HELP ME I am TOO OLD.

Hello. I'm a twenty-five year old, able-bodied female person who has always felt too old.
Not old, I'm not old, I know I'm still in the young end of the human age spectrum, but I feel too old for where I am in my life right now:

I'm a person who lives at home, is technically unemployed, not famous, not rich, no patents, no published work, nothing.

It's been easy to tell myself "You just have to get a job, any job, be 'of use to.. whoever, society? sure' and you'll feel good." for most of my adult life; heck, it's been easy for most people who find out about my situation to tell me that. But see, I did work for a while, and I didn't feel like I was of use to anyone, I felt like my purpose in both the jobs I had was lubrication in human form, just letting the gears of the machine work smoother, not really making any changes, just making things easier for "the man", totally out of touch with what that man is even trying to make happen. Is he trying to nuke North Korea? Is he trying to bulldoze more homeless shelters for Trump? Realistically, he's just another guy who has a lot of money, or a bunch of guys who have a lot of money- trying to keep himself from making less money. I've lost myself there. Just --Whatever it was, I was keeping the gears from rusting and grinding.

So I saved money from both jobs, and up to this point, I've been trying to figure out what it is that could actually make me of use to society -that is, cause change in a way that I actually want to be responsible for.

Some of this has been searching for jobs that are more engaging (yes, I'm still on the lookout for that possibility), some of it has been thinking of business ideas because I ultimately want to work for myself, some of it has been trying to figure out what skills I need to gain in order to get to a place of doing what I want to do, and admittedly, a lot of it had just been living life normally as a stay-at-home person - exploring things online, entertaining and educating myself, cleaning, cooking, trying not to freak about about how slow things are progressing.

In all of these, an important and kind of funny thing I realised is how important it is to, and forgive me for how cheesy this sounds, actually know and accept yourself  before coming into your own and presenting your ideas to the world. I realised how much I have been censoring myself and trying to "prune" myself before letting myself grow to my full potential, and how limiting that has become to me.

I decided to write this now to come clean about all of my insecurities - to lay it all out there - to give context for the existence of this blog and to let you know that there is a human behind all of these. An incredibly, disastrously flawed one. And so, this won't be written like an article like my recent posts. This will just be me baring myself to you, to humanise this corner of space that I have made for myself here in the vast interspacewebs.

First, the thing in the title that was definitely not meant to mislead you - I am insecure about my age relative to where I am in life. Whenever I see people who have done more by now and are younger than me (and there are many of them - I started feeling this way at FOURTEEN for godssake) I always manage to wonder if it's too late to start anything by now and I should just find a desk job and not look left and right and try to forget about all of my old passions. 

Today though, I found out that Bunny Meyers from YouTube (grav3yardgirl) started vlogging at 25 - MY AGE! In her 5-year YouTube anniversary video, she said she was a "late bloomer" and my bitter brain was like "She probably meant starting at 21 or something and you're already four years down the road from there, hun" But I googled her age, and nope. Born in 1985. I know how silly the next part is going to seem, I know how crazy I sound, but I actually, literally TEARED UP from relief. It felt like once again my existence has been validated by this lady - the first time was when I started watching her and saw how delightfully weird she was and I felt quite okay about myself and started letting myself be myself more. Yes I just said myself three times, Beardy. Four times now. Sorry. Love you, *kiss*

Every time I fail to convince myself that age is just a number from now on, I'm going to tell myself that I've been half-assing my whole life, so when it comes to self-actualisation, my real age is only twelve and a half. So I could just shut up about being too old, and get immersed in things as openly as I did when I was 12 and just starting to learn how to play guitar.

I was having a good skin day the other day so. *feelin myself*

Second, I fear that I'm too out of touch with what used to be my natural talents - and yes this is sort of still the first point, because it has to do with my age and how I didn't form the right habits in my formative years when it comes to harnessing my skills and whatnot, but it deserves its own spot because it's just HORRIBLE. I am so afraid of not being able to write songs anymore, not being able to learn new software that would allow me to digitally draw again. Not being able to dance well anymore because of my hip problem. So many fears! But recently (and yes, all of the points here are going to come with reassurances because this blog is about being encouraging to oneself and others, after all) I've been successfully maintaining two habits- eating moderately and cleaning regularly - for a long time now, so I have some ammo against my own brain telling me I can't create any new habits~!!! >.< Shuddup brain. You know nothin. Or.. enough. You know enough, so stop doubting yourself, shh.

Third, I don't know if I'm likeable enough. To be listened to, for my opinions to be valued, to simply get enough hits online when I publish my content! Okay, maybe that last one is more about marketing knowledge, but you get the point. And this is the bottom line to many smaller insecurities that I could have considered as separate: my looks, my tone, how dumb I come across... I'm putting them all here because essentially they are just about being received positively after I put myself out there. The only reassurance I have for this point is the hunch I have that it simply does not matter. That's one good thing about growing older, I guess. Things become less and less about what people think about me, but rather my experience of life. I just want to give this a shot man, and if it fails, if nobody ends up reading anything I write, then I'd know for sure that it just wasn't there for me. I'd prefer not having to live my life wondering.

So there it is. Right now, I'm still figuring myself out, yes, but at the same time, I've finally come to the realisation that this is just simply not meant to end! I'm never going to come to a point where I've figured myself out, where it's done, a thing of the past. I'm one of those things that Elizabeth Gilbert calls "hummingbirds".. People who live through life going from one thing to another. My life simply is about figuring things out. This blog is where I document myself figuring things out too, and sharing things along the way. Nothing is final and unchangeable here. I know that things I feel today will evolve, and maybe I'll regret many things I say from now, much like I regret many things I said when I was younger. That's just how life is. And I'm far too old to keep resisting. ;)