, say climb up a sand dune nearing a 90 degree angle, but we cheered each other on and in the end, we all made it to the top.
If you've never heard of a Tough Mudder before, it's worth Google-ing and checking out a course (polar plunges and electrocution obstacles included).
In January I'm hoping to participate in the Spartan Race in Kuwait, a little closer to home, ya know?
Dubai in itself was a great weekend trip. Never before in my life did I think I would live in a place where Dubai was a casual 90 minute, flight away. While I did not get to explore the city (though the sights were always towering around us) just the change of scenery, as well as being in one of the most famous places in the world was another tick off the bucket list.
Now, you may be wondering why I have cited a Blink-182 lyric for my post title, or maybe you aren't if you didn't know that phrase was a line from a Blink-182 song (#funfacts). To be honest, I was thinking about those words a lot in the weeks leading up to my birthday. Not because I thought a switch went off and that you suddenly became hated by all those around you. More, that though the line is often quoted in jest, it kind of embodies this notion of uncertainty when you're in your 20's. Many of my friends finished school with some kind of degree and still weren't quite sure what that really meant for them. Even those who obtained a job or went on to grad school seem to emanate a: I don't know what I'm going to do but for now, I'm just going to go with the flow, vibe.
Flexibility is a really important skill, however, with or without it I've found that external uncertainty tends to chip away at your internal certainty and self worth. At the end of the day, it's you and your thoughts, making it really easy to blame yourself where you are, or aren't, in life. It also makes it easy to compare ourselves to others, even when knowing other's lives are far more than advertised on a daily basis.
At 23, it's easy to feel like nobody likes you, including yourself.
The past few years I have balanced certainties with uncertainties. I knew I wanted to teach, I knew I wanted to travel, but I was uncertain about how to make it happen, and if I could make it happen at all. I think a lot of the time we are exposed to this notion that if it's what we're meant to do we should feel that way instantly and just know, similar to the idea of love at first sight. That is not always the case, sometimes exactly what we should do is the hardest thing to accomplish. Yeah, that kind of sucks put like that but, to be honest, I didn't see this job in Kuwait and think: "This is it, I'm done, I've found exactly what I want this is perfect I'm doing this!". It was more like: "Ah, here I am on this job site, let's apply to 15, oh this one responded, let's roll with it and see what happens." This excludes the difficult process of getting a visa once I had make up my mind which, to be honest, made me want to give up sometimes. However, now that I'm here, I am enjoying myself, I am happy and glad of my decision. And it wasn't because of love at first sight, it's because even when I was still taking a risk, I worked through all the difficulties and road blocks(not alone, I might add), and I worked really hard.
Even with my job and my travels there is a lot of external uncertainty, however if I've grown in any way in the past year it's that I've reached a place of internal peace. Of course I am still overwhelmed sometimes, I still make mistakes, am self conscious about things like my decisions, my abilities, my physical appearance, you name it. But, at the end of my day, no matter how cheesy: I like myself. It took a long time, a lot of experiences, and quite a few countries, but the personal journey I actively took to be comfortable with who I am has paid off. I continue to learn and grow everyday because things like self love are never a point A to point B kind of thing. This idea of self love can be seen negatively, especially in a time when we're praising the romanticized idea of not taking care of ourselves; getting no sleep, not eating right, trying to get a semester's worth of work done in one night, etc. There should be no shame in being able to say you are happy with who you are, especially since that feeling often comes with the realization that constant growth is necessary.
As I look back on my year of travel, school, music, job hunting, it truly is amazing and I am blessed to have celebrated another birthday. Life is not passive and the most important thing you can do is ask yourself questions and challenge yourself to think of what answers will help you grow.
Who knows, maybe I dug too deep and Blink-182 is really just trying to tell us we all suck when we're 23. However, as I enter this new year I know there is always going to be at least one person who likes me.