Transient Tuesdays: Simply Myself

Hi everyone! My name is Valerie and I blog on Indecisively Restless. There you can find my writings on life, food, TV & movies, and books. I’m so excited to be a guest on DT’s blog today. I love reading her posts and am so excited to see this new series come to life. Change is a big topic that covers such a wide area that I admit I had some trouble coming up with what exactly I was going to write about. Hopefully you’ll be able to understand, or at least empathize, with what I’ve decided on. 

I got my first boyfriend in high school. I was young, naïve, and had a pretty terrible view of myself. I thought the simple fact that he liked me was a good enough reason to start a relationship. Because I didn’t want us to break up, I started to get into his activities and music. I wanted to prove how good we were for each other.

“Do you like motorcycles?” he asked.

“Of course I love motorcycles.”

“Do you listen to Nine Inch Nails?” he asked.

“Oh yeah. I really like that one song…I forgot what it’s called.”

“Do you play video games?” he asked.

“I don’t play them very often but yeah I love them.”

I probably don’t have to say that the relationship didn’t work out. 

I went into my next relationship with the same mindset. I figured that the first one was just a fluke. Someone couldn’t like boring old me. I didn’t like anything except reading! 

So throughout the years and through the boys I pretended to like: hardcore music, health food, smoking, horror movies, cars, video games, sports, and the great outdoors. Among others. 

With each relationship, I reincarnated myself, creating a slightly different but hopefully more compatible version of the person they liked in the first place. 

But these hobbies and activities weren’t really me. I didn’t “love” them, hell half the time I didn’t even like them. Hardcore music? No thank you. Camping? There are bugs out there! As soon as the relationship ended so did my obsessions.

As I got older (and wiser) I started to realize that along the way I had found some things that truly interested me. Photography, reading, old movies, beer drinking, eating. These were interests that would no longer come and go but stay with me, become a part of who I am and would have a huge impact on what I’d grow up to do. 

I know I shouldn’t have changed myself to try to please someone else. They had originally been interested in me for being me! But I tried so many new things. Things I probably wouldn’t have tried otherwise. And these experiences helped me decide what I really and truly enjoy. These experiences helped me shape me. I learned what I was looking for in others too. Not that I wouldn’t date someone who liked something I hated, more so that I wanted someone who was willing to try my hobbies as well. Someone who was interested in me and not just how interested I was in them. 

Could I have eventually figured out my true passions? Probably, but this is the way I learned to accept myself and the things I love to do. I like to think of it just like the quote – I didn’t change as much as I became more myself.

ABOUT AUTHOR:

Valerie is a book and TV addict who lives in San Antonio, TX with her boyfriend and their two furbabies. She loves eating, traveling, and cross stitching. You may think she's sleeping but she's actually just taking an eye vacation.

Find her at Facebook and say Hi!

A big thanks to this smart girl, for joining us in Transient Tuesdays! Next week, on Transient Tuesdays, we have Donna. Stay tuned to read more, scribblers!

Previously on Transient Tuesdays:
Transient Tuesdays: Announcement

I'll have some wine with my cotton candy
Don't be afraid of change
How to embrace change
Create change
The adventures of modern day nomads
The change of lifetime

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