Tuesday Thoughts: Officially a Month of Entrepreneurship

On a series that I probably should’ve named your girl has severe ADHD and is totally unmediated, it is apparently the fourth Tuesday without having a job and of doing this entrepreneurship journey and I don’t know where my time went.
The part of me that has been worked towards my own self acceptance in such a radical manner won’t allow me to shame myself for what definitely feels like time wasted, excusing it for rest, but truth be told I just keep yelling, “Where TF did the time go?!?!” Because I swear that it was just March last month.

And if you’re reading this for the ‘chisme,’ then get your cup of tea because the beauty of healing is doing the work so that you can choose to cut throats if you deem it to be necessary, and right now I need to rip myself a new one because I love myself way too much not to…lovingly of course.

At twenty, afraid of heights, I decided I was going to be a flight attendant the semester I was kicked out of Architecture school, and I was convinced that skydiving would fix it all. If you want to know the truth, it didn’t. I’m still deeply terrified of heights. What??? I’m an earth sign.

A week from having received my expulsion letter, I sat in my living room and stayed up for two nights straight applying to over 90 different airlines. And when one had hired me, I was fully aware there would be a slide evacuation training that I’d have to pass, so that weekend I was in Houston with an instructor strapped to my back, at the edge of the plane door. I clung onto every inch of the airplane door I could refusing to let go, and begging him to keep the $200 I had paid to to this, but I didn’t want to jump anymore. “Take a deep breath,” he instructed as if he’d rehearsed this same scene with two thousand other terrified of heights but still going to go skydiving insane individuals. I let go of the sides of the plane, feet deeply planted, I inhaled and he began counting. “One, two,” and he shoved us both out.

Right now feels a lot like I’m in the middle of that breath. Subconsciously knowing that I’m about to get shoved out the door but I’m in the middle of that breath taking it all in before my face is getting slapped left and right on the way down. I know that the parachute will open, it has too. I know that it’ll all be worth it when I’m floating thousands of feet above it all, watching the painting that is just below, this surreal feeling of floating above it all almost as if out of body, but right before that breath, the part in which you’re clinging to the walls of the airplane you can’t help but wonder who’s idea was this anyways? Why would you put yourself through all of this? Why would you jump out of an airplane when you have a crippling fear of heights?

I’ve been grappling with the idea of why a lot since starting this. Truth is at twenty I didn’t feel good enough and I was in pain. I always wanted to prove I was good enough, that I was worthy of love, that I was smart enough, that I was enough. It was worth it because since I had nowhere to go home to I also didn’t have anything to lose, but honestly I got such a high from traveling from my first study abroad I was willing to put myself through such terrifying horror of jumping out of a plane because I thought it would make me brave enough to survive evacuation training. Mind you when I thought of this idea I was just sending application after application, but my mind was already there, seven steps ahead at training. Twenty year old me didn’t even know she was already brave. Brave for willing to risk two jobs paying her bills at the time to risk it all to go to training unpaid on the idea of one day getting paid to travel the world.

I think I’m upset because I’m waiting for the same level of anxiety that propelled me to do so much to make it happen, and the truth is I don’t have the same circumstances that bred that situation. The me that stands here today has a loving support system to fall back on. The me here today doesn’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone because she’s happy. If I think of it a little too hard I think there really isn’t a why.

“It’s not about the destination, it’s about the person you become on the journey”

-Some Motivational Bro on IG quoting some business owner

And maybe that’s my why…Me. If I really believe I’m enough, then maybe it’s time I act like it because if I am enough, I deserve to show up for myself more than I have been improving upon each day because whatever motivation IG bro said it, meant it when they said it was about the person you become on the journey. My journey throughout life has been one character development book plot after another with twists and turns and its still my favorite novel. In panicking over getting kicked out of my program degree, I moved states to train as a flight attendant and showed bravery in the pursuit of being brave. In pursuit of healing myself I became kinder. So many times in life I have lived and accomplished so much by accident and that was all while holding myself back from truly going after everything fearlessly for fear of being seen and looking stupid, or saying I’d do it tomorrow, and time came and went and I didn’t understand how it all felt like sand leaving my hands, so maybe this time I go into life consciously. Consciously knowing I’m enough, fearless and unafraid to be seen and to take on life, showing up everyday because can you imagine the person I might meet in the mirror two decades from now?!

Love,

Alavarado