Today I learned the definition of the word, “rumination.”
I stumbled upon it across an object listed on Etsy and I knew it was the perfect word to describe these types of posts. The definition is as followed:
I find myself ruminating a lot these last few weeks. I usually think about my life and the direction it’s headed to. I think about my career, where I’ll be living, and what I’ll be doing. These thoughts constantly change with the days making it difficult to sit down, define my goals, and start reaching for them.
I realized this difficulty was caused by how specific these goals were. They had a specific end date as soon as they were completed making it difficult to achieve them as my interests changed. Goals like becoming a poster designer or owning a stationery shop were huge and required lots of time and dedication in order to reach them. If my perception of my life changed a week later then those goals would change as well.
For the most part, this doesn’t seem out of the ordinary for most people. But what got to me was I started becoming disappointed in myself for not sticking to something and striving for it. I felt like I was failing. And while failing is usually a good thing this type of failure felt wrong. It felt wrong because I wasn’t making progress, and I was just stuck waiting for something to happen.
After some more reflection, I realized I needed to widen the scope of my goals and allow them to be adaptable. I needed goals that allowed for my life to progress and change and still be achievable.
These goals needed to strive for some type of universal principle. Goals like being happy with my work, surrounding myself only with people I love being around or having freedom in my day-to-day choices.
These are all goals that can adapt to different circumstances that are internal (things that we can control), and external (things we cannot control). This is important because no matter what we do in life we can still feel like we are achieving our dreams and living our best lives.
After this reflection, I realized that my goal is to have complete freedom in my life. I want to be able to work wherever I want, only work on projects that I want to work on and to have the freedom to make choices on a dime.
I know this is a lot to be able to ask for out of life but I know it’s the fuel I need to achieve the life I want.