starting fresh: the journey of re-invention
Happy Women’s Day to all my ladies! As we celebrate a new month, full of possibilities… I want to focus on why you should never stop redefining yourself. As long as you have breath in your body, you can “Press Reset”! And if this idea sounds a bit cliche to you, then I want you to do me one small, but BIG favor… just please keep on reading!
My cousin never lived to see her 35th birthday. She was young, health-conscious and very active. She had friends, a good career and good relationships with her close family members (as far as I knew because I never heard about her starting or being in any drama with anyone). Yet, she did not have a long life. It shocked us all. It is still so surreal! To this day, I still can’t believe it! Especially since I can still remember different versions of her (childhood and into adulthood). I remember her smile. She had a big smile. I remember our conversations. She had a lot of confidence. One conversation, in particular, that I remember having with her is when she expressed to me that she wanted to apply for a job where I was working at the time (Hooters). I told her to go for it! Why not? I know people had negative things to say about working there (the stigma of it being an overly-sexualized restaurant and whatnot) but I specifically told her, “Life is short. Do it! Apply! I make GOOD money there and it’s a fun place to work. Easy money! You should do it!”
I don’t think she ever actually worked there because another opportunity came along for her at the time, but that conversation sticks out in my mind because…who would know that her life would, in fact, be super short? For context, when we had that conversation, her life was already more than halfway over (sigh). It still seems unreal to me. I’ll never really “Get over” her not being here anymore. It messes with my head.
But my point here is that, as long as you still have life… just keep living. Keep finding new ways to better yourself. Don’t think that it’s too late because it is not. I remember at my cousins funeral, looking over at my grandmother who looked really sad. I know she was probably thinking to herself, “This child was supposed to outlive me”. But that’s just it. We are all assigned our own unique timeline. And we are not in control of the length of our life. And if you want to get deeper with it… thinking out loud… when my grandmother was my cousins age, she was not even at the half-point of her life yet. But here my cousin was… “young” and at the end of hers.
I often think of her whenever I feel that feeling of, “Here I go again starting over” or “Here I go again thinking of a re-brand”. I think of her each time I take on a new title or start on a new creative endeavor. And I think to myself, “I could be here today and gone tomorrow or I could be here for a lot more decades”. I don’t know. You don’t know. WE don’t know!
But while I am here, I am never going to hesitate starting over as long as I am alive and well enough to do so. Because I am never too young or too old! I am here and breathing. And that… is the only requirement needed to reinvent myself. And if I don’t like something, I am going to think of a way to improve it. And if I wake up tomorrow and decide that something is not working, I’m automatically on a mission to fix it! So start and restart again! That is… until you get it right.