love — blog — Southern Belle Nomad

Today I had an epiphany in a grocery store. Am I a Southern woman or am I a Southern woman?

To tell this story, I’ll have to back up a bit. These last few week have been a tumultuous roller coaster for me.

After a month of backpacking, I returned to my apartment in Paris for only 3 days before departing for Northern California to celebrate the wedding of my closest person and her soulmate. I spent a week in Northern California and now I’m currently sitting at a wonderful little haunt in Montmartre.

I won’t bore you with the details of my recent past, but I will say it has been one hell of a ride. My insides were all over the place. And at the end of this vague time period, I was one month out from starting this blog and am now 0 days shy of writing a business plan for my own startup. (‘Bout time, turns out I’m a beast at helping other people’s dreams come true, might as well start working on my own.)

Short-hand recent past inner-monologue: Do I want to continue writing on a blog that’s titled in a way that pigeon-holes me? What if I settle in one place for longer? Does that mean I'm no longer traveling "'round the world?" Shouldn’t I just write under my own name if my goal is to present my authentic self? Should I move back to California? I feel at home there. So many of my loves are there. But I need to be in San Francisco. That’s where all the start-ups are. Paris is too settled in its ways. No one is innovating there. People just walk around and drink coffee and wine. They aren’t hustlers. I need hustlers. San Francisco has hustlers. But I couldn’t be there full time. It would be too much. So maybe LA? But I don’t want to be there full time. Same problem. Too many loafers and schmoozers. Now that I’m back in Paris, I don’t care why these people are slow. They have all the croissants and all the champagne. I’m never leaving this place.

Needless to say, I get caught in my indecisiveness a lot. It bogs me down like a pig in 10 feet of mud. Good god it’s exhausting.

Then last night, post-nearly 18 hours of international travel, a dear friend of mine sent me a text telling me to check my e-mail. I love surprises.

He had sent me an article titled “What happens when you take full responsibility of your life.” Click the link to give it a read.

I have struggled with indecisiveness my entire life. Despite lots of self work, I still struggle with it and I might as well accept that I always will. But constant work on my self has sometimes allowed me to dig deeper and figure out what’s really going on.

Prior to reading this article, I once told someone that my indecisiveness presents itself in its most monstrous form AFTER I’ve made a decision. I will choose what I want for myself, but what follows is a period of second-guessing and self-doubt and fear of failure and fear of making a mistake. My authentic self chooses something and then my “dark side” (what I like to call it) says OH NO I DON’T THINK SO.

Per the article, I realized that what really lurks in my brain is a fear of commitment for a multitude of reasons. That dark side is a tricky mother fucker.

That paragraph up there? The one with all the concerns and worries and shoulds and should nots? Yeah. Fuck that. Fuck all that noise. The logistics don’t matter. This is what my authentic self has chosen as of this moment and I want to publicly make a commitment to myself right here. I commit to:

Writing

Building a supportive community for women

Traveling

Staying healthy / self-care

Connection

Creating a home wherever I am

See: grocery store epiphany. These commitments to myself don’t exist in a place or in other people or in a blog title. They exist in me. All the worries I listed above were, in a sense, asking for outside sources to love me back. I wanted Paris to embrace me and shift to my needs. I wanted different parts of California to embrace me and shift to my needs. I wanted my blog or my business venture to give me validation for the kind of life I want to live. In letting the indecisiveness and self-doubt take over, I looked everywhere outside my self for ANY KIND OF ANSWER. Because let’s face it, that dark side bitch wants to ruin my life.

But just like a relationship with any person, trying to force it to change to your own will taints it. You are no longer truly giving love to the authentic Paris or Los Angeles or San Francisco if you ask it to change for you. And trying to change myself to fit into a place or blog title taints my own authentic self. No matter where I am I'll always miss somewhere else. And if I were just writing under “Tanna Key” it wouldn’t give the site space to grow. I want other Southern voices up in here.

I vow to commit to the things I’ve listed above. And the list will grow longer. And I will change my mind all the time when it comes to logistics, but the core truths of my soul will remain constant. And through true consistency I will nurture my authentic self and foster my own validation of my own self worth that has existed within me all along.

Cheers, y’all. I need to finish my champagne.

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