Creating Yourself

Yesterday I pinned a saying on Pinterest that really got me thinking.  By thinking, I mean that I feel like I should think about it a bit more.  The quotation that inspires me states, "Life isn't about finding yourself.  It's about creating yourself."  It actually reminds me of something Jamie said to me back when we were seniors in high school: "You create your own happy."  I wish I could say that I've found myself or created a self I'm proud of since high school but I really haven't.  I've learned a lot and am so much better off than then.  Since high school I've met some incredible people, attained a college degree, and gathered a whole many more of both positive and negative experiences but can I say that I know who I am more now than I did then?  I can't and that really bothers me.

For so long I've been trying to find myself, trying to figure out who I am and what I like.  Last night I was telling Alli that her and Jamie are easy to buy for because they have a very distinct sense of self.  They know what they like and they have a variety of things they are passionate about.  Of course, they have a lot of questions about themselves, their own insecurities, vulnerabilities, and a lot of personal growth ahead of them (like us all) but they just know themselves a bit more than I know myself.  Perhaps I'm entirely wrong, though.  People think I have it together and know myself a lot more than I actually do.  So maybe that's how it seems to me with them.   Sometimes I wonder if those around us know us better than we know ourselves.  They can see our strengths that we can't see and the weaknesses we refused to see.

Anyway, I digress.  The idea that I could create myself wasn't all that new to me but I must of encountered it at the right moment because it had a profound effect.  If I were to create myself, who would I be?  What would I enjoy?  How would I like to describe myself?  These questions seem like they would have some easy answers but they actually don't.  Jamie actually sent me e-mail regarding this exact topic yesterday as well.  It was an e-mail that I needed to read and I'm still trying to put together my thoughts so that I can write her a response that is adequate.  It's another one of those, "I have so many thoughts but not sure how to articulate them."  I've been having that problem a lot recently.

Hopefully, by the end of this year I'll be on my way to creating myself.  Maybe I'll notate some of them here at some point.