I was musing the other day about my twitter bio and wondering if I should change it. I think it sums me up pretty well, but it doesn’t really give the clues that people seem to be expecting to find in a profile bio. But that’s not what I really want to talk about — it’s just where this particular train of thought got started. I can be a stubborn ol’ bat when I want, and that stubbornness kicks in a little more often than is probably good for me.

What I want to rant a bit about this morning is the working of my bio. Right now it reads “Still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up.” It’s pretty much a given that I’ll never totally grow up, so theoretically I’ll never have to decide what I want to “be”. So it probably shouldn’t bother me that I’m expected to “be” anything.

But it does.

I question why I have to be anything other than what I am. I question why society feels this need to pigeonhole me into a category of its choosing, and why I should have to label myself only to make it easier for someone who has never met me to judge me based on that label. I’m a lot of things — mother, friend, counsellor, businesswoman, artist, musician, author, historian are the labels that come to mind right off the top of my head — but not one of those labels really describes me on its own. Each individual piece of me makes up the whole, and trying to deny one in favor of the others doesn’t work. Believe me on this — I’ve tried.

I’ve tried to shove parts of myself to the background, or even to deny them in some cases. All so I’d fit in.

I’ve tried to do what other people thought was best for me, and to follow paths that others laid out for me. The result? I lost my sense of self in an attempt to please others and ended up alienating them anyway when living in someone else’s plan became too much and I rebelled. The worst, though, was that in being so caught up in living up (or down) to other’s expectations, I allowed myself to be abused physically, mentally, and emotionally. And I stayed that way for years even after my abusers were no longer on the scene. In effect, by trying to “be” something I wasn’t, I became my own abuser.

Because of this, standing up for my funky little bio becomes an exercise in being myself. Refusing to pick one thing, or to even list my labels; to define myself as being anything other than myself is me allowing the real me to be seen. It’s also a lesson in loving myself enough to actually BE me. There are days when I’m not even sure who the real me is yet — I’m still peeling away the layers of everyone else’s junk I’ve worn for too long. I’m gettin’ there slowly. What I’m finding is that I’m okay just as I am … even if I haven’t grown up yet :)

Please weigh in with a comment below… how do you craft your profile bio? Personal, professional, or somewhere in between? Do you show people the real you?

I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching over the past few days, and it seems that my plans are changing once again. It looks like I’m staying put here for a little longer, but for the first time in years I’m okay with that.

While I was dealing with the idea of not moving this spring, one of the questions that kept coming up over and over was “Why am I holding on to a goal that no longer fits who I am in this moment?”

I realized that while I have changed a lot in the past year, I hadn’t made any new goals to go along with the new me. I was still holding on to the goals of the scared, abused person years ago. When I really questioned why it was that all of a sudden moving east didn’t feel quite right, when it had been my driving force for so long, was that when I set that goal I my only desire was to hide myself away in the smallest, most remote place I could find where I could sit on the beach and lick my wounds, as it were. And at the time, I needed that solitude, that time to heal and to find myself. If I’d been able to make the move at that time, it would have been the right one. Now, with all the changes I’ve made in my life it doesn’t feel right. And until it does, I’m staying put!

Don’t get me wrong. I still want to move. And getting out of here is still one of the main motivations I have for getting up and working each and every day. I feel like I’ve outgrown this area and my reasons for being here, but have stayed because I was afraid to make the change I wanted. Now, I’m more than ready to embrace the change but I want to make sure that it’s the right change. When I came here years ago, I knew absolutely in my heart, in my soul, and in my head that it was the right thing to do at the time. It was such a good feeling to know that I was in the right place doing what the Universe intended for me to do, and I want that feeling again! I know that this upcoming move (and I have no doubt it will happen before the end of the year) is going to be another life changer for me, and I intend to do it right.

Getting back to my original question of why we hold on to goals that no longer serve us… (sorry I got on a bit of a rant there)

I think that for me, (and I can only speak for myself) it was a security blanket of sorts. The decision to move east was the first goal I set for myself after coming out of years of abuse and not being allowed to have dreams and goals of my own. I wanted to go as far away from here as I could get, and start completely over in a place of my own choosing.

Even after I started to build up my self-confidence and live again, I hung on to that goal because it was still the one thing I had that was truly mine. Although I was questioning the rightness of it, I brushed the uneasy feeling aside and wrote them off as self-sabotage. It really wasn’t until I was talking with a friend about it the other day, and I accepted her assertion that I’ve been putting way too much pressure on myself to do this now, that I really started to rethink my plans. I needed to hear that message that the right thing to do will make itself known at the right time again. After all, listening to that little voice is what got me to where I am now.

What I’ve learned through all this is that it really is okay to change your plans. Letting go of old goals that no longer fit you is really freeing. There are so many options out there that open up for you, and each time you make a change more doors open. Sure, some close too, that’s part of life. But when you accept that you yourself have changed enough that your old goals no longer fit, and you allow yourself to consider new possibilities, you will be amazed at they way things start to flow again. Don’t let fear keep you in the place you’ve worked so hard to get yourself out of. You really do owe it to yourself to embrace new experiences and opportunities that are a better fit with the new you!