“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”
― Francis Bacon

I started The Things I Learned From blog by accident.

I tried to start so many other blogs on purpose.

It never worked out.

I would buy a domain name, write a post, maybe write another post, and then suddenly just stop.

It became like that guy you suddenly lose interest in after the third date for no loveable or distinct reason. But you never want to see him again.

So you don’t.

I started The Things I Learned From because I had a whole lot of nothing.

I didn’t have a job.

I was living at home with my parents and my answer to the question, “what do you want to do with your life”, made people’s eyeballs roll. My work experience was so thin that my resume looked like my printer ran out of ink halfway down the page.

I applied for 326 jobs.

I kept busy. I’d spend all afternoon thinking of how I could invent a way to catapult back to freshman year of college and when I needed a break from doing that, I would take a nap.

I wanted to write but I didn’t have the opportunity to or the finances to do it full-time. Nobody, but the UPS guy or the neighbor who wanted to see If I could babysit her dog for the weekend, was knocking on MY door.

I was sick of waiting for someone to give me an opportunity.

The 4-year-old version of myself never waited for anybody to give her anything.

If she wanted a pack of dunkaroos, she’d wander into the pantry and climb shelves to get it.

If she wanted Barbie to kiss Ken, she didn’t wait for Ken to make the first move. She had Barbie walk up to him and give him a smooch.

If she had to pee and there was no bathroom around, well back then, she would just pee in her pants.

Four years ago, I went out to dinner to celebrate my Aunt’s 92nd birthday.

At 92, I thought to myself as I stuffed down a plate of linguini broccoli, what will still matter to me?

Who will be the people who are still in my life? The possessions that I will still hold on to tightly? The things I will still desperately believe in?

If I keep waiting for other people to say YES or you’re hired or I love you – before I have the guts to do those things for myself – I may end up with nothing. Nothing at all.

The car ride home, I decided to write this down. So when I got home, I rushed over to my computer and opened up a blank word documents an I wrote this sentence first:

The things I learned from my 92-year-old Aunt.

I wrote that story before I had a home for it. It became my very first post on this website. It became my punch in the stomach every time I thought about tossing my keyboard up in the air and giving up on this whole writing thing. It became the driving force behind the 399 posts that I have written for this website for the last 1,460 days.

There are eyeballs that find their way to this website  and I’m thankful for that and some afternoons I’m still unsure how that happened. It was never the reason I wanted to write or start a blog.

See, you’ll learn, when you love something with every single ounce of your heart, you don’t care about what the world is going to say or think. 

This place, this blog, this WordPress interface, is my HOME. It’s the opportunity I gave myself when nobody else did.

So, do you want to know what i’ve learned 4 years later?

We are all worthy of every single thing we want. Every bit and piece of it. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.

And when they do – and let me tell you this, they still do for me all the time – look at them directly in their eyeballs and say this:

Thank you for your consideration, but I am going to do it anyway.

And you will, my love, you really will.

No matter if you’ve been there since the first post or just found tis website today – I want to give you a virtual hug! I never intended anyone to read this (except for you mom, hi – I love you), but it truly means the world to me.

SO don’t be shy – say hello. I would love to meet you:  thethingslearned@gmail.com

And if you want to see where I’ve been over the past 4 years, here are the most popular posts.