The Dreamer
I used to be afraid of calling myself a dreamer, I feared that it would labeled as naive or complacent.
But now, I see it as the best part of me.
I feel as if I’ve always seen the world in a different way and I feel like my young love for Fantasy books had a big role in this.
Beyond providing entertainment, these stories shaped the way I see life. It’s really hard to explain it, but I think of myself almost as a character in a book. As a consequence, I have this habit of coming up with perfect scenarios and storylines in my head and I’m constantly evaluating this “character” from the view of a reader.
Maybe this is why I have the need to write so much.
Since I was a little kid, I’ve kept a journal. I started journaling in Portuguese, my native language, and my entries revolved more around my feelings, emotions and short-term planning.
When I began facing bigger decisions, such as the biggest and scariest question of them all: “what the f* do I want to do with my life?”, I found that English was a better language to convey these thoughts. Even now, I struggle to express these more broad questions and reflections in my mother tongue.
But coming back to my need for writing, it’s hard to explain it. I’ve tried to tackle it several times. The post The need to create was one of these tries. But, no matter the reason that constantly draws me back to the pen and pencil or the keyboard, this practice impacts the way I shape and analyze my day and my life.
The path to where I am now in life has been nothing but a series of chaotic events and unpredictable consequences. Just like in a book, where every word and event is wisely crafted to fit together in the end, all my actions and experiences come together and bring me to this moment right here.
This perfect order that arises from the randomness and chaos of time and experience is, to me, the most beautiful aspect of life.
Maybe, in the end, being aware of this is what makes me a Dreamer.
The Hyperactive
By this point, you’re probably thinking of me as a quiet and reflective girl. Who walks around looking at the sky and writing in her journal.
Ha! I wish!
The truth is, I have THE hardest time sitting my butt down.
But maybe that’s because I’m always either high on caffeine or endorphines.
In either case, it’s how I roll.
In a culture where you’re always expected to do more, the fact that I look as if I’m always on my feet, always doing is what I believe has allowed me to keep the Dreamer side alive.
The perfect overlap between the two is when I’m running. I don’t decide I need to run. The universe decides I need to run. One example is explained in the post The Day I Found My Song, another happened just the other day, when I felt called towards chasing the sunset and ended up running like a crazy maniac towards it. On my way, I fell on my face in a stop-sign, got completely lost and had to make my way thought gross mangrove water under a busy bridge … but I’ll talk more about this in a future post.
But this is just how I approach the decision to run. If you go to the keyboard settings in my brain, I’m sure there’s a “text replacement” rule that changes “yes” to “HELL, YES!”
In any project I engage in, I show up fully and with my all. I try to do my absolute best in anything I dedicate my time and energy to and I always choose to do the extra work.
Trust me, this is not always a sea of roses and it can sometimes backfire, but it’s what has made me stand out in the past and it’s what allowed me to achieve all the things I’m proud of today.
It’s what makes me patiently confident that my dreams will come true. That, even though there’s no way of predicting where I’ll be a year or ten years from now, I know I’ll be proud of how I got there.