I’m sitting here in my hotel room, it’s 11:11pm (make a wish!) and I feel like I want to catch up with you guys! I was scrolling Instagram and one of the women I follow was talking about how everyone thinks that she keeps an immaculate clean house, but she came back from this trip and she felt like a bomb went off in her house. Then she proceeded to say “if you ever ask yourself ‘am I the only one who struggles with…’ the answer is NO. You are not the only one. I think often we feel alone in our struggles, and if we only realized how many people are in the same situation… we would realize we are NOT the only one, nothing is wrong with us, and we are not alone.” – @angelarosehome (check her out if you’re not! She is a DIYer and has done some incredible projects.)

(Before I get too deep in this post, after writing it I realize it will be too long if I do a catch up and chat about my solo trip so instead I’m just going to do some life ramblings and I’ll get more posts out (hopefully soon) about my trip and other catch up chats.)

Anyways, it got me thinking, if we could all just be more open with where we’re at in life, maybe we would all feel a little less alone and a little less crazy. OR it would make us all panic that no one has their sh** together and how the heck will we all survive 😉

As I’m typing this I also realize I DO NOT remember anything about how to format blogs hahahah – we’ll see if I ever get this posted. If you’re reading this and it looks crappy, it’s because I wanted to get the words published before I made myself too crazy. If you’re reading this and it looks pretty, then I must have found some patience to dig in before posting. I make no promises!

I (very rarely) post on my Instagram account (@cosy.chaos) but I posted something to my stories a while back that said something similar – what if we all had a book published of all of our running thoughts ever. If anyone else read that book they would 1) think you were crazy 2) realize they’re not as crazy as they thought they were 3) realize we’re all going through struggles and maybe we should all be a little nicer 4) there might even be a small sense of comfort knowing everyone has their crazy thoughts, and moments and it could be a good reminder that you’re not alone.

Being alone is such a funny thing, right? I think we’ve all been in a relationship/friendship/partnership/work situation where you’re physically with/next to someone but you still feel so alone. Or you’re in a crowded place but you don’t feel seen or heard. Sometimes, you’re physically alone, but you don’t feel lonely. I know feeling alone can look different for all of us, and maybe hearing someone else’s story does not make you feel better or less lonely, but it should make you feel less singular. That, even though what you’re going through is hard, there have been dozens/hundreds/thousands of others who have gone through the same thing. Even though we may feel differently about an experience as someone else does, (that’s what makes us feel alone) we have to know that none of us have gone through an experience that no one else has experienced (which is why you shouldn’t feel singular). Is this making sense? I don’t know, being on a solo trip definitely makes you think about being alone vs. feeling lonely.

Also, this post is turning into a a bit of running dialogue. I’m not one for making edits, so I think I’ll keep it how it is. I hope you all don’t mind. I’m much better at free flowing then trying to get to a specific point in a direct manner. Besides, isn’t free flow dialogue the best way to get to know someone?

I’ll do a tiny life catch up and solo trip chat but then I’ll try to post more later. I’ve been in a bit of a funk recently with life. Quick rundown: Covid happened (yes, duh, we all know), I started working from home, I spent more time at my boyfriends condo, my boyfriend sold his condo and we rented a townhouse together, he bought a townhouse, I bought a condo, we moved out, we broke up, and here I am laying on a bed, in a hotel room, in a different state, by myself.

When I put it like that, I can’t decide if my feelings of grief are warranted, or if everything that happened in this last 20 months really hasn’t been that bad? Look – I ultimately feel so grateful that myself, my fiends, and my family have been safe and healthy through Covid, and I’m so fortunate to have been able to keep my job. But, I feel like Covid really put me on a new life path (I’m sure a lot of us feel that way). Can you think back to moments in your life that you feel like put you moving in a new direction? You switched train tracks to a new destination? Sometimes you’re aware of it in the moment (you chose to move to a new state) but other times you look back and realize something that you had no control over happened and now your life looks completely different. Covid is definitely one of those times for me. I was on a path, with my partner, with my career, with my goals, and Covid creeped in, started moving my tracks around a little bit, and now that I’m here I realize I’m not on any of the paths I had planned for when this all started. Too metaphor-y? I just feel like the direction of my life is now different than it was 20 months ago – and it didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t happen drastically, or with intention; it just slowly started changing, day by day, and now I don’t even know where I belong, let alone the direction I want to head in.

I’m not sure what I had hoped to get from this trip. Partly, I wanted to prove to myself that I can be alone and do new things on my own, part of me hoped that I would sit next to the ‘perfect’ guy on the plane and we would sail into the sunset together, and a big part of me hoped I would get some drive and motivation back. So far (day 3 of my trip) and none of the above have happened 😉 BUT I am writing this post, so maybe a teeny tiny bit of motivation is creeping back in.

Just know, we’re all going through something, you’re not the only one who has gone through it before, and just keep taking it one step at a time…