What makes you you

Last week I happened to watch a video from a YouTuber that I have been following ever since middle school, and she was talking about the way her life recently felt like going on autopilot and how to get out of that situation she needed to rediscover the things that made her feel good and that made her feel like herself. Her name is Lea and this video is called "Stare bene" and it really made me think about my life too and about how I have found myself in that situation recently. 

This year was full of changes for me as I moved to Paris and dealing with living abroad was as magical as it was terrible. I was soon hit with the realization that life can still be very challenging even when the setting looks like a dream. I feel like life can often become so hectic that we lose ourselves in the process and in the same way I started not recognising myself anymore. So, after watching this video, I started writing in my journal, trying to reflect about the things that brought happiness in my everyday life and those attributes that made me feel me.

First of all, this past year I started wearing boring outfits that I didn't like. This happened because I didn't have the time or the energy to think about what to wear, and I became so mentally exhausted that I couldn't bring myself to compose an outfit. Fashion is something that I have always been interested in and that I feel can be an important tool of self expression and a hobby that has always sparked my creativity. I have also learned how to sew in order to make clothes the way I imagine them and the struggles I was experiencing in dealing with everyday life also affected this, as I could not find the energy to dedicate to this activity. I feel like boosting our creativity and dedicating ourselves to pastimes that make us feel inspired is so important in life and this is why I want to try and bring back this past version of me. So, I made a resolution to make an effort every day to find the time to make combinations and always make up a nice outfit that expresses the truest version of me.

Another passion that I have always dedicated myself to is photography: I have always wanted to immortalize my own vision of the world around me and I also feel the need to capture moments to treasure them as memories, even if they are just fragments of ordinary life. I have always taken my camera everywhere to catch glimpses of the cities I used to live in and when I couldn't bring it around I would take pictures with my phone to hold on to the simple moments that I still didn't want to forget. During this year I started spending days or even weeks without taking pictures as I was feeling too drained to have the energy to bring my camera around when I was going somewhere, and I stopped immortalizing moments with my phone as well, probably because I was living days so exhausting that I didn't feel they were worth remembering, My second resolution was to bring back the version of me that saw magic even in the ordinary, to start capturing it again with my pictures and never let routines or tiredness stop me from seeing it.

The next element on the list was doing pigtails: this is something that randomly came to my mind as I was writing and I realized that I had stopped doing them for no reason. As for the clothing, this is an element that brought something different to my appearance and made me feel more whimsical, so it's something that I should not lose.

Afterwards I thought about reading, which is one of my greatest passions. I feel like there is something magical in connecting with stories written even centuries ago and being able to understand ourselves through the words of someone else. I have been devouring books ever since I was a kid and I study literature at University, but I feel that even this love can't get me past the burnout that prevents me from dedicating more time to this passion. I think it is very common to not have the energy to concentrate on more complex activities because of tiring routines, and it's such a shame that it leads to abandoning pastimes that can be so enriching. This is why I want to try and train my brain to stay focused for more time again and little by little start to include reading more in my daily life.

The last aspect that I found myself thinking about is something related to my personality: before this challenging year I was always told by people that I am a person with a positive mindset. This is something that I never noticed myself, but that I have been realizing thanks to the people around me. This version of me always tried to focus on the bright side and see the positive aspects of life, even when there were only few, probably because I was always believing in a brighter future. It is not easy to preserve such a mindset when life around you becomes more difficult to deal with and for me the negative aspects started becoming so many that I could only focus on them. My final resolution was to be more like the me I know and always find a way to focus on gratitude and the positive elements of life, even when it's hard to see them. Our mind can really play a crucial role in how we perceive the world around us and focusing on positivity is the only way to attract more of it.

As I write these resolutions I know that working on these aspects is not something that can be done easily or that can be achieved overnight, but I feel like making a list and reflecting on what enriches us is a good way to start. Discomfort is part of life and, even though we would like to experience the least of it, it is part of the process of regaining our peace, and we should not discard it, as it is what makes us grow.

- Ambra