New Year, Better Me? Thoughts From An INFP

It’s that time of year again. Time to bring in the new year. First, I want to say that I am so grateful to be alive to see the year 2020. Usually, I write a post on what my goals for the new year are and reflecting on what goals I achieved in the last year. This post will be a little different. Mainly because the year 2019 was a year of reflecting in itself, and even though I’m thankful for achieving the goals I did last year, I don’t want to review them. 2019 seemed as if it was a grace period before 2020; I guess that is the best way to put it. I’m hoping 2020 is more active, but for it to be more dynamic, it starts with me, right? The problem is, how does a person who is forever stuck in their mind, get into action?

2019, that year went by so fast I honestly wasn’t ready. By the time it hit June, I was in a daze. Where did the first half of the year go? What have I been doing? By the time it hit my birthday(September), I wasn’t even happy that it was my birthday. I was too busy crying and asking myself what is it that I want to do with my life? Who do I want to become? How can I get to this better me that I envision daily? I remember sitting on the couch and crying a few days before my birthday. My best friend, who is my sister from another mother, we talked about our lives, and I’m so thankful God blessed me with a friend like her. Someone who I can talk to, who understands me, sometimes more than I know myself. I told her, I’m so unhappy right now that my birthday pictures will be simplistic(we were planning our birthday pictures). Now to you, my photos might not have seemed simple, but to me, they did. I took them myself and didn’t smile in any of them for a reason. You’re probably wondering, why take pictures if you weren’t happy? I know, strange right? Why would I take photos of myself when I’m not content? I grew up with love for photography, and I honestly think I got this love for it from my grandma, anyone that knows her knows she will take pictures and videos instantly. Nothing is better than to look back on photos and think, “ah, that’s what I looked like then and what I was doing.” Other people write in journals to reflect on their lives. Me, I like to record my life visually.

So while I sit there looking at my pictures, I thought to myself, what is it that I truly want? Where do I want to be in the next 5, 10 years? And how can I get there? To answer the above question, sometimes I say I don’t know, but then there’s an answer that starts as a whisper then continues to grow and grow until I give into it. They say you always know what your calling in life is because you keep coming back to it, and you think about it a lot. However, how do I see this thing that I keep thinking about is undoubtedly my calling? I guess I will never know until I act on it, right? There are billions of stars in our galaxy; I should reach for one instead of waiting for it to fall.

There I was at the end of 2019, listening to this voice that keeps whispering in my head that’s been trying to get me to notice it for a long time. I heard, now what? I perceived that I must work on myself first to pursue this so-called calling of mine. So, I’ve been working on how I take things in and react, how to be happier by doing and enjoying things that make me happy. By being shameless. Figuring out who I am as a person at this moment and not so much how I see myself in the future. As well as not clinging on to my past. The thing about being an INFP/Type 4(my personality types) we think profoundly in the past and daydream about the future and do little work in the now. That was me in 2019, doing little in the now. That can’t be me in 2020.

2020 will be better because I now have a better understanding of who I am. A better understanding, I’m still entirely figuring out who I am. I’m a human being that is continually changing, will I ever know who I am, honestly? This question I will ponder on later, but for now, I’m going to act on this calling. I’m not sure if this will be another idea of mine that I work on for some time and then give up on because of fear or lack of dedication, we will see. That’s another desire I’m trying to attain in 2020, to be fearless and more tenacious. I’m honestly going to have to have a lot of courage and discipline to get to this elevated version of myself in the next 5 to 10 years. 2020 is the start, and I’m getting out of this stuck mentality of mine and taking 2020 head-on.